PATTERSON v. SOUTH CAROLINA

• Decision Date: 01 January 1985
• Citation: 471 U.S. 1036
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

471 U.S. 1036

Wardell PATTERSON, Jr., petitioner,

v. SOUTH CAROLINA

No. 84-5843

Paul F. KOON, petitioner,

v. SOUTH CAROLINA

No. 84-5850

Supreme Court of the United States

April 15, 1985

On petitions for writs of certiorari to the Supreme Court of South Carolina.

The petitions for writs of certiorari are denied.

Justice MARSHALL, with whom Justice BRENNAN joins, dissenting.

In spite of this Court's repeated declarations that a capital " 'sentencer . . . not be precluded from considering, as a mitigating factor, any aspect of a defendant's character . . . that the

Page 471 U.S. 1036 , 1037

defendant proffers as a basis for a sentence less than death,' " Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104, 110, 874 (1982) ( quoting Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 604, 2964d 973 (1978)), the South Carolina Supreme Court has determined that evidence of a capital defendant's likely nondangerousness within a prison environment is legally irrelevant to the capital sentencer's choice between death or life in prison. In these cases, the petitioners were sentenced to death. They had offered such evidence in mitigation of death but were denied the opportunity of submitting the evidence to their sentencing juries.

The death sentences in these cases were imposed in glaring violation of two lines of this Court's capital sentencing jurisprudence. First, and most obviously, the sentences are contrary to the Lockett-Eddings line of authority, which makes unmistakably clear that it is for the sentencer to determine the weight to be given to proffered evidence of mitigation. Second, they are equally in conflict with those decisions of this Court that make equally clear that the question of a capital defendant's future dangerousness is a legitimate penological concern relevant to a capital sentencing hearing. See California v. Ramos, 463 U.S. 992, 1001-1003, 3453-3454 (1983); Barefoot v. Estelle, 463 U.S. 880, 896-905, 3396-3401 (1983); Jurek v. Texas, 428 U.S. 262, 274-276, 2957-2958 ( 1976).

While this latter group of cases affirmed the penological relevance of future dangerousness in contexts in which the State urged it as a factor in aggravation, the hitherto relevant factor of future dangerousness cannot become suddenly and cruelly "irrelevant" as a matter of law when a defendant wishes to assert its absence as a factor in mitigation. As was declared in a precursor to Lockett and Eddings, "a jury must be allowed to consider on the basis of all relevant evidence not only why a death sentence should be imposed, but also why it should not be imposed." Jurek v. Texas, supra, at 271. Rather than allow Lockett and Eddings to be eroded through such a cruelly inequitable view of relevance, I would grant these petitions. [^{Footnote 1}]

Page 471 U.S. 1036 , 1038

I

At the time of the sentencing hearings in question the South Carolina Supreme Court's view of the relevance of predictive evidence as to a defendant's future non-dangerousness in a prison environment was clear:

"The penalty phase of a capital murder case is concerned with the existence or nonexistence of mitigating or aggravating circumstances involved in or arising out of the murder, not the convicted murderer's adaptability to prison life. The jury is concerned with the circumstances of the crime and the characteristics of the individual defendant as they bear logical relevance to the crime . . . . In Lockett v. Ohio, . . . cited as controlling in Eddings v. Oklahoma, . . . the United States Supreme Court retained the court's traditional authority to exclude irrelevant evidence which did not bear on a defendant's character, prior record, or the circumstances of his offense. We conclude that the evidence of appellant's future conformity to prison life was properly excluded as irrelevant." State v. Koon, 278 S.C. 528, 536, 537, 298 S.E.2d 769, 773-774 (1982) ( hereinafter Koon I).2

At Koon's hearing below, his counsel sought to develop a number of avenues of mitigating evidence. First, he sought to call two prison officials to testify as to petitioner's excellent record in prison and his demonstrated ability to adapt to prison life. Record in No. 84-5850, pp. 922-927. Second, he sought to call psychiatric experts to testify as to Koon's mental condition. Those psychiatrists had examined him and were prepared to testify that he suffered from a severe mental disorder, and that partly as a result of that disorder he was extremely capable of

Page 471 U.S. 1036 , 1039

adapting to prison life. They would have testified that, within the highly structured and regulated context of life in prison, Koon would be unlikely to present any problem of future dangerousness, and that indeed, he might live a more productive life than he was capable of living outside of confinement. Id., at 925-928. See also id., at 1062-1066.3

The trial court, relying on Koon I, excluded all of the prison officers' testimony, and all psychiatric evidence of Koon's ability to adapt to prison life or of his likely future nondangerousness within the prison environment. Although Koon was allowed to

Page 471 U.S. 1036 , 1040

call a psychiatric witness to testify about his general psychiatric makeup, questions concerning adaptability or future nondangerousness were prohibited. The witness did briefly refer to petitioner's successful adaptation to prison life in responding to a question only tangentially related to that issue; petitioner's counsel was obviously unable to either develop this issue to any extent or to draw the jury's attention to it in his summation.

In Patterson, the facts are quite similar. Petitioner proffered evidence from prison authorities that he had an exemplary prison record during the period of almost three years since his earlier trial, and proffered evidence from a psychiatrist that individuals exhibiting a personality pattern similar to petitioner's "usually make a satisfactory adjustment to prison life" so that the likelihood of future violence by such persons "diminishes with the passing of time." Record in No. 84-5843, p. 1442. The trial court excluded all this evidence as irrelevant under the authority of Koon I. Thus, the sentencing jury was given no opportunity at all to consider either petitioner's behavior in prison or the issue of petitioner's likely future nondangerousness within a prison environment.

On appeal, both of these petitioners' death sentences were affirmed by the State Supreme Court on a slight variation of the Koon I rationale. 285 S.C. 5, 327 S.E.2d 650 (1984); 285 S.C. 1, 328 S.E.2d 625 (1984). Following Koon I, the court held that all predictive evidence of Patterson's future behavior in prison was simply irrelevant. It modified Koon I only to the extent that it held that the bare facts of Patterson's past prison record would now be considered admissible as general personal history. It read Lockett and Eddings as saying that a defendant's " character" was relevant mitigating evidence that can be shown through evidence of past behavior. It thus found that it had been error for the trial court to exclude the prison officers' testimony concerning Patterson's prior prison behavior. But since such behavior was relevant only to show a generally good character, the court held that it was merely cumulative of other general character evidence submitted by the petitioner. 4

Page 471 U.S. 1036 , 1041

Similarly, in Koon's appeal below, the State Supreme Court held that the evidence of future nondangerousness was properly excluded. Prison officials' testimony as to Koon's prison record was relevant, but again, was properly excluded as cumulative since the psychiatrist had briefly, in an unresponsive answer, stated that petitioner had been doing quite well in prison.

In both of these cases, the capital defendants were limited to argue the most vague and general theories of mitigation. Their chosen theories were completely excluded from the jury's consideration. The State Supreme Court declared that it was irrelevant, as a matter of law, to argue that a death sentence might be inappropriate where a defendant could be relied on to lead an unthreatening life, and even a somewhat productive life, if kept in prison. [^{Footnote 5}]

II

The constitutionality of these sentences rests on the premise that a State can make irrelevant to the capital sentencing process, as a matter of law, the theory of future non-dangerousness that was proffered in mitigation by petitioners. The State's reasoning was that the proffered factor does not "aris[e] out of the murder" nor "bear logical relevance to the crime." Koon I, 278 S.C., at 536, 298 S.E.2d, at 774. Put another way, the State viewed the factor as irrelevant because its proof would not reduce the moral culpability of the defendant. But this Court has never limited the circumstances relevant to a capital sentencing determination to those going to moral culpability. Quite the contrary, this Court has repeatedly treated predictive evidence relating to future dangerousness as highly relevant to sentencing concerns.

Page 471 U.S. 1036 , 1042

The most glaring is Jurek v. Texas, 428 U.S. 262, 49 L. Ed.2d 929 (1976), where this Court upheld a state law requiring capital sentencing juries to consider the issue of future dangerousness. The opinion announcing the judgment there declared:

"It is, of course, not easy to predict future behavior. The fact that such a determination is difficult, however, does not mean that it cannot be made. Indeed, prediction of future criminal conduct is an essential element in many of the decisions rendered throughout our criminal justice system. . . . And any sentencing authority must predict a convicted person's probable future conduct when it engages in the process of determining what punishment to impose. . . . The task that a [capital sentencing] jury must perform in answering the statutory question in issue is thus basically no different from the task performed countless times each day throughout the American system...