New death penalty statue in Idaho.

• Author: Shaw, Stephen
• Position: Perspectives: Federal Jurisprudence, State Autonomy

On June 24, 2002, the Supreme Court held that the jury trial provision of the Sixth Amendment requires that enumerated aggravating circumstances in a capital trial must be found by a jury and not by a judge sitting alone, and thus, the Court struck down Arizona's death penalty statute. (1) Arizona's death penalty statute, which authorized a judge to make this determination, and therefore denied the accused the right to a jury on those matters, was invalidated. In Ring v. Arizona, (2) the United States Supreme Court's ruling triggered fundamental changes in the criminal procedure of many states that had statutes similar to Arizona's. Furthermore, Ring required change that the Supreme Court itself had recently declared to be unnecessary. (3)

The Arizona Supreme Court recognized in Ring that Arizona's sentencing scheme was questionable; however, a few years earlier, the United States Supreme Court approved of the scheme. (4) Moreover, when the United States Supreme Court had occasion to overrule Walton v. Arizona, it declined to do so. (5) According to Justice Feldman of the Arizona Supreme Court,

While the state is correct in noting that neither Jones nor Apprendi overruled Walton, we must acknowledge that both cases raise some question about the continued viability of Walton. Of course, it could also be said that because a majority of the Court refused to expressly overrule Walton, the apparent scope of Apprehdi and Jones is not as broad as some of the language of the two opinions suggests. The unclear language of the Court's Apprendi and Jones opinions makes either of these interpretations reasonable and, therefore, we believe the practical operation of Arizona's death penalty scheme, as applied under the peculiar facts of the present case, requires some further explication. (6) In Ring v. Arizona, a few changes in the United States Supreme Court Justice's votes resulted not only in an overruling of the Arizona Supreme Court's decision but also in overruling the United States Supreme Court's past precedent with the concomitant requirement that many states alter their sentencing procedure for capital cases. Although Ring arose in Arizona, the Supreme Court's decision affected four other states, including Idaho. (7)

As in Arizona, Idaho's death-penalty statute allowed judges alone to determine fact-finding in a capital trial and to make the ultimate sentencing decision. (8) When the 2003 session of the Idaho legislature began in early...