Public defenders: Death penalty law is unconstitutional

As the Delaware Supreme Court continues to weigh the constitutionality of the death penalty statute, public defenders used their last chance at written arguments to refute the claims of state prosecutors.

Three assistant public defenders argued in a 25-page brief Monday that the state's arguments failed to recognize that Delaware's capital punishment law has many of the same constitutional infirmities that led the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down Florida's sentencing law.

"The constitutional deficiencies are so fatal that they render Delaware's capital sentencing scheme entirely invalid," they wrote.

The U.S. Supreme Court found in January that Florida was giving too much power to judges – and not enough to juries – when imposing death sentences.

This decision left attorneys and judges in Delaware questioning how to proceed in capital punishment cases because Delaware, like Florida, allows judges to override a jury's recommendation of life, and, instead, impose a sentence of death.

The Delaware Supreme Court agreed to resolve the issue by considering five certified questions of the law. It is using as a test case that of Benjamin Rauf, the Temple University law graduate charged with gunning down classmate Shazi Uppal, 27, in the parking lot of a Hockessin nursing home last summer.

Monday's brief from the public defenders was the final written argument on the matter.

Before making a final decision, the court will likely hear oral arguments in Dover from the parties, but no date has been announced.

In Delaware, the process of sentencing someone to death requires multiple steps. Once a person is found guilty of first-degree murder, the jury must unanimously agree that the evidence shows beyond a reasonable doubt that at least one of 22 statutory aggravating factors exists.

Then, each juror has to decide whether the aggravating factors outweigh the non-aggravating factors. That decision need not be unanimous, and the judge is not bound by those findings.

The jury's verdict is advisory, leaving judges with the final authority in sentencing.

STORY: Moral Monday rally in Dover

STORY: Public defenders - death penalty unconstitutional

Prosecutors have argued that Florida's death penalty process looked similar to an older version of Delaware's statute. They said that at the courts beckoning, the General Assembly in 2002 changed the statute, barring the Superior Court from imposing a death sentence unless a jury first determines unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt that at least one statutory aggravating circumstance exists.

Public defenders pushed back against that notion this week and called the analysis "faulty and incomplete." They said that the 2002 change still violates the Sixth Amendment requirement that a jury find the factors necessary for a death sentence.

The public defenders also once again said the state Legislature should be the one to resolve the issue of making the death penalty statute fit with the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision.

"The statute’s constitutional problems require a complete statutory restructuring, a task for the legislature, not the courts," they wrote.

But that could be a difficult task in a Legislature that is divided on the issue.

A bill to repeal the death penalty passed the state Senate but failed in the state House of Representatives in February. Sponsors of the bill suspended further legislative action and suspended a reconsideration vote until the court's decision is completed.

Also, as the debate rages on, President Judge Jan R. Jurden issued a temporary stay on all pending capital murder trials.

Delaware is one of 32 states with capital punishment. The last execution in the state was in 2012, when Shannon Johnson, 28, was killed by lethal injection. Johnson had been convicted in the 2006 shooting death of Cameron Hamlin, 26, an aspiring musician.

Contact Jessica Masulli Reyes at 302-324-2777, jmreyes@delawareonline.com or Twitter @JessicaMasulli.