State v. Tate

Summary

The Supreme Court of Louisiana affirmed Antoine Tate's convictions for three counts of first degree murder and his death sentence for a 1997 ambush-style shooting during an attempted armed robbery in East Baton Rouge Parish. Applying the Jackson v. Virginia standard, the court held that three accomplices' testimony, corroborated by physical evidence, rationally established that Tate acted as a principal with specific intent to kill or inflict great bodily harm even if the fatal bullets may have come from a co-perpetrator's gun. The court upheld the State's cause challenges to three jurors with qualms about capital punishment, rejected defense cause challenges to two pro-death-penalty jurors, and found the refused special accomplice-testimony instruction adequately covered by the general charge. On mandatory capital sentence review, the court invalidated the especially-heinous-atrocious-or-cruel aggravator but sustained the armed-robbery/drive-by-shooting and multiple-victim-risk aggravators, found no passion, prejudice, or arbitrariness, found the sentence proportionate, and declined to remand for an Atkins mental-retardation hearing because the record showed only borderline IQ with the defense expert conceding Tate does not meet Louisiana's statutory definition.