Cases | Noel v. State, 960 S.W.2d 439 (Ark. 1998) | 2018
The defendant was convicted of three counts of capital murder and one count of attempted capital murder. He appealed, arguing, among other things, that the statute permitting the use of victim-impact evidence deprived him of due process of law because it improperly created a new, aggravating circumstance. He argued further that the new, aggravating circumstance denied him due process protection because it was considered by the jury outside of the statutory weighing process required for aggravating and mitigating circumstances. The Supreme Court of Arkansas affirmed, noting first that the defendant’s due process claim that the victim-impact evidence created a new, aggravating circumstance was not argued to the trial court, and, thus, was not preserved for appeal. With respect to the defendant’s second argument, the Court noted that it had previously rejected the notion that victim-impact evidence is an aggravating circumstance or that it violates the statutory weighing process. The Court noted that during the penalty phase of this case, the defense called the defendant’s mother to the stand to offer mitigating testimony about the defendant in an effort to emphasize the loss that would be associated with his execution. The Court noted that such mitigating testimony was properly offset by the testimony of the mother of the three children murdered by the defendant, who testified as to the human toll that her children’s murders had on her. Thus, the Court held that victim-impact evidence was not an additional aggravating circumstance in this case, but rather was relevant evidence which informed the jury of the toll the murders had taken on the victims’ family.