Stripling v. the State.

• Decision Date: 13 June 2011
• Docket Number: No. S11A0474.,S11A0474.
• Citation: 711 S.E.2d 665,289 Ga. 370
• Parties: STRIPLINGv.The STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

289 Ga. 370

711 S.E.2d 665

11 FCDR 1763

11 FCDR 2684

STRIPLING

v.The STATE.

No. S11A0474.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

June 13, 2011.

David T. Wooten, Gerald P. Word, Carrollton, Mitchell D. Raup, Carl J. Summers, for appellant.Jeffrey Lynn Ballew, James Alan Dooley, Asst. Dist. Attys., David McDade, Dist. Atty., W. Thomas Weathers, III., Asst. Dist. Atty., for appellee.Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Sr. Asst. Atty. Gen., Sabrina Dawn Graham, Asst. Atty. Gen., Mary Beth Westmoreland, Deputy Atty. Gen., Samuel S. Olens, Atty. Gen., Department of Law, for amici curiae.MELTON, Justice.

In 1988, Alphonso Stripling was working as a cook trainee at a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Douglasville. Shortly after the restaurant closed on October 15, 1988, he shot his four co-workers, killing two of them and injuring the other two. He then stole money from the restaurant and fled in an automobile that he stole at gunpoint. He was convicted on two counts each of murder, armed robbery, and aggravated assault and was sentenced to death for each of the murders. This Court affirmed. See Stripling v. State, 261 Ga. 1, 401 S.E.2d 500 (1991). Stripling filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, which the habeas court granted as to Stripling's death sentence. On appeal of that decision by the Warden, this Court concluded that the State had suppressed favorable information regarding Stripling's alleged mental retardation and, accordingly, affirmed the habeas court's order directing that Stripling must be retried on the question of his mental retardation and, if he is not found to be mentally retarded, retried as to sentencing. Head v. Stripling, 277 Ga. 403, 590 S.E.2d 122 (2003). Stripling's case is now pending in the trial court, and this Court granted Stripling's application for interim review to consider the following three questions:

Did the trial court err in its order addressing what burden and standard of proof should apply to Stripling's claim that he is mentally retarded?

Did the trial court err regarding the order of opening statements and closing arguments in the mental retardation phase?

Did the trial court err by ruling that it lacked the authority to accept a plea of guilty but mentally retarded?

For the reasons set forth below, we conclude that the trial court erred regarding the burden of proof to be applied to Stripling's claim of mental retardation, that the trial court did not err by ruling that standard criminal procedural rules would apply to Stripling's retrial on the issue of mental retardation, and that the trial court erred by ruling that it lacked the authority to consider any plea bargain that the parties might be willing to enter into.

1. Georgia law provides by statute that a defendant will be exempt from the death penalty if he or she can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he or she is mentally retarded. See OCGA § 17–7–131(c)(3) and (j). Stripling moved the trial court to declare the standard of proof applied to mental retardation claims to be unconstitutional. Specifically, Stripling moved the trial court to place the burden on the State to prove that he was not mentally retarded. The trial court granted Stripling's motion in part by declaring it unconstitutional to place the burden on defendants to prove their mental retardation beyond a reasonable doubt; however, the trial court also denied Stripling's motion in part by ruling that Stripling would bear the burden to prove his mental retardation by a preponderance of the evidence. In so ruling, the trial court relied on a decision by a three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals,¹ a decision that has since been vacated for rehearing en banc. See Hill v. Schofield, 608 F.3d 1272 (11th Cir.2010), vacated and rehearing en banc granted, 625 F.3d 1313 (11th Cir.2010).

We have previously addressed this very issue, and we now reiterate our prior holding that Georgia's beyond a reasonable doubt standard is not unconstitutional. See Head v. Hill, 277 Ga. 255, 260–263(II)(B), 587 S.E.2d 613 (2003). In addressing this issue previously, we first noted that, although the Supreme Court of the United States had recognized a constitutional right of mentally retarded defendants to be exempt from the death penalty, it had not directed the states to apply any particular burden of proof to claims of mental retardation. See Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 122 S.Ct. 2242, 153 L.Ed.2d 335 (2002) (identifying a national consensus against executing mentally retarded persons and holding that executing such persons was therefore unconstitutional). Instead, we noted that the Supreme Court “specifically left “‘to the States the task of developing appropriate ways to enforce the (federal) constitutional restriction”’ on executing the mentally retarded.” Hill, 277 Ga. at 260(II)(B), 587 S.E.2d 613 (quoting Atkins, 536 U.S. at 317(III), 122 S.Ct. 2242 (citation omitted)). See also Bobby v. Bies, –––U.S. ––––, ––––(I), 129 S.Ct. 2145, 2150(I), 173 L.Ed.2d 1173 (2009) (“Our opinion [in Atkins ] did not provide definitive procedural or substantive guides for determining when a person who claims mental retardation ‘will be so impaired as to fall (within Atkins' compass).’ ” (quoting Atkins, 536 U.S. at 317(III), 122 S.Ct. 2242); Ferrell v. Head, 398 F.Supp.2d 1273, 1295(III)(D) (N.D.Ga.2005) (finding Georgia's procedure regarding mental retardation to be constitutional under the direction given to the states in Atkins )), rev'd on other grounds sub nom. Ferrell v. Hall, 640 F.3d 1199 (11th Cir.2011). We then took guidance from Leland v. Oregon, which approved the application of the beyond a reasonable doubt standard to claims of insanity at the time of defendants' crimes, because claims of mental retardation and claims of insanity “both relieve a guilty person of at least some of the statutory penalty to which he [or she] would otherwise be subject.” Hill, 277 Ga. at 261(II)(B), 587 S.E.2d 613 (citing Leland v. Oregon, 343 U.S. 790, 72 S.Ct. 1002, 96 L.Ed. 1302 (1952)). Accord Ledford v. Head, 2008 WL 754486, at *3–4 (II) (N.D.Ga. 2008). We rejected the argument that claims of mental retardation were closely analogous to claims of incompetence to stand trial, which a defendant cannot be required to prove by any standard higher than a preponderance of the evidence. Hill, 277 Ga. at 261(II)(B), 587 S.E.2d 613 (distinguishing Cooper v. Oklahoma, 517 U.S. 348, 116 S.Ct. 1373, 134 L.Ed.2d 498 (1996)). In doing so, we noted that “the special risks and limitations” faced by mentally retarded persons during their trial proceedings were “sufficiently counterbalanced by the joint safeguards” of defendants' right to a determination of competency to stand trial under the preponderance of the evidence standard and their right to a determination of mental retardation under the beyond a reasonable doubt standard, and we also noted that Georgia was not alone in placing a burden higher than a preponderance of the evidence on defendants seeking to prove their mental retardation. Hill, 277 Ga. at 262(II)(B), 587 S.E.2d 613. Thus, in light of the specific statement by the Supreme Court that it had not established any particular procedural standards that must be applied to mental retardation, the similarity of mental retardation claims to claims of insanity at the time of the commission of crimes, and the persuasive effect of having sister states who have refused to declare the preponderance of the evidence standard to be constitutionally required, we held that Georgia's beyond a reasonable doubt standard was not unconstitutional from a procedural point of view.

In addition to addressing the question of Georgia's burden of proof from a purely procedural point of view, we also held that Georgia's beyond a reasonable doubt standard further served to define the category of mental retardation within Georgia law and that, in doing so, Georgia had not acted outside the bounds of the national consensus about the treatment of mentally retarded persons identified by the Supreme Court in Atkins. In Atkins, the Supreme Court praised Georgia as being the first state in the nation to have banned the execution of mentally retarded persons, and the Supreme Court made no negative comment about Georgia's heightened standard of proof but, instead, counted Georgia among the states forming the national consensus about the treatment of mentally retarded defendants. Furthermore, Georgia was not alone in defining mental retardation through the use of a heightened standard of proof at the time of Atkins, as several states by that time had already established that a defendant must prove mental retardation under a clear and convincing evidence standard. See Colo.Rev.Stat. § 18–1.3–1102(2) (formerly Colo.Rev.Stat. § 16–9–401); Fla. Stat. § 921.137(4); Ind.Code Ann. § 35–36–9–4(b); Ariz.Rev.Stat. Ann. § 13–753 (formerly Ariz.Rev.Stat. Ann. § 13–703.02).² Nevertheless, these states, despite their heightened standards of proof, were also counted among those states forming the national consensus about the treatment of mentally retarded persons. Finally one state at the time of Atkins, Kansas, limited the definition of mentally retarded persons by requiring defendants to show that their mental deficiencies directly affected their degrees of criminal culpability, and yet that state was also counted as part of the national consensus about the treatment of mentally retarded persons. See Kan. Stat. Ann. § 21–4623(e) (2001) (providing that “ ‘mentally retarded’ means having significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning ... to an extent which substantially impairs one's capacity to appreciate the criminality of one's conduct or to conform one's conduct to the requirements of law.”). Thus, in light of these varying approaches to defining and setting the standard of proof regarding mental retardation which formed part of the national consensus regarding the treatment of mentally...