Ramdass v. Angelone - Opinion Announcement

Argument of Speaker

Mr. Speaker: The opinion of the Court in No. 99-7000 Ramdass versus Angelone, will be announced by Justice Kennedy.

Argument of Justice Kennedy

Mr. Kennedy: Bobby Lee Ramdass was convicted in Virginia State Courts, of murder and he was sentenced to death.

He is the petitioner in this Court and contends he is entitled to a new sentencing trial.

The opinion announcing the judgment, there are four justices including myself, who subscribed the opinion I have written.

In 1992, petitioner was released on parole and almost immediately embarked on a series of violent crimes.

In a period of just over two months he murdered two people, shot another in the head and left him bleeding from a serious wound and assaulted yet another person with a deadly weapon.

He also committed a series of armed robberies.

This proceeding involves his conviction for the capital murder of Mohammad Kayani, who is the last person he killed.

Kayani was a clerk at a convenience store, robbed by the petitioner and his accomplices, when Kayani fumbled in an attempt to open the store safe, the petitioner held a gun to Kayani’s head and pulled the trigger, the gun did not fire, on a second attempt the gun discharged killing Kayani.

Petitioner stood over the body and laughed, and after the robbery he asked his accomplices, “Why the other customers were not also killed?”

At the time of his trial, the petitioner had been tried for two of his earlier crimes.

First, a final judgment of conviction had been entered for petitioner’s robbery at the Pizza Hut restaurant.

Second, a jury had returned a guilty verdict for the robbery of the Domino's Pizza restaurant, but no final judgment of conviction had yet been imposed.

After the jury found petitioner guilty of murdering Kayani the capital sentencing proceeding was conducted.

During deliberations, the jury asked the judge whether the petitioner could be paroled before his death.

In accordance with then existing Virginia Law, the judge instructed the jury that they were not to concern themselves with matters that would occur after the sentence was imposed.

The jury then returned with its verdict and recommended the sentence of death.

After that trial we decided Simmons versus South Carolina.

Simmons held that under certain narrow circumstances, a capital defendant is entitled to inform the jury that he would be ineligible for parole if he were sentenced to life imprisonment.

We have not extended Simmons in subsequent cases; the this positive effect in Simmons was that the defendant had conclusively established his parole ineligibility under state law, at the time of the jury deliberations and of the murder trial.

In this case, in contrast to Simmons, the Virginia Supreme Court had declared that the three-strikes law did not apply and therefore the petitioner was not paroled ineligible under state law, at the time of his murder trial because no judgment of conviction had been entered for the Domino's crime.

Especially in light of the possibility the petitioner’s prior convictions could have been overturned by the Trial Court or on appeal.

This difference between Simmons and this case forecloses us from granting the relief petitioner requests; the rule of Simmons does not apply.

We affirm the judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Justice O’Connor has filed an opinion concurring in the judgment; Justice Stevens has filed a dissenting opinion in which Justices Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer join.