Section 20.16 Bifurcated Trials

• Library: Criminal Practice 2012 Supp

G. (§20.16) Bifurcated Trials

In Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972), the Supreme Court held that the death penalty as it was presently being enforced was in violation of the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The Court stopped short of finding that the death penalty was per se in violation of the constitution but decided the case on the basis of procedures then in place in most states for deciding when the death penalty would be given. This decision had the practical effect of suspending the use of the death penalty for several years. Missouri and many other states addressed the questions raised in Furman by substantially amending the procedures for assessing the death penalty. The result in Missouri was the enactment of § 565.030, now RSMo Supp. 2004, which requires bifurcated trials in capital cases so that issues relating to the aggravating circumstances required to justify the assessment of the death penalty would not be presented to a jury until the jury had already resolved the issue of guilt or innocence.

The use of bifurcated trials was extended to non-capital cases by action of the General Assembly during the 2003 term. See § 557.036, RSMo Supp. 2004. The amendment became effective in July 2003, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, in its August 1, 2003, edition, reported that the first case tried under the new procedure had just been completed in St. Louis County. See State v. Mario DeLaTorres, No. 02CR-2477 (St. Louis County Cir. Ct., July 9, 2003).

Any analysis of this issue should also include a thorough review of Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584 (2002). In Ring, the Supreme Court held that an Arizona statute that allowed the trial judge, sitting alone, to determine the presence or absence of the aggravating factors required by Arizona law for imposition of the death penalty violated the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial in capital prosecutions. Under the Arizona statute in question, a death sentence could not legally be imposed unless at least one of several specific aggravating circumstances was found to exist beyond a reasonable doubt. The question presented was whether that aggravating circumstance could be found to exist by the trial judge, as Arizona law specified, or whether the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a jury trial, made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment, requires that the aggravating determination be entrusted to the jury. The Supreme Court of Missouri has found that the...