Case and Quote
A death penalty system that seeks procedural fairness and reliability brings with it delays that severely aggravate the cruelty of capital punishment and significantly undermine the rationale for imposing a sentence of death in the first place But a death penalty system that minimizes delays would undermine the legal system's efforts to secure reliability and procedural fairness. In this world, or at least in this Nation, we can have a death penalty that at least arguably serves legitimate penological purposes or we can have a procedural system that at least arguably seeks reliability and fairness in the death penalty's application. We cannot have both
Breyer Dissent in Glossip v. Gross
In my view, the prosecutor's remarks were impermissible because they were inaccurate and misleading in a manner that diminished the jury's sense of responsibility.
Caldwell v. Mississippi (O'Connor Concurrence)
Given such a situation, the uncorrected suggestion that the responsibility for any ultimate determination of death will rest with others presents an intolerable danger that the jury will in fact choose to minimize the importance of its role.
Caldwell v. Mississippi; Justice Marshall
Construing and applying the Eighth Amendment in the light of our "evolving standards of decency," we therefore conclude that such punishment is excessive and that the Constitution "places a substantive restriction on the State's power to take the life" of a mentally retarded offender
Atkins v. Virginia
The question presented by this case is whether a national consensus deprives Virginia of the constitutional power to impose the death penalty on capital murder defendants like petitioner, i.e., those defendants who indisputably are competent to stand trial, aware of the punishment they are about to suffer and why, and whose mental retardation has been found an insufficiently compelling reason to lessen their individual responsibility for the crime
Atkins v. Virginia; Dissent Justice Rehniquist
To the extent there is serious disagreement about the execution of mentally retarded offenders, it is in determining which offenders are in fact retarded Not all people who claim to be mentally retarded will be so impaired as to fall within the range of mentally retarded offenders about whom there is a national consensus.
Atkins v. Virginia; Majoirty
1. Of special concern to me are rules that deprive the defendant of a trial by jurors representing a fair cross section of the community. 2. Another serious concern is that the risk of error in capital cases may be greater than in other cases because the facts are often so disturbing that the interest in making sure the crime does not go unpunished may overcome residual doubt concerning the identity of the offender. 3. A third significant concern is the risk of discriminatory application of the death penalty. While that risk has been dramatically reduced, the Court has allowed it to continue to play an unacceptable role in capital cases
Baze v. Rees; Concurrence Stevens
It is the responsibility of the courts to determine the nature of the work that a defense attorney must do in a capital case in order to meet the obligations imposed by the Constitution, and I see no reason why the ABA Guidelines should be given a privileged position in making that determination.
Bobby v. Van Hook (Alito Concurrence)
a. "No particular set of detailed rules for counsel's conduct can satisfactorily take account of the variety of circumstances faced by defense counsel or the range of legitimate decisions regarding how best to represent a criminal defendant. i. Restatements of professional standards, we have recognized, can be useful as "guides" to what reasonableness entails, but only to the extent they describe the professional norms prevailing when the representation took place
Bobby v. Van Hook; Majority
Of the more than 200 variables potentially relevant to a sentencing decision, race of the victim is a powerful explanation for variation in death sentence rates—as powerful as nonracial aggravating factors such as a prior murder conviction or acting as the principal planner of the homicide
Brennen Dissent; McClesky v. Kemp
i. In my view, the prosecutor's remarks were impermissible because they were inaccurate and misleading in a manner that diminished the jury's sense of responsibility. 1. The Court, however, seems generally to characterize information regarding appellate review as "wholly irrelevant to the determination of the appropriate sentence.
Caldwell v. Mississippi; Justice Marshall
1. Unfortunately, all this experimentation and ingenuity yielded little of what Furman demanded. It soon became apparent that discretion could not be eliminated from capital sentencing without threatening the fundamental fairness due a defendant when life is at stake
Callins v. Collins Blackmunn's Dissent
i. Experience has taught us that the constitutional goal of eliminating arbitrariness and discrimination from the administration of death can never be achieved without compromising an equally essential component of fundamental fairness, individualized sentencing
Callins v. Collins Blackmun's Dissent
"In other circumstances the state adjudication carries the weight that federal practice gives to the conclusion of a court of last resort of another jurisdiction on federal constitutional issues. It is not res judicata."
Brown v. Allen; Justice Reed/Frankfurter
a. The Constitution allows capital punishment. i. Nor did the later addition of the Eighth Amendment outlaw the practice. On the contrary—the Fifth Amendment, added to the Constitution at the same time as the Eighth, expressly contemplates that a defendant may be tried for a "capital" crime and "deprived of life" as a penalty, so long as proper procedures are followed. And the First Congress, which proposed both Amendments, made a number of crimes punishable by death
Bucklew v. Precythe
The argument used by the dissenter focus on intellectual, moral and personal perception but never to the text and tradition of the Constitution
Callins v. Collins Concurrence; Justice Scalia
i. He agrees with Blackmun's basis about the incompatibility between the treatment of aggravating and mitigating evidence (But disagrees with the idea that the imposition of the death penalty should end because of this factor)
Callins v. Collins Concurrence; Justice Scalia
i. History shows that the traditional remedy for claims of innocence based on new evidence, discovered too late in the day to file a new trial motion, has been executive clemency.
Herrea v. Collins
a. We accordingly see nothing in appellate weighing or reweighing of the aggravating and mitigating circumstances that is at odds with contemporary standards of fairness or that is inherently unreliable and likely to result in arbitrary imposition of the death sentence i. The Court holds that it is constitutionally permissible for a state appellate court to engaged in reweighing or harmless-error analysis when errors have occurred in a capital sentencing proceeding
Clemons v. Mississippi
i. It is not the place of the Court to supplant its judgment for that of state legislatures. (Court is overstepping their boundaries) 1. The plurality bases its decision primarily on the fact that rape does not result in the death of the victim, and that therefore, it does not warrant the death penalty. 1. Although it is true that the Eighth Amendment bars the imposition of the death penalty for minor crimes, rape is a serious crime that is often permanently damaging to the victim, both physically and mentally.
Coker v. Georgia; Burger Dissent
i. The plurality goes too far in holding that the death penalty is always, without exception, disproportionate to the crime of rape. 1. State legislatures should be free to determine specific instances of aggravated rape that warrant the death penalty.
Coker v. Georgia; Powell Concurring
i. The majority suggests that, "[f]or purposes of describing counsel's duties," a capital sentencing proceeding "need not be distinguished from an ordinary trial. i. Death, in its finality, differs more from life imprisonment than a 100-year prison term differs from one of only a year or two. 1. Because of that qualitative difference, there is a corresponding difference in the need for reliability in the determination that death is the appropriate punishment in a specific case.
Dissent Justice Marshall; Strickland v. Washington
At some point in this case, Warren McCleskey doubtless asked his lawyer whether a jury was likely to sentence him to die. A candid reply to this question would have been disturbing. First, counsel would have to tell McCleskey that few of the details of the crime or of McCleskey's past criminal conduct were more important than the fact that his victim was white. Petitioner's Supplemental Exhibits (Supp. Exh.) 50. Furthermore, counsel would feel bound to tell McCleskey that defendants charged with killing white victims in Georgia are 4.3 times as likely to be sentenced to death as defendants charged with killing blacks. Petitioner's Exhibit DB 82. In addition, frankness would compel the disclosure that it was more likely than not that the race of McCleskey's victim would determine whether he received a death sentence: 6 of every 11 defendants convicted of killing a white person would not have received the death penalty if their victims had been black, Supp. Exh. 51, while, among defendants with aggravating and mitigating factors comparable to McCleskey's, 20 of every 34 would not have been sentenced to die if their victims had been black
Dissent Stevens; McClesky v. Kemp
a. The importance of the mitigating evidence is not about forgiving the crime, but it is about mitigating the sentence
Eddings v. Oklahoma
i. Just as the State may not by statute preclude the sentencer from considering any mitigating factor, neither may the sentencer refuse to consider, as a matter of law, any relevant mitigating evidence ii. The judge may not give mitigating evidence no weight by excluding such evidence from their consideration
Eddings v. Oklahoma
1. The focus must be on his culpability, not on that of those who committed the robbery and shot the victims, for we insist on "individualized consideration as a constitutional requirement in imposing the death sentence,
Enmund v. Florida
We are quite unconvinced, however, that the threat that the death penalty will be imposed for murder will measurably deter one who does not kill and has no intention or purpose that life will be taken. Instead, it seems likely that "capital punishment can serve as a deterrent only when murder is the result of premeditation and deliberation,
Enmund v. Florida
i. We have no doubt that robbery is a serious crime deserving serious punishment. It is not, however, a crime "so grievous an affront to humanity that the only adequate response may be the penalty of death."
Enmund v. Florida
We therefore hold that the federal habeas judge may in his discretion deny relief to an applicant who has deliberately bypassed the orderly procedure of the state courts and in so doing has forfeited his state court remedies.
Fay v. Noia; Justice Brennan
i. (1) Federal courts have power under the federal habeas statute to grant relief despite the applicant's failure to have pursued a state remedy not available to him at the time he applies; the doctrine under which state procedural defaults are held to constitute an adequate and independent state law ground barring direct Supreme Court review is not to be extended to limit the power granted the federal courts under the federal habeas statute.
Fay v. Noia; Justice Brennan
i. What the Court seems to be saying in this exercise in fine distinctions is that no waiver of a right can be effective if some adverse consequence might reasonably be expected to follow from exercise of that right. 1. Under this approach, of course, there could never be a binding waiver, since only an incompetent would give up a right without any good reason, and an incompetent cannot make an intelligent waiver.
Fay v. Noia; Justice Harlan Dissent
We reject as unsound in principle, as well as not supported by authority, the suggestion that the federal courts are without power to grant haneas relief to an applicant whose federal claims would not be heard on direct review in this Court because of a procedural default furnishing an adequate and independent ground of state decision
Fay v. noia; Justice Brennan
a. Making the death penalty discretionary and the ability for rich individuals to purchase the services of the most respect legal talent are the key drivers to this trend
Furman v. Georgia: Justice Douglas
i. A penalty should be considered unusually imposed if it is administered arbitrarily or discriminatorily (The way the death penalty is put to use raises a strong inference of arbitrariness) 1. There is evidence that shows that the death sentence is disproportionally imposed and carried out on the poor, Negro, and the members of unpopular groups
Furman v. Georgia: Justice Douglas
i. Famous Quote: "If we have a law that says you cannot face this punishment if you make X amount of dollars, then we would strike it down for being discriminatory" 1. "Thus, if it works like this in practice, then we need to strike it down for being discriminatory"
Furman v. Georgia: Justice Douglas
Real change could clearly be brought about if legislatures provided mandatory death sentences in such a way as to deny juries the opportunity to bring in a verdict on a lesser charge; under such a system, the death sentence could only be avoided by a verdict of acquittal. If this is the only alternative that the legislatures can safely pursue under today's ruling, I would have preferred that the Court opt for total abolition.
Furman v. Georgia; Dissent Justice Burger
To be sure, there is a recitation cast in Eighth Amendment terms: petitioners' sentences are 'cruel' because they exceed that which the legislatures have deemed necessary for all cases; petitioners' sentences are 'unusual' because they exceed that which is imposed in most cases. This application of the words of the Eighth Amendment suggests that capital punishment can be made to satisfy Eighth Amendment values if its rate of imposition is somehow multiplied; it seemingly follows that the flexible sentencing system created by the legislatures, and carried out by juries and judges, has yielded more mercy than the Eighth Amendment can stand
Furman v. Georgia; Dissent Justice Burger
1. Death is today an unusually severe punishment, unusual in its pain, in its finality, and its enormity. No other existing punishment is comparable to death in terms of physical and mental suffering
Furman v. Georgia; Justice Brennan
a. The progressive decline in, and the current rarity of, the infliction of death demonstrators that our society seriously questions the appropriateness of this punishment today
Furman v. Georgia; Justice Brennan
i. Four Key Factors 1. A punishment must not be so severe as to be degrading to the dignity of human begins 2. The government must not arbitrarily inflict a severe punishment 3. A severe punishment must not be unacceptable to contemporary society 4. A severe punishment must not be excessive
Furman v. Georgia; Justice Brennan
Assuming knowledge of all the facts presently available regarding capital punishment, the average citizen would, in my opinion, find it shocking to his conscience and sense of justice
Furman v. Georgia; Justice Marshall
Whether or not a punishment is cruel and unusual depends, not on whether its mere mention 'shocks the conscience and sense of justice of the people,' but on whether people who were fully informed as to the purposes of the penalty and its liabilities would find the penalty shocking, unjust, and unacceptable In other words, the question with which we must deal is not whether a substantial proportion of American citizens would today, if polled, opine that capital punishment is barbarously cruel, but whether they would find it to be so in the light of all information presently available.
Furman v. Georgia; Justice Marshall
i. Even if capital punishment is not excessive, it nonetheless violates the 8th Amendment because it is morally unacceptable to the people of the United States at this time in their history 1. Therefore, a penalty that was permissible at one time in our history is not necessarily permissible today
Furman v. Georgia; Justice Marshall
i. Common sense and experience tell us that seldom-enforced laws become ineffective measures for controlling human conduct and that the death penalty, unless imposed with sufficient frequency, will make little contribution to deterring those crimes for which it may be exacted i. When imposition of the penalty reaches a certain degree of infrequency, it would be very doubtful that any existing general need for retribution would be measurably satisfied
Furman v. Georgia; Justice White
For this reason, I remain hopeful that even if the Court is unwilling to accept the view that the death penalty is so barbaric that it is in all circumstances cruel and unusual punishment forbidden by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, it may eventually conclude that the effort to eliminate arbitrariness in the infliction of that ultimate sanction is so plainly doomed to failure that it—and the death penalty—must be abandoned altogether
Godfrey v. Georgia; Dissent Brennnan and Marshall
a. A capital scheme must provide a meaningful basis for distinguishing the few cases in which the penalty is imposed from the many cases in which it is not i. The State must channel the sentencer's discretion by clear and objective standards that provide specific and detailed guidance and that make rationally reviewable the process for imposing a sentence of death
Godfrey v. Georgia; Plurality Stewart
"Considerations of federalism, as well as respect for the ability of a legislature to evaluate, in terms of its particular State, the moral consensus concerning the death penalty and its social utility as a sanction, require us to conclude, in the absence of more convincing evidence, that the infliction of death as a punishment for murder is not without justification and thus is not unconstitutionally sever"
Gregg v. Georgia; Justice Stewart (Pluarity)
"In part, capital punishment is an expression of society's more outrage at particularly offensive conduct. This function may by unappealing to many, but it is essential in an ordered society that asks its citizens to rely on legal processes rather than self-help to vindicate their wrongs."
Gregg v. Georgia; Justice Stewart (Pluarity)
The sanction imposed cannot be so totally without penological justification that it results in the gratuitous infliction of suffering
Gregg v. Georgia; Justice Stewart (Pluarity)
The instinct for retribution is part of the nature of man, and channeling that instinct in the administration of criminal justice serves an important purpose in promoting the stability of a society governed by law. When people begin to believe that organized society is unwilling or unable to impose upon criminal offenders the punishment they deserve, then there are sown the seeds of anarchy of self-help and lynch law"
Gregg v. Georgia; Justice Stewart (Plurality)
Victim impact evidence is only useful to appeal to the jury's emotions. The majority reasons that because defendants may introduce evidence relating to their character, victims should be afforded the same right. However, it is the defendant who is on trial, not the victim. Whether the victim is a good or valued person has no bearing on the defendant's culpability.
Payne v. Tennessee; Stevens Dissent
We may assume, for the sake of argument in deciding this case, that in a capital case a truly persuasive demonstration of "actual innocence" made after trial would render the execution of a defendant unconstitutional, and warrant federal habeas relief if there were no state avenue open to process such a claim. But because of the very disruptive effect that entertaining claims of actual innocence would have on the need for finality in capital cases, and the enormous burden that having to retry cases based on often stale evidence would place on the States, the threshold showing for such an assumed right would necessarily be extraordinarily high
Herrera v. Collins; Justice Rehniqust
Claims of actual innocence based on newly discovered evidence have never been held to state a ground for federal habeas relief absent an independent constitutional violation occurring in the underlying state criminal proceeding
Herrera v. Collins;Justice Rehniqust
i. The 98% of first-degree murder defendants being eligible for the death penalty is an unrebutted fact that points to a possible constitutional problem (assumed to be true by the state courts) 1. As a result, the record as it has come to us is limited and largely unexamined by experts and the courts below in the first instances 2. There needs to be a stronger record for us to grant cert
Hidalgo v. Arizona; Dissent
"However, reversal by a higher court is not proof that justice is thereby better done. There is no doubt that if there were a super-Supreme Court, a substantial proportion of our reversals of state courts would also be reversed. We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final."
Justice Jackson Concurring in Brown v. Allen
i. By authorizing the defense to bring before the jury at the separate sentencing hearing whatever mitigating circumstances, Texas has ensured that the sentencing jury will have adequate guidance to enable it to performed its function
Jurek v. Texas
i. Texas death statue only applies to a narrow group: Thus, this ensures that the death penalty will only be imposed for the most serious crimes and that it will only be imposed for the same type of offenses which occur under the same types of circumstances
Jurek v. Texas
The Court also maintains that accepting McCleskey's claim would pose a threat to all sentencing because of the prospect that a correlation might be demonstrated between sentencing outcomes and other personal characteristics. Again, such a view is indifferent to the considerations that enter into a determination whether punishment is "cruel and unusual." Race is a consideration whose influence is expressly constitutionally proscribed. We have expressed a moral commitment, as embodied in our fundamental law, that this specific characteristic should not be the basis for allotting burdens and benefits
Justice Brennan Dissent; McClesky v. Kemp
i. In order to make this process as uniform as possible, without taking away the discretion of the court, the following standards should be followed: (1) the petitioner must set forth a prima facie case for relief; (2) failure to exhaust state remedies is clear grounds for dismissal; (3) if the state record has not been filed, the judge needs to call for the record or hold a hearing; (4) although the judge may accept as true factual findings of state record, state rulings on questions of law cannot be accepted as binding; and (5) mixed questions of fact and law are left to the judgment of the federal court judge.
Justice Frankfurter; Brown v. Allen
i. There are, moreover, serious systemic concerns in prosecuting the crime of child rape that are relevant to the constitutionality of making it a capital offense. The problem of unreliable, induced, and even imagined child testimony means there is a "special risk of wrongful execution" in some child rape cases. ii. Similar criticisms pertain to other cases involving child witnesses; but child rape cases present heightened concerns because the central narrative and account of the crime often comes from the child herself. She and the accused are, in most instances, the only ones present when the crime was committed.
Justice Kennedy; Kennedy v. Louisiana
i. A broader conclusion that people should derive, however (and I would not consider this much of a leap either), is that the dissenters' encumbering of the death penalty in other cases, with unwarranted restrictions neither contained in the text of the Constitution nor reflected in two centuries of practice under it, will be the product of their policy views—views not shared by the vast majority of the American people. 1. The dissent essentially argues that capital punishment is such an undesirable institution—it results in the condemnation of such a large number of innocents—that any legal rule which eliminates its pronouncement, including the one favored by the dissenters in the present case, should be embraced
Justice Scalia; Concurrence; Kansas v. Marsh
We cannot face up to these facts and still hold that the guarantee of morally justifiable sentencing is hollow enough to allow maximizing death sentences, by requiring them when juries fail to find the worst degree of culpability: when, by a State's own standards and a State's own characterization, the case for death is "doubtful.
Justice Souter Dissent in Kansas v. Marsh
i. In the face of evidence of the hazards of capital prosecution, maintaining a sentencing system mandating death when the sentencer finds the evidence pro and con to be in equipoise is obtuse by any moral or social measure. 1. And unless application of the Eighth Amendment no longer calls for reasoned moral judgment in substance as well as form, the Kansas law is unconstitutional
Justice Souter Dissent in Kansas v. Marsh
In an attempt to bring executions in line with our evolving standards of decency, we have adopted increasingly less painful methods of execution, and then declared previous methods barbaric and archaic. But by requiring that an execution be relatively painless, we necessarily protect the inmate from enduring any punishment that is *81 comparable to the suffering inflicted on his victim.16 This trend, while appropriate and required by the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, actually undermines the very premise on which public approval of the retribution rationale is based.
Justice Stevens concurrence opinion in Baze vs. Rees
i. It is not so much the number of these States that is significant, but the consistency of the direction of change 1. The large number of States prohibiting the execution of mentally retarded persons (and the complete absence of States passing legislation reinstating the power to conduct such executions) provides powerful evidence that today our society views mentally retarded offenders as categorically less culpable than the average criminal.
Justice Stevens; Virginia v. Atkins
Case and Justice i. "These death sentences are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lighting is cruel and unusual'
Justice Stewart; Furman v. Georgia
i. Justice STEVENS reasoned similarly in Jackson, where he stressed that habeas corpus "is not intended as a substitute for appeal, nor as a device for reviewing the merits of guilt determinations at criminal trials," but only "to guard against extreme malfunctions in the state criminal justice systems." b. These differences simply reflect the fact that habeas review "entails significant costs Among other things, " '[i]t disturbs the State's significant interest in repose for concluded litigation, denies society the right to punish some admitted offenders, and intrudes on state sovereignty to a degree matched by few exercises of federal judicial authority.
Justice Thomas; Plurality Opinon Wright v. West
Rape is without doubt deserving of serious punishment; but in terms of moral depravity and of the injury to the person and to the public, it does not compare with murder, which does involve the unjustified taking of human life. Although it may be accompanied by another crime, rape by definition does not include the death of or even the serious injury to another person.13 The murderer kills; the rapist, if no more than that, does not. Life is over for the victim of the murderer; for the rape victim, life may not be nearly so happy as it was, but it is not over and normally is not beyond repair. We have the abiding conviction that the death penalty, which 'is unique in its severity and irrevocability,'
Justice White (Coker v. Georgia)
i. "When the law punishes by death, it risks its own sudden descent into brutality, transgressing the constitutional commitment to decency and restraint." ii. To date the Court has sought to define and implement this principle, for the most part, in cases involving capital murder. One approach has been to insist upon general rules that ensure consistency in determining who receives a death sentence. iii. This has led some Members of the Court to say we should cease efforts to resolve the tension and simply allow legislatures, prosecutors, courts, and juries greater latitude. iv. The tension between general rules and case-specific circumstances has produced results not altogether satisfactory. v. Our response to this case law, which is still in search of a unifying principle, has been to insist upon confining the instances in which capital punishment may be imposed.
Kennedy v. Louisana Justice Kennedy
1. "As it relates to crimes against individuals, though, the death penalty should not be expanded to instances where the victim's life was not taken."
Kennedy v. Louisiana; Justice Kennedy
a. Consistent with evolving standards of decency and the teachings of our precedents we conclude that, in determining whether the death penalty is excessive, there is a distinction between intentional first-degree murder on the one hand and nonhomicide crimes against individual persons, even including child rape, on the other. i. The latter crimes may be devastating in their harm, as here, but "in terms of moral depravity and of the injury to the person and to the public, they cannot be compared to murder in their "severity and irrevocability."
Kennedy v. Louisiana; Justice Kennedy
i. "Though that practice remains sound, beginning the same process for crimes for which no one has been executed in more than 40 years would require experimentation in an area where a failed experiment would result in the execution of individuals undeserving of the death penalty. Evolving standards of decency are difficult to reconcile with a regime that seeks to expand the death penalty to an area where standards to confine its use are indefinite and obscure."
Kennedy v. Louisiana; Justice Kennedy
i. "We find it difficult to identify standards that would guide the decisionmaker so the penalty is reserved for the most severe cases of child rape and yet not imposed in an arbitrary way" ii. "As noted above, the resulting imprecision and the tension between evaluating the individual circumstances and consistency of treatment have been tolerated where the victim dies. It should not be introduced into our justice system, though, where death has not occurred"
Kennedy v. Louisiana; Justice Kennedy
a. We conclude that the 8th and 14th Amendments require that the sentencer not be precluded from considering any aspect of a defendant's character or record and any of the circumstances of the offense that the defendant proffers as a basis for a sentence less than death
Lockett v. Ohio
Rather than creating the risk of an unguided emotional response, full consideration of evidence that mitigates against the death penalty is essential if the jury is to give a " 'reasoned moral response to the defendant's background, character, and crime.' "
Majority Opinion; Penry v. Lynaugh (Justice O'Connor)
Thus, petitioner's mental retardation and history of abuse is thus a two-edged sword: it may dimmish his blameworthiness for his crime even as it indicates that there is a probability that he will be dangerous in the future
Majority Opinion; Penry v. Lynaugh (Justice O'Connor)
a. From this it follows that, when a State requires a prisoner to raise an ineffective-assistance-of-trial-counsel claim in a collateral proceeding, a prisoner may establish cause for a default of an ineffective-assistance claim in two circumstances. i. The first is where the state courts did not appoint counsel in the initial-review collateral proceeding for a claim of ineffective assistance at trial. ii. The second is where appointed counsel in the initial-review collateral proceeding, where the claim should have been raised, was ineffective under the standards of.
Martinez v. Ryan
In sum, our decisions since Furman have identified a constitutionally permissible range of discretion in imposing the death penalty. First, there is a required threshold below which the death penalty cannot be imposed. In this context, the State must establish rational criteria that narrow the decisionmaker's judgment as to whether the circumstances of a particular defendant's case meet the threshold. Moreover, a societal consensus that the death penalty is disproportionate to a particular offense prevents a State from imposing the death penalty for that offense. Second, States cannot limit the sentencer's consideration of any relevant circumstance that could cause it to decline to impose the penalty. In this respect, the State cannot channel the sentencer's discretion, but must allow it to consider any relevant information offered by the defendant.
McCelsky v. Kemp; Justice Powell
We must also ask whether the conclusion suggested by those numbers is consonant with our understanding of history and human experience. Georgia's legacy of a race-conscious criminal justice system, as well as this Court's own recognition of the persistent danger that racial attitudes may affect criminal proceedings, indicates that McCleskey's claim is not a fanciful product of mere statistical artifice.
McClesky v. Kemp; Justice Brennan Dissent
At most, the Baldus study indicates a discrepancy that appears to correlate with race. Apparent disparities in sentencing are an inevitable part of our criminal justice system. The discrepancy indicated by the Baldus study is "a far cry from the major systemic defects identified in Furman
McClesky v. Kemp; Justice Powell
Where the discretion that is fundamental to our criminal process is involved, we decline to assume that what is unexplained is invidious. In light of the safeguards designed to minimize racial bias in the process, the fundamental value of jury trial in our criminal justice system, and the benefits that discretion provides to criminal defendants, we hold that the Baldus study does not demonstrate a constitutionally significant risk of racial bias affecting the Georgia capital sentencing process
McClesky v. Kemp; Justice Powell
"Doesn't believe legislatures of 50 states so devoid of wisdom and the power of rational thought."
McGautha v. California Dissent: Justice Brennan
"To identify before the fact those characteristics of criminal homicides and their perpetrators which call for the death penalty, and to express these characteristics in language which can be fairly understood and applied by the sentencing authority, appear to be tasks which are beyond present human ability."
McGautha v. California (Justice Harlan Quote)
"The States are entitled to assume that jurors confronted with the truly awesome responsibility of decreeing death for a fellow human that they will act with due regard for the consequences of their decision and will consider a variety of factors, many of which will have been suggested by the evidence or by the arguments of defense counsel"
McGautha v. California; Justice Harlan
Moreover, the purpose of the effective assistance guarantee of the Sixth Amendment is not to improve the quality of legal representation, although that is a goal of considerable importance to the legal system. The purpose is simply to ensure that criminal defendants receive a fair trial.
Strickland v. Washington; Majority
i. The misread in precedent led to an unfairly weighed scale in a capital trial that allows for virtually no limits on the relevant mitigating evidence but bars the States from offering a quick glimpse of the life which a defendant chose to extinguish, or demonstrating the loss to the victim's family and to society which has resulted from the defendant's homicide
Payne v. Tennessee
a. If we were to travel down the path that Justice BREYER sets out for us and once again consider the constitutionality of the death penalty, I would ask that counsel also brief whether our cases that have abandoned the historical understanding of the Eighth Amendment, beginning with Trop, should be overruled.
Scalia Concurrence in Glossip
"Nothing in any of our cases suggests that the decision to afford an individual defendant mercy violates the Constitution"
Pluarity Opinion; Gregg v. Georgia (Justice Stewart)
Mandates that where discretion is afforded a sentencing body on a matter so grave as the determination of whether a human life should be taken or spared, that discretion must be suitably directed and limited so as to minimize the risk of wholly arbitrary and capricious action
Pluarity Opinion; Gregg v. Georgia (Justice Stewart)
i. It appears evident that the post-Furman enactments reflect attempts by the States to retain the death penalty in a form consistent with the Constitution, rather than a renewed societal acceptance of mandatory death sentencing
Plurality; Woodson (Justice Stewart)
a. The response is also familiar: A vocal minority of the Court, waving over their heads a ream of the most recent abolitionist studies (a superabundant genre) as though they have discovered the lost folios of Shakespeare, insist that now, at long last, the death penalty must be abolished for good.
Scalia Concurrence in Glossip
a. Does the imposition of the death penalty by those States which retain it for rape violate evolving standards of decency that mark the profess or our maturing society? b. Is taking of human life to protect a value other than human life consistent with the constitutional proscription against punishments which by their excessive severity are greatly disproportioned to the offense charged? c. Can the permissible aims of punishment be achieved as effectively by punishing rape less severely than by death; if so, does the imposition of the death penalty for rape constitute unnecessary cruelty?
Rudolph v. Alabama; Dissent
We hold that where the defendant's future dangerousness is at issue, and state law prohibits the defendant's release on parole, due process requires that the sentencing jury be informed that the defendant is parole ineligible
Simmons v. South Carolina
whenever there is a reasonable likelihood that a juror will misunderstand a sentencing term, a defendant may demand instruction on its meaning, and a death sentence following the refusal of such a request should be vacated as having been "arbitrarily or discriminatorily" and "wantonly and ... freakishly imposed."
Souter Concurrence (Simmons v. South Carolina)
Because advocacy is an art and not a science, and because the adversary system requires deference to counsel's informed decisions, strategic choices must be respected in these circumstances if they are based on professional judgment.
Strickland v. Washington; Justice O'Connor
i. No particular set of detailed rules for counsel's conduct can satisfactorily take account of the variety of circumstances faced by defense counsel or the range of legitimate decisions regarding how best to represent a criminal defendant. 1. Any such set of rules would interfere with the constitutionally protected independence of counsel and restrict the wide latitude counsel must have in making tactical decisions
Strickland v. Washington; Justice O'Connor
Relevancy Test: "Any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence 1. Relevant mitigating evidence is evidence which tends logically to prove or disprove some fact or circumstance which a fact-finder could reasonably deem to have mitigating value i. The question is simply whether the evidence is of such a character this it might serve as a basis for a sentence less than death
Tennard v. Dretke
For example, we have no quarrel with the statement ... that 'how often [the defendant] will take a shower' is irrelevant to the sentencing determination"
Tennard v. Dretke O'Connor
a. We simply hold that major participation in the felony committed, combined with reckless indifference to human life, is sufficient to satisfy the Enmund culpability requirement.
Tison v. Arizona
i. A narrow focus on the question of whether or not a given defendant "intended to kill," however, is a highly unsatisfactory means of definitively distinguishing the most culpable and dangerous of murderers.
Tison v. Arizona
i. Their degree of participation in the crimes was major rather than minor, and the record would support a finding of the culpable mental state of reckless indifference to human life. (They participated fully in the kidnapping and robbery and watched the killing after which he chose to aid those whom he had placed in the position to kill rather than their victims)
Tison v. Arizona
We think, that the rule will not prevent a federal habeas court from adjudicating for the first time the federal constitutional claim of a defendant who in the absence of such an adjudication will be the victim of a miscarriage of justice
Wainwright v. Sykes; Justice Rehnquist
To acknowledge that "there perhaps is an inherent tension" between this line of cases and the line stemming from Furman, is rather like saying that there was perhaps an inherent tension between the Allies and the Axis Powers in World War II.
Walton v. Arizona Justice Scalia Concurrence
1. We base our conclusion on the much more limited principle that "strategic choices made after less than complete investigation are reasonable" only to the extent that "reasonable professional judgments support the limitations on investigation.
Wiggins v. Smith
a. We emphasize that Strickland does not require counsel to investigate every conceivable line of mitigating evidence no matter how unlikely the effort would be to assist the defendant at sentencing. i. Nor does Strickland require defense counsel to present mitigating evidence at sentencing in every case.
Wiggins v. Smith
A habeas court should ask whether the state court's application of clearly established federal law was objectively unreasonable" For now, it is sufficient to hold that when a state-court decision unreasonably applies the law of this Court to the facts of a prisoner's case, a federal court applying the provision may conclude that the state-court decision falls within that provision's unreasonable application clause
Williams v. Taylor (O'Connor)
"The most important point is that an unreasonable application of federal law is different from an incorrect application of law"
Williams v. Taylor; Justice O'Connor
It treats all persons convicted of a designated offense not as uniquely individual human beings, but as members of a faceless, undifferentiated mass to be subjected to the blind infliction of the penalty of death
Woodson v. NC
i. While it is true that a state prisoner could not obtain the writ if he had been provided a full and fair hearing in the state courts, this rule governed the merits of a claim under the Due Process Clause. 1. In the area of criminal procedure, the Due Process Clause was understood to guarantee no more than a full and fair hearing in the state court Thus, when the Court stated that a state prisoner who had been afforded a full and fair hearing could not obtain a writ of habeas corpus, the Court was propounding a rule of constitutional law, not a threshold requirement of habeas corpus
Wright v. West; Justice O'Connor Concurrence
In Georgia, the finding of an aggravating circumstance does not play any role in guiding the sentencing body in the exercise of its discretion, apart from its function of narrowing the class of persons convicted of murder who are eligible for the death penalty
Zant v. Stephens Majority; Stevens
Rompilla v. Beard:
i. Solidified the centrality of existing professional norms, especially the ABA standards, for determining whether counsel's performance fell below the reasonableness bar 1. Inserts the additional step of requiring trial counsel to conduct a thorough pre-trial investigation not only to uncover mitigating evidence but also to rebut the prosecutions' case for death
