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Wednesday, March 21, 2001

The justices also said that federal trial judges, not the appeals courts, had the main responsibility to decide when past crimes define a "career criminal," a circumstance that could translate into a longer prison sentence being ordered.

In the first case, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that its own 1994 precedent in Simmons vs. South Carolina governed what a jury should be told about a possible life sentence. In Simmons, the high court ruled that when a convicted defendant's "future dangerousness" is at issue, and a jury is offered the alternatives of imposing a life term or the death penalty, then the jurors must be told if the defendant may become ineligible for parole under state law.

In the case decided Tuesday, Wesley Aaron Shafer Jr. was 18 when he killed a convenience store cashier during a 1997 robbery in Union County, S.C. A jury convicted Shafer of murder, armed robbery and conspiracy. During sentencing, his attorney and the prosecutor disagreed on whether the Simmons precedent should apply.

The prosecutor contended that Simmons did not apply because he did not argue Shafer's "future dangerousness" at trial or in the sentencing phase. Accepting the prosecutor's reasoning, the state judge subsequently refused to instruct the jury that if sentenced to life in prison, instead of the death penalty, Shafer would not be eligible for parole under South Carolina law.

Despite that omission, the jury asked during its deliberations about the possibility of parole if it imposed a life sentence. The judge replied that it was not part of the jury's duty to consider that issue. The jury then unanimously recommended the death penalty, and the judge complied. On appeal, the South Carolina Supreme Court upheld the sentence.

But the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the state courts Tuesday.

Writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the jury's understanding of the possibility of parole "may become critical to its life-or-death decision" when only two choices are available - life in prison or the death penalty. "Therefore Simmons holds sway at that stage."

Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas filed separate dissents. Scalia said such jury instructions may be logical, but it was up to the federal judiciary to enforce the Constitution, not "promulgate wise national rules of criminal procedure."

In the second case decided Tuesday, the justices said unanimously that federal appeals courts must take a "deferential" approach to reviewing the decisions of U.S. trial judges when evaluating a convicted defendant's past criminal conduct.

In the underlying case, Paula Buford pleaded guilty in federal court to bank robbery. The judge, in determining her sentence, had to decide whether her 1992 convictions for four gas station robberies in Wisconsin were related and as such should be counted as one single conviction. The distinction was important. Under U.S. sentencing guidelines, a "career offender" with at least two prior felony convictions for violent or drug crimes gets a much stiffer sentence.

In Buford's case, the government conceded that her gas station robberies were related and should be counted as one. But prosecutors would not concede that a separate 1992 drug conviction was related. The judge agreed with prosecutors that Buford had two strikes against her, and a federal appeals court refused to conduct its own review of the facts.

Tuesday, the Supreme Court agreed with the appeals court. Justice Stephen Breyer pointed to the federal statute that says appeals courts must give "due deference" to a judge's findings of facts, except when they are "clearly erroneous."

(Nos. 00-5250, Shafer vs. South Carolina; and 00-9073, Buford vs. United States.)

Copyright 2001 by United Press International.

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