Cases | Johnson v. State, 157 S.W.3d 151 (Ark. 2004) | 2018
The defendant was convicted of capital murder. The Supreme Court of Arkansas reversed the defendant’s conviction. A retrial was held, and the defendant was again convicted of capital murder. The Supreme Court of Arkansas affirmed the conviction and sentence. The defendant appealed from a hearing concerning two petitions that he filed. The first petition claimed ineffective assistance of counsel, and the second was a petition for writ of habeas corpus. The circuit court denied both petitions. Two days prior to the circuit court’s ruling, the defendant moved to supplement his petition with a claim that victim-impact evidence and his resulting death sentence violated the rule of law handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court in Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584, 122 S. Ct. 2428 (2002). The trial court denied the motion to supplement, and the defendant appealed. The Supreme Court of Arkansas affirmed in pertinent part, and reversed and remanded for DNA retesting to be performed. The Court noted that the Arkansas Victim Impact Statute requires a jury to consider victim-impact evidence in the context of weighing aggravating and mitigating circumstances. Arkansas case law has specifically rejected the notion that victim-impact evidence is an aggravating circumstance or that it violates the Arkansas statutory weighing process. Thus, Ring and related cases are not applicable because victim-impact evidence is not an element contained in a statute. Instead, it is evidence to be considered by a jury. Thus, the defendant’s argument would have failed, even if the circuit court had granted his motion to supplement.