Jones v U.S.
| Decision Date | 21 June 1999 |
| Docket Number | 979361 |
| Parties | JONES v. UNITED STATES (97-9361) SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 119 S.Ct. 20909361 LOUIS JONES, PETITIONER v. UNITED STATES ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT [ |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Petitioner was sentenced to death for committing a kidnaping resulting in death to the victim. His sentence was imposed under the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994, 18 U.S.C. § 3591 et seq. (1994 ed. and Supp. III). We are presented with three questions: whether petitioner was entitled to an instruction as to the effect of jury deadlock; whether there is a reasonable likelihood that the jury was led to believe that petitioner would receive a court-imposed sentence less than life imprisonment in the event that they could not reach a unanimous sentence recommendation; and whether the submission to the jury of two allegedly duplicative, vague, and overbroad nonstatutory aggravating factors was harmless error. We answer "no" to the first two questions. As for the third, we are of the view that there was no error in allowing the jury to consider the challenged factors. Assuming error, arguendo, we think it clear that such error was harmless.
Petitioner Louis Jones, Jr., kidnaped Private Tracie Joy McBride at gunpoint from the Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas. He brought her to his house and sexually assaulted her. Soon thereafter, petitioner drove Private McBride to a bridge just outside of San Angelo, where he repeatedly struck her in the head with a tire iron until she died. Petitioner administered blows of such severe force that, when the victim's body was found, the medical examiners observed that large pieces of her skull had been driven into her cranial cavity or were missing.
The Government charged petitioner with, inter alia, kidnaping with death resulting to the victim, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(2), an offense punishable by life imprisonment or death. Exercising its discretion under the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994, 18 U.S.C. § 3591 et seq., the Government decided to seek the latter sentencing option. Petitioner was tried in the District Court for the Northern District of Texas and found guilty by the jury.
The District Court then conducted a separate sentencing hearing pursuant to §3593. As an initial matter, the sentencing jury was required to find that petitioner had the requisite intent, see §3591(a)(2); it concluded that petitioner intentionally killed his victim and intentionally inflicted serious bodily injury resulting in her death. Even on a finding of intent, however, a defendant is not death-eligible unless the sentencing jury also finds that the Government has proved beyond a reasonable doubt at least one of the statutory aggravating factors set forth at §3592. See §3593(e). Because petitioner was charged with committing a homicide, the Government had to prove 1 of the 16 statutory aggravating factors set forth at 18 U.S.C. § 3592(c) (1994 ed. and Supp. III) (). The jury unanimously found that two such factors had been proved beyond a reasonable doubt it agreed that petitioner caused the death of his victim during the commission of another crime, see §3592(c)(1), and that he committed the offense in an especially heinous, cruel, and depraved manner, see §3592(c)(6).1
Once petitioner became death-eligible, the jury had to decide whether he should receive a death sentence. In making the selection decision, the Act requires that the sentencing jury consider all of the aggravating and mitigating factors and determine whether the former outweigh the latter (or, if there are no mitigating factors, whether the aggravating factors alone are sufficient to warrant a death sentence). §§3591(a), 3592, 3593(e). The Act, however, requires more exacting proof of aggravating factors than mitigating ones although a jury must unanimously agree that the Government established the existence of an aggravating factor beyond a reasonable doubt, §3593(c), the jury may consider a mitigating factor in its weighing process so long as one juror finds that the defendant established its existence by preponderance of the evidence, §§3593(c), (d). In addition to the two statutory aggravators that established petitioner's death-eligibility, the jury also unanimously found two aggravators of the nonstatutory variety2 had been proved: one set forth victim impact evidence and the other victim vulnerability evidence.3 As for mitigating factors, at least one juror found 10 of the 11 that petitioner proposed and seven jurors wrote in a factor petitioner had not raised on the Special Findings Form.4
After weighing the aggravating and mitigating factors, the jury unanimously recommended that petitioner be sentenced to death. App. 57 58. The District Court imposed sentence in accordance with the jury's recommendation pursuant to §3594. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the sentence. 132 F.3d 232 (1998). We granted certiorari, 525 U.S. ___ (1998), and now affirm.
We first decide the question whether petitioner was entitled to an instruction as to the consequences of jury deadlock. Petitioner requested, in relevant part, the following instruction:
"In the event, after due deliberation and reflection, the jury is unable to agree on a unanimous decision as to the sentence to be imposed, you should so advise me and I will impose a sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of release.
. . . . .
"In the event you are unable to agree on [a sentence of] Life Without Possibility of Release or Death, but you are unanimous that the sentence should not be less than Life Without Possibility of Release, you should report that vote to the Court and the Court will sentence the defendant to Life Without the Possibility of Release." App. 14 15.
In petitioner's view, the Eighth Amendment requires that the jury be instructed as to the effect of their inability to agree. He alternatively argues that we should invoke our supervisory power over the federal courts and require that such an instruction be given.
Before we turn to petitioner's Eighth Amendment argument, a question of statutory interpretation calls for our attention. The Fifth Circuit held that the District Court did not err in refusing petitioner's requested instruction because it was not substantively correct. See 132 F.3d, at 242 243. According to the Court of Appeals, §3593(b)(2)(C), which provides that a new jury shall be impaneled for a new sentencing hearing if the guilt phase jury is discharged for "good cause," requires the District Court to impanel a second jury and hold a second sentencing hearing in the event of jury deadlock. Id., at 243. The Government interprets the statute the same way (although its reading is more nuanced) and urges that the judgment below be affirmed on this ground.
Petitioner, however, reads the Act differently. In his view, whenever the jury reaches a result other than a unanimous verdict recommending a death sentence or life imprisonment without the possibility of release, the duty of sentencing falls upon the district court pursuant to §3594, which reads:
Petitioner's argument is based on his construction of the term "[o]therwise." He argues that this term means that when the jury, after retiring for deliberations, reports itself as unable to reach unanimous verdict, the sentencing determination passes to the court.
As the dissent also concludes, post, at 14 15, petitioner's view of the statute is the better one. The phrase "good cause" in §3593(b)(2)(C) plainly encompasses events such as juror disqualification, but cannot be read so expansively as to include the jury's failure to reach a unanimous decision. Nevertheless, the Eighth Amendment does not require that the jury be instructed as to the consequences of their failure to agree.
To be sure, we have said that the Eighth Amendment requires that a sentence of death not be imposed arbitrarily. See, e.g., Buchanan v. Angelone, 522 U.S. 269, 275 (1998). In order for a capital sentencing scheme to pass constitutional muster, it must perform a narrowing function with respect to the class of persons eligible for the death penalty and must also ensure that capital sentencing decisions rest upon an individualized inquiry. Ibid. The instruction that petitioner requested has no bearing on what we have called the "eligibility phase" of the capital sentencing process. As for what we have called the "selection phase," our cases have held that in order to satisfy the requirement that capital sentencing decisions rest upon an individualized inquiry, a scheme must allow a "broad inquiry" into all "constitutionally relevant mitigating evidence." Id., at 276. Petitioner does not argue, nor could he, that the District Court's failure to give the requested instruction prevented the jury from considering such evidence.
In theory, the District Court's failure to instruct the jury as to the consequences of deadlock could give rise to an Eighth Amendment problem of a different sort: We also have held that a jury cannot be "affirmatively misled regarding its role in the sentencing process." Romano v. Oklahoma, 512 U.S. 1, 9 (1994). In no way, however, was the jury affirmatively misled by the District...
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