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North Carolina v. McKoy9/7/1988
yland case whether the jury found no mitigating circumstance or at least one but not all the mitigating circumstances submitted to it. Since in this situation Maryland's capital sentencing scheme is no different from North Carolina's, it must follow that the Mills holding applies equally to North Carolina's capital sentencing scheme.
The Eighth Amendment jurisprudence upon which Mills rests is that in a capital case the sentencing authority may not be precluded from considering any relevant mitigating circumstance which might be proffered by the defendant as reasonably justifying a sentence other than death. Skipper v. South Carolina, 476 U.S. 1, 4, 90 L. Ed. 2d 1 (1986); Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104, 110, 71 L. Ed. 2d 1 (1982); Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 604, 57 L. Ed. 2d 973 (1978). This jurisprudence is summarized at the outset of the substantive discussion in Mills. Mills, 486 U.S. at , 100 L. Ed. 2d at 393-94. Later in its opinion the Supreme Court posits a Maryland capital sentencing process under which the jury actually reaches the balancing stage, saying:
Ordinarily, a Maryland jury reaches the balancing stage of the deliberation process any time it unanimously finds at least one mitigating circumstance, or, under the interpretation adopted by the Court of Appeals in this case, any time the jury does not unanimously reject all mitigating circumstances. Had the jurors that sentenced petitioner reached Section III, they would have found that even if they had read the verdict form as the Court of Appeals suggests they could have, and marked "yes" or "no" only on the basis of unanimity as to either, they were not free at this point to consider all relevant evidence in mitigation as they balanced aggravating and mitigating circumstances. Section III instructed the jury to weigh only those mitigating circumstances marked "yes" in Section II. Any mitigating circumstance not so marked, even if not unanimously rejected, could not be considered by any juror. A jury following the instructions set out in the verdict form could be "precluded from considering, as a mitigating factor, aspect of a defendant's character or record a circumstanc of the offense that the defendant proffer as a basis for a sentence less than death," {PA}
Page 54} Skipper v. South Carolina, 476 U.S. at 4, 90 L. Ed. 2d 1, 106 S. Ct. 1669, if even a single juror adhered to the view that such a factor should not be so considered.
Mills, 486 U.S. at , 100 L. Ed. 2d at 397 (footnote omitted). Footnote 14 presses the point further:
For example, some jurors in this case might have found that petitioner's age, 20, constituted a mitigating factor, i.e., youthfulness, under § 413(g)(5). Indeed, in his sentencing report the trial judge noted: "There was evidence from which the jury could have found the existence of Mitigating Circumstance No. 5 (youthful age)." App. 108. Other jurors, on the other hand, might have accepted the prosecutor's argument that petitioner was "not youthful in terms of the criminal justice system," id., at 79, because of his history of criminal activity. Under such circumstances, the lack of unanimity would have prevented the jury from marking that answer "yes." Regardless of whether the answer was marked "no" or left blank, the instructions in Section III would prevent those jurors who thought petitioner's youthfulness was relevant to the ultimate sentencing decision from giving that mitigating circumstance any weight.
Mills, 486 U.S. at , 100 L. Ed. 2d at 397-98 n.14.
The majority next attempts to distinguish Mills on the basis of the posture in which that case reached the Supreme Court. The majority notes that the Maryland Cour
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