IN THE FIFTIETH JUDICIAL DISTRICT, PARISH OF PEINE DE MORT
STATE OF LOUISIANA
No. _____

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STATE OF LOUISIANA, Plaintiff
v.
JOHN CLIENT, Defendant

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MOTION TO SUPPRESS GRUESOME
PENALTY PHASE PHOTOGRAPHS & EVIDENCE

COMES NOW, JOHN CLIENT, by counsel, and moves this Court pursuant to the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, and Article 1, Sections 2, 3, 5, 13, 14, 16 & 17 of the Louisiana Constitution to exclude all the gruesome pictures taken of the scene, of the victim, or of anything else related in any manner at all with this crime, as well as the prejudicial and inflammatory evidence, from the penalty phase of his trial. In support of his motion, Mr. Client states as follows:

1. Since this is to be a capital prosecution, exacting standards must be met to assure that it is fair. As the Louisiana Supreme Court has held, "[d]eath, in its finality, differs more from life imprisonment than a 100-year prison term differs from one of only a year or two. Because of that qualitative difference, there is a corresponding difference in the need for reliability in the jury's determination that death is the appropriate punishment in a specific case." State v. Myles, 389 So. 2d 12, 30 (La. 1979) (citing cases); see also Johnson v. Mississippi, 486 U.S. 578, 584, 108 S. Ct. 1981, 100 L. Ed. 2d 575 (1988) ("[t]he fundamental respect for humanity underlying the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment gives rise to a special '"need for reliability in the determination that death is the appropriate punishment"' in any capital case") (quoting, Gardner v. Florida, 430 U.S. 349, 363-64, 97 S. Ct. 1197, 51 L. Ed. 2d 393 (1977) (quoting, Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280, 305, 96 S. Ct. 2978, 49 L. Ed. 2d 944 (1976) (White, J., concurring))).
2. At capital trials, gruesome and highly prejudicial photographs are sometimes introduced in the penalty phase. These have often been excluded during the guilt phase. These pictures are apparently submitted to the jury solely to make the jurors regurgitate. In closing argument the prosecutor then points out to those jurors who had not noticed the more gruesome aspects of the pictures to inspire them to an emotional and entirely unreliable sentence of death.
3. Mr. Client reincorporates his discussion of this issue in the previous motion (Motion to exclude gruesome photos from guilt phase). Suffice it to say here that it is obviously inappropriate that the worst pictures should have been kept back and submitted to the jury at the penalty phase. The United States Supreme Court has long since held that more care, not less, must be taken to avoid emotionalism at the penalty phase of a capital trial:
death is different in kind from any other punishment imposed under our system of criminal justice . . . [and it cannot] be imposed under sentencing procedures that create[] a substantial risk that it [will] be inflicted in an arbitrary and capricious manner. . . .

Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 96 S. Ct. 2909, 2932, 49 L. Ed. 2d 859 (1976).
WHEREFORE, Mr. Client moves that his motion be granted, and that this Court exclude all the gruesome photographs, and inflammatory evidence, from any penalty phase of his trial.
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