Green v. Georgia
442 U.S. 95 (1979)
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Rule of Law:
In a capital case, the mechanistic application of a state's hearsay rule to exclude reliable and highly relevant mitigating evidence during the sentencing phase violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Facts:
- Roosevelt Green and Carzell Moore were accused of abducting Teresa Carol Allen from the store where she worked.
- Allen was subsequently raped and murdered.
- Moore was tried and convicted separately from Green.
- After his own trial, Moore confided to a close friend, Thomas Pasby, that he (Moore) had been the one to kill Allen.
- Moore told Pasby that he had shot Allen twice after ordering Green to run an errand.
Procedural Posture:
- Carzell Moore was tried separately in a Georgia trial court, where the State used Thomas Pasby's testimony to help secure a conviction and death sentence.
- Roosevelt Green was subsequently tried in a Georgia trial court and convicted of murder.
- During the sentencing phase of Green's trial, the trial court refused to allow the defense to introduce Pasby's testimony regarding Moore's confession, ruling it was inadmissible hearsay under state law.
- The jury imposed the death penalty on Green.
- Green, as appellant, appealed his sentence to the Supreme Court of Georgia, which affirmed the trial court's judgment.
- Green, as petitioner, sought a writ of certiorari from the Supreme Court of the United States to review the affirmance of his capital sentence.
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Issue:
Does the exclusion of a co-defendant's confession from the sentencing phase of a capital trial violate the defendant's rights under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment when that confession is highly relevant to mitigation and bears substantial indicia of reliability, including its prior use by the State in the co-defendant's trial?
Opinions:
Majority - Per Curiam
Yes, the exclusion of the co-defendant's confession violated the petitioner's rights under the Due Process Clause. A state's hearsay rule may not be applied mechanistically to defeat the ends of justice, especially in a capital sentencing proceeding. The excluded testimony was highly relevant to the critical issue of Green's culpability and bore substantial indicia of reliability. The reliability was demonstrated by several factors: Moore's statement was spontaneous to a close friend, it was a declaration against his own penal interest, it was corroborated by other evidence, and most importantly, the State itself had considered the testimony reliable enough to use it to obtain a conviction and death sentence against Moore in his separate trial. Citing Chambers v. Mississippi, the Court held that excluding this crucial mitigating evidence under these unique circumstances denied Green a fair trial on the issue of punishment.
Dissenting - Justice Rehnquist
No, the exclusion of the testimony did not violate the petitioner's constitutional rights. The U.S. Constitution does not grant the Supreme Court the authority to supersede a state's code of evidence simply because its application in a particular case produces a result the Court finds unjust. The trial court correctly applied Georgia's hearsay rule, which does not contain an exception for declarations against penal interest. The fact that the evidence was admissible when offered by the State in a different trial does not demonstrate an unconstitutional application of the rules, as it is a common 'fact of trial life' that evidentiary rules are not always symmetrical. The Court's decision improperly 'embalms the law of evidence in the Due Process Clause' and is an example of 'hard cases make bad law.'
Analysis:
This per curiam opinion reinforces the principle from Chambers v. Mississippi that a state's evidentiary rules must sometimes yield to a defendant's due process right to present exculpatory or mitigating evidence. The decision is particularly significant in the capital punishment context, establishing that the heightened need for individualized sentencing can override a state's interest in the uniform application of its hearsay rule. It requires trial courts to conduct a case-specific inquiry into the reliability of proffered hearsay, especially when the state itself has previously vouched for that evidence's credibility. This limits the state's ability to use evidence for its own purposes in one trial while simultaneously arguing it is too unreliable for a defendant to use in another.
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