The Handy Law Answer Book. David L Hudson
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unless those views would prevent or substantially impair the performance of his duties as a juror in accordance with his instructions and his oath.”
Edmund v. Florida (1982)
Decision: The Court rules that a defendant cannot be sentenced to death for participating in a felony that leads to murder if the defendant did not participate in the killing, attempt to kill or intend for killing to take place.
Eddings v. Oklahoma (1982)
Decision: The Court vacates the death sentence of inmate, who was 16 years old at the time of the murder, because the trial court refused to allow his attorney to introduce mitigating factors, such as his turbulent family history, beatings by his father and emotional problems.
California v. Ramos (1983)
Decision: The Court rules that a California trial judge did not violate the constitutional rights of a criminal defendant by instructing the jury that the governor could commute a defendant’s life sentence to a sentence with the possibility of parole.
Barclay v. Florida (1983)
Decision: The Court rejects the claims of a Florida inmate who alleges his death sentence should be overturned because the trial judge allowed the jury to consider his criminal record as an aggravating factor.
Spaziano v. Florida (1984)
Decision: The Court rules that a trial judge may sentence a criminal defendant to death even though a jury has recommended a life sentence. The Court writes that “the purpose of the death penalty is not frustrated by, or inconsistent with, a scheme in which the imposition of the penalty in individual cases is determined by a judge.”
Strickland v. Washington (1984)
Decision: The Court sets the standard for determining when a death sentence can be set aside for ineffective assistance of counsel. The Court writes that “the defendant must show that there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different.”
Caldwell v. Mississippi (1985)
Decision: The Court sets aside a Mississippi inmate’s death sentence after the prosecutor told the jury that an appeals court would review its determination of life or death. The Court writes “it is constitutionally impermissible to rest a death sentence on a determination made by a sentencer who has been led to believe that the responsibility for determining the appropriateness of the defendant’s death rests elsewhere.”
Ford v. Wainwright (1986)
Decision: The Court rules that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the execution of insane persons.
LegalSpeak: Gregg v. Georgia (1976)
Justice Potter Stewart (plurality): “The most marked indication of society’s endorsement of the death penalty for murder is the legislative response to Furman. The legislatures of at least 35 States have enacted new statutes that provide for the death penalty for at least some crimes that result in the death of another person…. These recently adopted statutes have attempted to address the concerns expressed by the Court in Furman primarily (i) by specifying the factors to be weighed and the procedures to be followed in deciding when to impose a capital sentence, or (ii) by making the death penalty mandatory for specified crimes. But all of the post-Furman statutes make clear that capital punishment itself has not been rejected by the elected representatives of the people.”
Justice Byron White (concurring): “Imposition of the death penalty is surely an awesome responsibility for any system of justice and those who participate in it. Mistakes will be made and discriminations will occur which will be difficult to explain. However, one of society’s most basic tasks is that of protecting the lives of its citizens and one of the most basic ways in which it achieves the task is through criminal laws against murder. I decline to interfere with the manner in which Georgia has chosen to enforce such laws on what is simply an assertion of lack of faith in the ability of the system of justice to operate in a fundamentally fair manner.”
Justice William Brennan (dissenting): “Death is not only an unusually severe punishment, unusual in its pain, in its finality, and in its enormity, but it serves no penal purpose more effectively than a less severe punishment; therefore the principle inherent in the Clause that prohibits pointless infliction of excessive punishment when less severe punishment can adequately achieve the same purposes invalidates the punishment. The fatal constitutional infirmity in the punishment of death is that it treats ‘members of the human race as nonhumans, as objects to be toyed with and discarded.’”
While instruments like the electric chair and guillotine are no longer used, some states still exercise the death penalty, usually by injecting lethal drugs into the condemned inmate (iStock).
Justice Thurgood Marshall (dissenting): “The death penalty, unnecessary to promote the goal of deterrence or to further any legitimate notion of retribution, is an excessive penalty forbidden by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.”
Darden v. Wainwright (1986)
Decision: The Court rules that a prosecutor’s improper comments during closing arguments in a death penalty case did not justify vacating the sentence. The Court wrote that a sentence should be set aside based on a prosecutor’s comments only when the comments “so infected the trial with unfairness as to make the resulting conviction a denial of due process.”
Skipper v. South Carolina (1986)
Decision: The Court sets aside a death sentence when the trial judge excluded as mitigating evidence the testimony of jailers regarding the good behavior of the defendant before his trial.
McCleskey v. Kemp (1987)
Decision: The Court ruled that a death penalty defendant cannot invalidate his death penalty based on a broad statistical study showing correlation between race and the death penalty. Rather, the majority rules that the defendant must show “that the decisionmakers in his case acted with discriminatory purpose.”
Tison v. Arizona (1987)
Decision: The Court ruled that the Eighth Amendment does not prohibit the death penalty for a defendant who participates in a felony that leads to a murder.
Thompson v. Oklahoma (1988)
Decision: The Court ruled that it is unconstitutional for a state to execute a criminal defendant who was 15 years old when he committed murder.
Penry v. Lynaugh (1989)
Decision: The Court ruled that the Eighth Amendment does not prohibit the execution of a mentally retarded inmate.
Stanford v. Kentucky (1989)
Decision: