Justices Rule Non-Killers Can Be Sentenced to Death : ‘Reckless Indifference to Life’ Cited

Defendants who play a major part in a crime that results in a murder that they did not commit may be sentenced to death if they displayed a “reckless indifference” for human life, the Supreme Court ruled today.

By a 5-4 vote, the justices said the death penalty is a constitutional punishment in such cases even if the condemned person never intended to kill anyone and was not the actual killer.

The ruling limits the effect of the court’s 1982 decision that outlawed the death penalty for “non-triggermen” who did not intend to take part in a killing but whose crimes led to a death.

In today’s ruling, however, the court fell short of deciding the fate of two brothers sentenced to die in Arizona’s gas chamber for their role in four 1978 murders.

Wrong Standard Used

The justices sent back to the Arizona Supreme Court the cases of Ricky and Ray Tison, ruling that the state court had used the wrong standard in finding that the Tisons were properly sentenced to death.

(A similar question is now facing the California Supreme Court, which has been asked by state prosecutors to overrule a 1983 decision it made under former Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird. In Carlos vs. Superior Court, the Bird court ruled that a defendant may not be sentenced to death unless a jury finds that the defendant intended to kill his victim.

(California’s high court has overturned 14 death sentences on such grounds since the ruling. Another 29 capital sentences may face reversal unless the 1983 ruling is overturned by a new court now led by Chief Justice Malcolm M. Lucas.

(State prosecutors said today they believe that the U.S. Supreme Court ruling substantially enhances their contention that Carlos vs. Superior Court was wrongly decided and should be overturned.)

‘Unsatisfactory’ Standard

“A narrow focus on the question of whether or not a given defendant ‘intended to kill’ . . . is a highly unsatisfactory means of definitively distinguishing the most culpable and dangerous of murderers,” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote for the court.

“On the other hand, some non-intentional murderers may be among the most dangerous and inhumane of all--the person who tortures another not caring whether the victim lives or dies,” she said. “This reckless indifference to the value of human life may be every bit as shocking to the moral sense as the ‘intent to kill.’ ”

But she said Arizona’s highest court wrongly upheld the Tisons’ death sentences after finding that they “intended, contemplated or anticipated that lethal force would or might be used or that life would or might be taken.”

She said that standard was too broad because any violent felony carries the possibility of bloodshed.

Ricky Tison was 19 and Ray Tison was 18 when on July 30, 1978, they smuggled guns into the Arizona State Prison in Florence on a visit to their father, Gary, who was serving a life sentence for murder. Using the guns to overcome guards, the Tisons and prison inmate Randy Greenawalt escaped.

The group, which included another brother, Donald, who later was killed at a police roadblock, commandeered a car near Quartzite, Ariz.

The car’s four passengers--John and Donnella Lyons, their 2-year-old son, Christopher, and their teen-age niece, Theresa Tyson--were left dead.

The Tison brothers have consistently said the killings were committed by their father, who died in the Arizona desert before being found by police, and by Greenawalt, who like them was sentenced to death.

O’Connor said the state court should restudy the case and determine whether the Tisons, already found to have played a major role in the 1978 crimes, exhibited reckless indifference for life.