Oregon v. Guzek - Opinion Announcement

Argument of Speaker

Mr. Speaker: Justice Breyer has the opinion in No. 04-928, Oregon versus Guzek.

Argument of Justice Breyer

Mr. Breyer: This is a capital case.

The Oregon Supreme Court has ordered a new sentencing proceeding after reviewing the case, and the respondent, who is the defendant, Randy Lee Guzek, wants to introduce at that new sentencing proceeding some new testimony from his mother tending to show that he had an alibi for the night of the crime and consequently didn’t commit the crime itself.

The Oregon Supreme Court has read several cases from this Court; namely, Lockett v. Ohio, Eddings v. Oklahoma, Green v. Georgia.

It’s read those cases as holding that Guzek has a federal Constitutional right to introduce his mother’s evidence about alibi at the new sentencing proceeding.

We do not agree about that with the Oregon Supreme Court.

In our view, the cases to which Oregon refers do not provide Guzek with the right to introduce alibi evidence at a new sentencing proceeding.

Indeed, in a later case called Franklin v. Lynaugh, this Court specifically said, “We have not decided whether the Constitution grants a capital defendant the right to introduce at sentencing evidence”, like the alibi evidence, “designed to cast a residual doubt on his guilt of the basic crime of conviction”.

The Court, then, in Franklin itself didn’t decide the question, and like that Court, today we don’t decide the question.

The reason we don’t decide that are more important residual-doubt question is that even if there is some kind of right like that, three circumstances taken together make it plain that Guzek lacks a Constitutional right to introduce the new alibi evidence that is at issue here.

Now, first, like all residual-doubt evidence, this alibi evidence concerns whether Guzek committed the crime, not how he committed.

Sentencing normally is about the opposite, namely, how a defendant committed the crime, not whether he did so; that’s a matter normally for the trial; second, a court, namely the court that convicted Guzek, has already considered this alibi claim and rejected it and the law does normally can discourage collateral attacks on matters that are previously decided; and, third -- and this is special in this case -- Oregon law allows Guzek to introduce at the new sentencing hearing all of the evidence he introduced earlier at the trial.

He introduced alibi evidence then; he can reintroduce it now.

Of course, what he wants to do is to, at this re-sentencing hearing, introduce some new and different alibi evidence, evidence that is far as we have been told he could have introduced, but did not introduce, at his original trial.

A state can set reasonable limits upon the evidence a defendant can submit at sentencing, and it can control in a reasonable way the manner of submission.

We see nothing unreasonable about, in effect, telling Guzek to introduce that evidence the first time or not at all.

For these reasons, we conclude that the Federal Constitution does not grant Guzek the evidentiary right he claims here, and we reverse the Oregon Supreme Court’s contrary determination.

There is also a motion to dismiss our writ as improvidently granted, which we do not.

Justice Scalia has filed an opinion concurring in our denial of the motion to dismiss as improvidently granting and concurring in the judgment; Justice Thomas has joined Justice Scalia; Justice Alito took no part in the consideration or the decision of this case.