United States v. Ofomata

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. CHUKWUDI OFOMATA

CRIMINAL ACTION No. 17-201 SECTION I

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF LOUISIANA

February 11, 2019

ORDER & REASONS

Before the Court is defendant Chukwudi Ofomata's ("Ofomata") motion¹ to strike the death penalty as a possible punishment. The motion requests the following forms of relief: an order striking the government's notice of intent to seek the death penalty as to Ofomata; an order striking the notice of special findings in the superseding indictment;² an order requiring that the government produce the grand jury instructions that pertain to the consequences of the jury's special findings; and an order requiring the government to submit an outline with information about the evidence it intends to use to prove the aggravating factors set forth in its notice of intent to seek the death penalty as to Ofomata, followed by a hearing to determine the admissibility of such evidence.³ For the following reasons, the motion is denied.

I.

On August 31, 2018, the government filed its notice of intent to seek the death penalty as to Ofomata.⁴ Under the Federal Death Penalty Act (the "FDPA"), 18 U.S.C. §§ 3591-3598, "conviction of an offense punishable by death is followed by a separate sentencing hearing which involves both an eligibility and selection phase." United States v. Ebron, 683 F.3d 105, 149 (5th Cir. 2012). To render a defendant eligible for the death penalty, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt one of four mental states, also known as statutory intent factors, provided in § 3591(a)(2), and at least one of sixteen statutory aggravating factors provided in § 3592(c). United States v. Bourgeois, 423 F.3d 501, 506-07 (5th Cir. 2005).⁵

Once the defendant becomes eligible for the death penalty, the selection phase begins, during which the government may attempt to prove the existence of additional factors in support of its position that the death penalty should be imposed. See § 3593(c). Similarly, the defendant may attempt to prove the existence of mitigating factors to dissuade the sentencing jury from recommending a death sentence. Id. The jury then weighs the proven aggravating factors against any proven mitigating factors to determine if a death sentence is appropriate. § 3593(e).

II.

Ofomata offers several arguments in support of his contention that the death penalty is unconstitutional, and he requests various forms of relief—all of which the Court will address in turn.

A.

Ofomata first argues that over thirty years of experience with the federal death penalty has demonstrated that it operates in an arbitrary and capricious way, in violation of the Eighth Amendment.⁶ In support of his position, Ofomata relies on a dissenting opinion from the United States Supreme Court's decision in Glossip v. Gross, in which two justices identified what they considered to be "fundamental constitutional defects" in the modern imposition of the federal death penalty. Glossip, 135 S. Ct. 2726, 2755-56 (Breyer, J. and Ginsburg, J., dissenting). He also relies on another federal district court's finding that the FDPA is imposed and carried out arbitrarily. See United States v. Fell, 224 F. Supp. 3d 327, 358 (D. Vt. 2016).

Notwithstanding the dissent in Glossip and the district court's findings in Fell, the majority of the Supreme Court has expressly provided that "it is settled that capital punishment is constitutional." Glossip, 135 S. Ct. at 2732. Indeed, in Fell, the district court ultimately concluded that—despite its finding that the death penalty is arbitrarily imposed—it was powerless: "Institutional authority to change this body of law is reserved to the Supreme Court." Fell, 224 F. Supp. 3d at 359.

Perhaps in an attempt to circumvent such precedent, Ofomata argues that, "if there has been a material change in facts relevant to the Eighth Amendment analysis," a district court may reconsider an issue that the Supreme Court has already decided.⁷ The Court declines to do so. "Changing forty years of decisional law raises questions that can only be settled by the Supreme Court itself." Id. at 238-29; see also United States v. Quinones, 313 F.3d 49, 52 (2d Cir. 2002) (noting that, "to the extent the defendants' arguments rely upon the Eighth Amendment, their argument is foreclosed by the Supreme Court's decision in Gregg v. Georgia")⁸; United States v. Jones, 132 F.3d 132 F.3d 232, 242 (5th Cir. 1998) ("We are bound by Supreme Court precedent which forecloses any argument that the death penalty violates the Constitution under all circumstance.").

Moreover, Ofomata has not demonstrated any "material change" that is critical to the Eighth Amendment inquiry and which would warrant this Court's reconsideration of the issue. Ofomata first argues that the FDPA is extremely rare and infrequently imposed, citing Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972), which declared the death penalty cruel and unusual in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, as applied by the states at that time. But "[i]n the thirty-four years since Furman was decided, the [Supreme] Court has made clear that its decision was not based on the frequency with which the death penalty was sought or imposed." United States v. Sampson, 486 F.3d 13, 23 (1st Cir. 2007). "Rather, theprimary emphasis . . . has been the requirement that the discretion exercised by juries be guided so as to limit the potential for arbitrariness." Id. Multiple circuits, including the Fifth Circuit, have held that "the FDPA fully meets the requirements of guided discretion." See id. at 24; United States v. Mitchell, 502 F.3d 931, 938 (9th Cir. 2007) ("That federal executions are rare . . . does not render the FDPA unconstitutional."); Jones, 132 F.3d at 241 ("The FDPA provides sufficient safeguards to prevent the arbitrary imposition of the death penalty.").

Ofomata's second argument in support of his request that the Court reevaluate the constitutionality of the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment is that the FDPA is discriminatory—namely, that there are racial and geographical disparities in the way the FDPA is utilized.⁹ Ofomata relies on several studies and reports.¹⁰ The Supreme Court, however, has rejected Eighth Amendment claims based on similar statistics:

Because of the risk that the factor of race may enter the criminal justice process, we have engaged in "unceasing efforts" to eradicate racial prejudice from our criminal justice system. . . . Our efforts have been guided by our recognition that "the inestimable privilege of trial by jury . . . is a vital principle, underlying the whole administration of criminal justice[.]

. . .

At most, the . . . study indicates a discrepancy that appears to correlate with race. Apparent disparities in sentencing are an inevitable part of our criminal justice system. . . . "[T]here can be 'no perfect procedure for deciding in which cases governmental authority should be used to impose death.'" . . . Despite these imperfections, our consistent rule has been that constitutional guarantees are met when "the mode [fordetermining guilt or punishment] itself has been surrounded with safeguards to make it as fair as possible." . . . Where the discretion that is fundamental to our criminal process is involved, we decline to assume that what is unexplained is invidious.

McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279, 309-13 (1987).

The Supreme Court in McCleskey refused to accept the results of the study proffered by the defendant as "the constitutional measure of an unacceptable risk of racial prejudice influencing capital decisions." McCleskey, 481 U.S. at 309. "The statistics submitted by [Ofomata] are no more probative than those rejected in McCleskey." Sampson, 486 F.3d at 26; see also Fell, 224 F. Supp. 3d at 357 ("The current state of the law . . . is that once the required statute is in place and the jury is made the decision-maker, the inquiry into factors such as racial bias, geographical disparity, and other shortcomings in jury decision-making is largely at an end.").

"In light of the safeguards designed to minimize racial bias in the process, the fundamental value of jury trial in our criminal justice system, and the benefits that discretion provides to criminal defendants," the data submitted by Ofomata "does not demonstrate a constitutionally significant risk of racial bias affecting the [FDPA's] capital sentencing process."¹¹ McCleskey, 481 U.S. at 313; see also United States v. Sablan, No. 00-531, 2006 WL 1028780, at *11 (D. Colo. Apr. 18, 2006) ("[B]y requiring juries to consider the individual characteristics of the defendant and specificcircumstances of the crime, and thereby narrowing the class of individuals subject to the death penalty, the FDPA in effect recognizes that 'a consistency produced by ignoring individual differences is a false consistency.'") (quoting Eddings v. Okla., 455 U.S. 104, 112 (1982)); Sampson, 486 F.3d at 27 ("McCleskey prohibits us from assuming that 'what is unexplained is invidious.'") (citation omitted).

B.

Ofomata also argues that the FDPA is unconstitutional because it fails to provide sentencing juries with a structure that permits them to make a reasoned choice between the death penalty and life imprisonment.¹²

To comply with federal constitutional requirements, a capital sentencing scheme must: "(1) rationally narrow the class of death-eligible defendants; and (2) permit a jury to render a reasoned, individualized sentencing determination based on a death-eligible defendant's record, personal characteristics, and the circumstances of his crime." See Kansas v. Marsh, 548 U.S. 163, 173-74 (2006). The FDPA satisfies the foregoing parameters. With respect to the narrowing requirement:

[T]he FDPA requires the jury first to find that the defendant had the requisite intent. 18 U.S.C. § 3591. The FDPA further narrows the jury's discretion with the requirement [that] the jury find at least one statutory aggravating factor prior to

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