CURTIS MAURICE LOPEZ v. STATE OF MARYLAND
Court of Special Appeals, Krauser, Feb. 2, 2017,
Discovery- Sentencing- Where the State has tendered voluminous discovery, it is required under Rule 4-342 to “identify, with some specificity, what previously disclosed documents and information it intends to rely upon at sentencing”
Lopez married Jane McQuain while he was imprisoned in Pennsylvania on an unrelated conviction for attempted murder. While Lopez was still incarcerated, Ms. McQuain became pregnant by another man, and gave birth to a son.
After Lopez was released, he lived in North Carolina while Ms. McQuain and her son, William, continued to live in Maryland. In 2011, Lopez came to Maryland to visit, staying with McQuain and her son. One evening, as Ms. McQuain lay in her bed, Lopez struck her in the head with a thirty-pound dumbbell and stabbed her twice in the back with a butcher knife, inflicting fatal wounds. He then robbed her and beat William to death with a baseball bat, shattering his skull into 36 pieces.
Lopez was arrested and given over 10,000 pages of discovery by the State related to his prior crimes and current offenses. He tendered an Alford plea (pleading guilty while maintaining innocence).
At sentencing, the State played (over objection from the defense) an approximately six-minute montage of 115 still photographs, showing the two victims, Jane and William McQuain, throughout their lives, either alone, together, or with a family member or friend. The video began with a bell ringing. It was then initially accompanied by a piano instrumental piece and then by a pop song, as each photograph faded in and out. Finally, it concluded with the same sound of a ringing bell that signaled the commencement of the video.
Lopez was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences for the murders.
He then appealed, claiming that the photo montage was unfairly prejudicial and that the State gave him so much discovery that it was required to identify the specific evidence it was going to use at sentencing.
Sentencing Discovery- Rule 4-342 requires the State to “disclose to the defendant or counsel any information that the State expects to present to the court for consideration in sentencing” and do so “[s]ufficiently in advance of sentencing to afford the defendant a reasonable opportunity to investigate”
Sentencing Discovery – To be sure, Maryland Rule 4-342(d) does not require the State to provide a line-item list of every fact to be presented at sentencing.
Sentencing Discovery- The State cannot state as a blanket matter that “all evidence will be used.” “Rather, it must identify, with some specificity, what previously disclosed documents and information it intends to rely upon at sentencing. That is to say, it must provide enough detail that it reasonably informs the defense of what material and information the defense will face at sentencing.”
Sentencing Discovery-
Victim Impact- The Maryland Declaration of Rights grants victims the right ““upon request and if practicable,… to be heard at a criminal justice proceeding”
Victim Impact- The Defendant, on the other hand, is entitled to sentencing based on reason rather than an appeal to emotion
Sentencing Evidence- For that reason, victim impact information such as “victim’s family members’ characterizations and opinions about the crime, the defendant, and the appropriate sentence violates the Eighth Amendment”
Victim Impact- And so the trial court must balance the risk of unfair prejudice against evidence of the impact of a crime on the victim (or those they left behind)
Victim Evidence- The “State has a legitimate interest in counteracting the mitigating evidence which the defendant is entitled to put in, by reminding the sentencer that just as the murderer should be considered as an individual, so too the victim is an individual whose death represents a unique loss to society and in particular to his family
From the Case: The trial court did not make a mistake in allowing the video. It was relatively brief, and it “portrayed the harm inflicted by Lopez’s double murders, using still photographs of the victims to offer, at most, a “quick glimpse” into the two lives extinguished by Lopez.”