Rodriguez v. Colorado

1991-01-22

Headline: Court leaves a murderer's death sentence intact, denying review and a stay despite a Justice’s warning that jury instructions may have barred consideration of non‑unanimous mitigating evidence.

Holding: The Court denied the stay of execution and refused to review the case, leaving the defendant's death sentence intact despite Justice Marshall's view that the jury instructions likely required unanimous findings before considering mitigating evidence.

Real World Impact:

Leaves the defendant's death sentence in place while no Supreme Court review is granted.
Signals similar jury instruction disputes may persist without immediate federal correction.

Topics: death penalty, jury instructions, mitigating evidence, capital sentencing

Summary

Background

The defendant was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. At the penalty phase the trial judge gave Instruction No. 21 telling the jury to make "unanimous findings" about aggravating and mitigating factors before weighing them. The Colorado Supreme Court refused to overturn the death sentence, and the defense asked the High Court for a stay of execution and review.

Reasoning

Justice Marshall, writing in dissent, focused on whether Instruction No. 21 effectively required jurors to agree unanimously about the existence of mitigating factors before those factors could be considered. He relied on this Court’s prior rulings saying juries must be able to consider any relevant mitigation evidence, and argued that the wording of Instruction No. 21 could only be read to impose an unconstitutional unanimity rule. The Colorado court had relied on another decision (Boyde) and other phrasing in the charge to reject that reading; Marshall rejected that reasoning.

Real world impact

The Court denied the application for a stay of execution and refused review, leaving the death sentence in place for now. Marshall would have granted review and vacated the death sentence because he viewed the instruction as constitutionally defective. Because this order denies review rather than reaches the full merits, the question could still be raised in other cases or at a later time.

Dissents or concurrances

Marshall also stated his long-held view that the death penalty is always unconstitutional and said he would have vacated the sentence on that ground even if the instruction issue had not compelled review.