36
OCTOBER TERM, 2000
Syllabus
certiorari to the supreme court of south carolina
No. 00-5250. Argued January 9, 2001—Decided March 20, 2001
Under recent amendments to South Carolina law, capital jurors face two questions at the sentencing phase of the trial. They decide first whether the State has proved beyond a reasonable doubt the existence of any statutory aggravating circumstance. If the jury fails to agree unanimously on the presence of a statutory aggravator, it cannot make a sentencing recommendation. In that event, the trial judge is charged with sentencing the defendant to either life imprisonment or a mandatory minimum 30-year prison term. If, on the other hand, the jury unanimously finds a statutory aggravator, it then recommends one of two potential sentences—death or life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. No other sentencing option is available to the jury.
A South Carolina jury found petitioner Shafer guilty of murder, armed robbery, and conspiracy. During the trial's sentencing phase, Shafer's counsel and the prosecutor disagreed on the application of Simmons v. South Carolina, 512 U. S. 154, to this case. This Court held in Simmons that where a capital defendant's future dangerousness is at issue, and the only sentencing alternative to death available to the jury is life imprisonment without possibility of parole, due process requires that the jury be informed of the defendant's parole ineligibility. Shafer's counsel maintained that Simmons required the trial judge to instruct the jury that under South Carolina law a life sentence carries no possibility of parole. The prosecutor, in opposition, urged that no Simmons instruction was required because the State did not plan to argue to the jury that Shafer would be a danger in the future. Shafer's counsel replied that the State had in fact put future dangerousness at issue by introducing evidence of a postarrest assault by Shafer and jail rules violations. The judge refused to charge on parole ineligibility, stating that future dangerousness had not been argued. The judge also denied Shafer's counsel leave to read in his closing argument lines from the controlling statute stating plainly that a life sentence in South Carolina carries no possibility of parole. After the prosecution's closing argument, Shafer's counsel renewed his plea for a life without parole instruction on the ground that the State had placed future dangerousness at issue by repeating the statements of an alarmed witness at the crime scene that Shafer and his accomplices "might come back." The trial judge again denied the request. Quoting a passage from the relevant
Page: Index 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007