Delaware Supreme Court Decision Paves Way to Clear State’s Death Row

On December 15, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled in Powell v. State that death-row pris­on­er Derrick Powell will get the ben­e­fit of its August 2016 deci­sion in Rauf v. State declar­ing Delaware’s death sen­tenc­ing statute uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. The court direct­ed that Powell be resen­tenced to life with­out parole, in a rul­ing that also paves the way for resen­tenc­ing Delaware’s twelve oth­er death row pris­on­ers to life. 

The court’s hold­ing is based upon a legal prin­ci­ple called retroac­tiv­i­ty. When the court decid­ed Rauf, it deter­mined that Delaware’s cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing statute vio­lat­ed due process and the Sixth Amendment in part because it did not require that the jury find unan­i­mous­ly and beyond a rea­son­able doubt all facts legal­ly nec­es­sary to impose a death sen­tence. Applying Delaware law, the court held that Rauf was a type of legal rul­ing that should apply to all cap­i­tal cas­es in which juries did not make such a find­ing because Rauf had announced a ​“new water­shed pro­ce­dur­al rule for cap­i­tal pro­ceed­ings that con­tributed to the reli­a­bil­i­ty of the fact-finding process.” 

The court explained that, pri­or to Rauf, Delaware cap­i­tal defen­dants had been sen­tenced to death using a ​“pre­pon­der­ance of the evi­dence stan­dard” in which the death penal­ty could be imposed if the pros­e­cu­tion proved that aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stances jus­ti­fy­ing the death penal­ty even slight­ly out­weighed mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors that could jus­ti­fy spar­ing the defen­dan­t’s life. That bur­den of proof, the court said, was mate­ri­al­ly low­er than if juries were required rule out the death penal­ty if any juror had rea­son­able doubt as to whether the aggra­vat­ing evi­dence outweighed mitigation. 

In Powell’s case, his jury, apply­ing the less­er pre­pon­der­ance-of-the-evi­dence stan­dard, vot­ed 7‑to‑5 that aggra­vat­ing fac­tors out­weighed mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors and rec­om­mend­ed a death sen­tence. Under the court’s rul­ing, Powell’s death sen­tence was auto­mat­i­cal­ly con­vert­ed to a sen­tence of life with­out the pos­si­b­li­ty of ​“pro­ba­tion or parole or any oth­er reduc­tion.” The Delaware Attorney General’s office did not appeal the court’s rul­ing in Rauf, which was based sole­ly on the fed­er­al con­sti­tu­tion, to the U.S. Supreme Court. Because the Powell retroac­tiv­i­ty deci­sion is based on Delaware state law, it does not raise fed­er­al con­sti­tu­tion­al ques­tions and would not be sub­ject to review by the federal courts.