Quote IDs Flashcards
1
Q
“An observer unacquainted with our death penalty jurisprudence (and in the habit of thinking logically) would probably say these positions cannot both be right. The ultimate choice in capital sentencing, he would point out, is a unitary one - the choice between death and imprisonment.”
A
Walton - Scalia Concurrence
2
Q
“To acknowledge that ‘there perhaps is an inherent tension’ between this line of cases and the line stemming from Furman, McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. at 363 (Blackmun, J., dissenting), is rather like saying that there was perhaps an inherent tension between the Allies and the Axis Powers in World War II. And to refer to the two lines as pursuing ‘twin objectives,’ Spaziano v. Florida, 468 U.S. at 459, is rather like referring to the twin objectives of good and evil. They cannot be reconciled.”
A
Walton - Scalia Concurrence
3
Q
“The Woodson-Lockett line of cases, however, is another matter. As far as I can discern, that bears no relation whatever to the text of the Eighth Amendment.”
A
Walton - Scalia Concurrence
4
Q
“Woodson and Lockett are rationally irreconcilable with Furman. Stare decisis cannot command the impossible. Since I cannot possibly be guided by what seem to me incompatible principles, I must reject the one that is plainly in error.”
A
Walton - Scalia Concurrence
5
Q
“Though Justice Blackmun joins those of us who have acknowledged the incompatibility of the Court’s Furman and Lockett-Eddings lines of jurisprudence, he unfortunately draws the wrong conclusion from the acknowledgment.”
A
Callins - Scalia Concurrence
6
Q
“Experience has taught us that the constitutional goal of eliminating arbitrariness and discrimination from the administration of death, see Furman v. Georgia, can never be achieved without compromising an equally essential component of fundamental fairness - individualized sentencing.”
A
Callins - Blackmun Dissent
7
Q
“Having virtually conceded that both fairness and rationality cannot be achieved in the administration of the death penalty, see McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279, 313, n. 37 (1987), the Court has chosen to deregulate the entire enterprise, replacing, it would seem, substantive constitutional requirements with mere aesthetics.”
A
Callins - Blackmun Dissent
8
Q
“From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death. For more than 20 years I have endeavored - indeed, I have struggled - along with a majority of this Court, to develop procedural and substantive rules that would lend more than the mere appearance of fairness to the death penalty endeavor.”
A
Callins - Blackmun Dissent
9
Q
“It soon became apparent that discretion could not be eliminated from capital sentencing without threatening the fundamental fairness due to a defendant when life is at stake.”
A
Callins - Blackmun Dissent
10
Q
“But even if the constitutional requirements of consistency and fairness are theoretically reconcilable in the context of capital punishment, it is clear that this Court is not prepared to meet the challenge. In apparent frustration over its inability to strike an appropriate balance between the Furman promise of consistency and the Lockett requirement of individualized sentencing, the Court has retreated from the field, allowing relevant mitigating evidence to be discarded, vague aggravating circumstances to be employed, and providing no indication that the problem of race in the administration will ever be addressed.”
A
Callins - Blackmun Dissent
11
Q
“In my view, the proper course when faced with irreconcilable constitutional commands is not to ignore one or the other, nor to pretend that the dilemma does not exist, but to admit the futility of the effort to harmonize them.”
A
Callins - Blackmun Dissent
12
Q
“We are now of the view that a State may properly conclude that for the jury to assess meaningfully the defendant’s moral culpability and blameworthiness, it should have before it at the sentencing phase evidence of the specific harm caused by the defendant.”
A
Payne - Rehnquist Majority
13
Q
“A State may legitimately conclude that evidence about the victim and about the impact of the murder on the victim’s family is relevant to the jury’s decision as to whether or not the death penalty should be imposed. There is no reason to treat such evidence differently than other relevant evidence is treated.”
A
Payne - Rehnquist Majority
14
Q
“Power, not reason, is the new currency of this Court’s decisionmaking.”
A
Payne - Marshall Dissent
15
Q
“Cast aside today are those condemned to face society’s ultimate penalty. Tomorrow’s victims may be minorities, women, or the indigent. Inevitably, the campaign to resurrect yesterday’s “spirited dissents” will squander the authority and the legitimacy of this Court as a protector of the powerless.”
A
Payne - Marshall Dissent
16
Q
“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.”
A
Coker - White Majority
17
Q
“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.”
A
Coker - White Majority
18
Q
“We cannot know which among this range of possibilities is correct, but today’s holding forecloses the very exploration we have said federalism was intended to foster.”
A
Coker - Burger Dissent
19
Q
“Here the robbers did commit murder; but they were subjected to the death penalty only because they killed as well as robbed. The question before us is not the disproportionality of death as a penalty for murder, but rather the validity of capital punishment for Enmund’s own conduct. The focus must be on his culpability, not on that of those who committed the robbery and shot the victims.”
A
Enmund - White Majority
20
Q
“On the other hand, it is equally clear that petitioners also fall outside the category of felony murderers for whom Enmund explicitly held the death penalty disproportional: 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.”
A
Tison - O’Connor Majority
21
Q
“This substantial and recent legislative authorization of the death penalty for the crime of felony murder regardless of the absence of a finding of an intent to kill powerfully suggests that our society does not reject the death penalty as grossly excessive under these circumstances.”
A
Tison - O’Connor Majority
22
Q
“Rather, 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.”
A
Tison - O’Connor Majority
23
Q
“It is not so much the number of these States that is significant, but the consistency of the direction of change.”
A
Atkins - Stevens Majority
24
Q
“Additional evidence makes it clear that this legislative judgment reflects a much broader social and professional consensus.”
A
Atkins - Stevens Majority
25
“If the culpability of the average murderer is insufficient to justify the most extreme sanction available to the State, the lesser culpability of the mentally retarded offender surely does not merit that form of retribution.”
Atkins - Stevens Majority
26
“Additionally, it suggests that some characteristics of mental retardation undermine the strength of the procedural protections that our capital jurisprudence steadfastly guards.”
Atkins - Stevens Majority
27
“The Court’s assessment of the current legislative judgment regarding the execution of defendants like petitioner more resembles a post hoc rationalization for the majority’s subjectively preferred result rather than any objective effort to ascertain the content of an evolving standard of decency.”
Atkins - Rehnquist Dissent
28
“The Court’s suggestion that these sources are relevant to the constitutional question finds little support in our precedents and, in my view, is antithetical to considerations of federalism, which instruct that any ‘permanent prohibition upon all units of democratic government must [be apparent] in the operative acts (laws and the application of laws) that the people have approved.’”
Atkins - Rehnquist Dissent
29
“In my view, these two sources - the work product of legislatures and sentencing jury determinations - ought to be the sole indicators by which courts ascertain the contemporary American conceptions of decency for the purposes of the Eighth Amendment.”
Atkins - Rehnquist Dissent
30
“If it is evidence of a national consensus for which we are looking, then the viewpoints of other countries simply are not relevant.”
Atkins - Rehnquist Dissent
31
“Today’s decision is the pinnacle of our Eighth Amendment death-is-different jurisprudence. Not only does it, like all of that jurisprudence, find no support in the text or the history of the Eighth Amendment; it does not even have support in current social attitudes regarding the conditions that render an otherwise just death penalty inappropriate.”
Atkins - Scalia Dissent
32
“The Court concludes that no one who is even slightly mentally retarded can have sufficient ‘moral responsibility to be subjected to capital punishment for any crime. As a sociological and moral conclusion that is implausible; and it is doubly implausible as an interpretation of the United States Constitution.’”
Atkins - Scalia Dissent
33
“The Court makes no pretense that execution of the mildly mentally retarded would have been considered ‘cruel and unusual’ in 1791.”
Atkins - Scalia Dissent
34
“How is it possible that agreement among 47% of the death penalty jurisdictions amounts to ‘consensus’?”
Atkins - Scalia Dissent
35
“Given that 14 years ago all the death penalty statutes included the mentally retarded, any change (except precipitate undoing of what had just been done) was bound to be in the one direction the Court finds significant enough to overcome the lack of real consensus.”
Atkins - Scalia Dissent
36
“But the Prize for the Court’s Most Feeble Effort to fabricate ‘national consensus’ must go to its appeal (deservedly relegated to a footnote) to the views of assorted professional and religious organizations, members of the so-called ‘world community,’ and respondents to opinion polls.”
Atkins - Scalia Dissent
37
“Once the Court admits (as it does) that mental retardation does not render the offender morally blameless, ante, at 13-14, there is no basis for saying that the death penalty is never appropriate retribution, no matter how heinous the crime.”
Atkins - Scalia Dissent
38
“But following the approach of Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005), and Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), it found significant not the ‘numerical counting of which [S]tates … stand for or against a particular capital prosecution,’ but ‘the direction of change.’”
Kennedy - Kennedy Majority
39
“When the law punishes by death, it risks its own sudden descent into brutality, transgressing the constitutional commitment to decency and restraint.”
Kennedy - Kennedy Majority
40
“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 - Kennedy Majority
41
“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 - Kennedy Majority
42
“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 - Kennedy Majority
43
“The incongruity between the crime of child rape and the harshness of the death penalty poses risks of overpunishment and counsels against a constitutional ruling that the death penalty can be expanded to include this offense.”
Kennedy - Kennedy Majoriy
44
“It is not at all evident that the child rape victim’s hurt is lessened when the law permits the death of the perpetrator.”
Kennedy - Kennedy Majority
45
“We conclude that 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.”
Caldwell - Marshall Majority
46
“The argument at issue here cannot be said to be either accurate or relevant to a valid state penological interest. The argument was inaccurate, both because it was misleading as to the nature of the appellate court’s review and because it depicted the jury’s role in a way fundamentally at odds with the role that a capital sentencer must perform.”
Caldwell - Marshall Majority
47
“Such comments, if left uncorrected, might so affect the fundamental fairness of the sentencing proceeding as to violate the Eighth Amendment.”
Caldwell - Marshall Majority
48
“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 - Blackmun Majority
49
“If the State rests its case for imposing the death penalty at least in part on the premise that the defendant will be dangerous in the future, the fact that the alternative sentence to death is life without parole will necessarily undercut the State’s argument regarding the threat that the defendant poses to society.”
Simmons - Blackmun Majority
50
“Due process plainly requires that he be allowed to bring it to the jury’s attention by way of argument by defense counsel or an instruction from the court.”
Simmons - Blackmun Majority
51
“The state may not create a false dilemma by advancing generalized arguments regarding the defendant’s future dangerousness while, at the same time, preventing the jury from learning that the defendant never will be released on parole.”
Simmons - Blackmun Majority
52
“That same need for heightened reliability also mandates recognition of a capital defendant’s right to require instructions on the meaning of the legal terms used to describe the sentences (or sentencing recommendations) a jury is required to consider, in making the reasoned moral choice between sentencing alternatives.”
Simmons - Souter Concurrence
53
“When the State seeks to show the defendant’s future dangerousness, however, the fact that he will never be released from prison will often be the only way that a violent criminal can successfully rebut the State’s case.”
Simmons - O'Connor Concurrence
54
“When the prosecution has not specifically suggested parolability, I see no more reason why the United States Constitution should compel the admission of evidence showing that, under the State’s current law, the defendant would be nonparolable, than that it should compel the admission of evidence showing that parolable life-sentence murderers are in fact almost never paroled, or are paroled only after age 70.”
Simmons - Scalia Dissent
55
“The regime imposed by today’s judgment is undoubtedly reasonable as a matter of policy, but I see nothing to indicate that the Constitution requires it to be followed coast to coast.”
Simmons - Scalia Dissent
56
“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 - Rehnquist Majority
57
“A claim of ‘actual innocence’ is not itself a constitutional claim, but instead a gateway through which a habeas petitioner must pass to have his otherwise barred constitutional claim considered on the merits.”
Herrera - Rehnquist Majority
58
“We have, of course, held that the Eighth Amendment requires increased reliability of the process by which capital punishment may be imposed. But petitioner’s claim does not fit well into the doctrine of these cases, since, as we have pointed out, it is far from clear that a second trial 10 years after the first trial would produce a more reliable result.”
Herrera - Rehnquist MAjority
59
“We cannot say that Texas’ refusal to entertain petitioner’s newly discovered evidence eight years after his conviction transgresses a principle of fundamental fairness ‘rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people.’”
Herrera - Rehnquist Majority
60
“Under Texas law, petitioner may file a request for executive clemency. Clemency is deeply rooted in our Anglo-American tradition of law, and is the historic remedy for preventing miscarriages of justice where judicial process has been exhausted.”
Herrera - Rehnquist Majority
61
“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. … The showing made by petitioner in this case falls far short of any such threshold.”
Herrera - Rehnquist Majority
62
“I cannot disagree with the fundamental legal principle that executing the innocent is inconsistent with the Constitution.”
Herrera - O'Connor Concurrence
63
“Dispositive to this case, however, is an equally fundamental fact: Petitioner is not innocent, in any sense of the word.”
Herrera - O'Connor Concurrence
64
“If the system that has been in place for 200 years (and remains widely approved) ‘shock[s]’ the dissenters’ consciences, perhaps they should doubt the calibration of their consciences, or, better still, the usefulness of ‘conscience shocking’ as a legal test.”
Herrera - Scalia Concurrence
65
“Nothing could be more contrary to contemporary standards of decency, or more shocking to the conscience, than to execute a person who is actually innocent.”
Herrera - Blackmun Dissent
66
“The question is not whether a second trial would be more reliable than the first but whether, in light of new evidence, the result of the first trial is sufficiently reliable for the State to carry out a death sentence.”
Herrera - Blackmun Dissent
67
“I believe a prisoner must show not just that there was probably a reasonable doubt about his guilt but that he is probably actually innocent.”
Herrera - Blackmun Dissent
68
“Whatever procedures a State might adopt to hear actual-innocence claims, one thing is certain: The possibility of executive clemency is not sufficient to satisfy the requirements of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.”
Herrera - Blackmun Dissent
69
“The actual-innocence inquiry is therefore distinguishable from review for sufficiency of the evidence, where the question is not whether the defendant is innocent but whether the government has met its constitutional burden of proving the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Herrera - Blackmun Dissent
70
“As a general rule, I do not think it appropriate for judges to heap either praise or censure upon a legislative measure that comes before them, lest it be thought that their validation, invalidation, or interpretation of it is driven by their desire to expand or constrict what they personally approve or disapprove as a matter of policy.”
Marsh - Thomas Majority
71
“The benchmark for judging any claim of ineffectiveness must be whether counsel’s conduct so undermined the proper functioning of the adversarial process that the trial cannot be relied on as having produced a just result.”
Strickland - O'Connor Majority
72
"Reasonableness under prevailing professional norms."
Strickland - O'Connor Majority
73
“[n]o 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.”
Strickland - O'Connor Majority
74
“A fair assessment of attorney performance requires that every effort be made to eliminate the distorting effects of hindsight, to reconstruct the circumstances of counsel’s challenged conduct, and to evaluate the conduct from counsel’s perspective at the time”
Strickland - O'Connor Majority
75
“in adjudicating a claim of actual ineffectiveness of counsel, a court should keep in mind that the principles we have stated do not establish mechanical rules. Although those principles should guide the process of decision, the ultimate focus of inquiry must be on the fundamental fairness of the proceeding whose result is being challenged. In every case the court should be concerned with whether, despite the strong presumption of reliability, the result of the particular proceeding is unreliable because of a breakdown in the adversarial process that our system counts on to produce just results.“
Strickland - O'Connor Majority
76
"I join the Court’s opinion because I believe that the standards it sets out today will both provide helpful guidance to courts considering claims of actual ineffectiveness of counsel and also permit those courts to continue their efforts to achieve progressive development of this area of the law…. I believe these standards are sufficiently precise to permit meaningful distinctions between those attorney derelictions that deprive defendants of their constitutional rights and those that do not; at the same time, the standards are sufficiently flexible to accommodate the wide variety of situations giving rise to claims of this kind.”
Strickland - Brennan Concurrence
77
"My objection to the performance standard adopted by the Court is that it is so malleable that, in practice, it will either have no grip at all or will yield excessive variation in the manner in which the Sixth Amendment is interpreted and applied by different courts."
Strickland - Marshall Dissent
78
"It is an unfortunate but undeniable fact that a person of means, by selecting a lawyer and paying him enough to ensure he prepares thoroughly, usually can obtain better representation than that available to an indigent defendant, who must rely on appointed counsel, who, in turn, has limited time and resources to devote to a given case. Is a “reasonably competent attorney” a reasonably competent adequately paid retained lawyer or a reasonably competent appointed attorney?"
Strickland - Marshall Dissent
79
"Seemingly impregnable cases can sometimes be dismantled by good defense counsel. On the basis of a cold record, it may be impossible for a reviewing court confidently to ascertain how the government’s evidence and arguments would have stood up against rebuttal and crossexamination by a shrewd, well-prepared lawyer."
Strickland - Marshall Dissent
80
“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. Nor does Strickland require defense counsel to present mitigating evidence at sentencing in every case. Both conclusions would interfere with the ‘constitutionally protected independence of counsel’ at the heart of Strickland."
Wiggins - O'Connor Majority
81
“Had the jury been able to place petitioner’s excruciating life history on the mitigating side of the scale, there is a reasonable probability that at least one juror would have struck a different balance.”
Wiggins - O'Connor Majority
82
"But if the case is that the whole proceeding is a mask – that counsel, jury and judge were swept to the fatal end by an irresistible wave of public passion, and the state courts failed to correct the wrong; neither perfection in the machinery for correction nor the possibility that the trial court and counsel saw no other way of avoiding immediate outbreak of the mob can prevent this court from securing to the petitioners their constitutional rights."
Moore v. Dempsey - Holmes Majority
83
“In other circumstances, the state adjudication carries the weight that federal practice gives to the conclusion of a court of last resort of another judicial determination on federal constitutional issues. It is not res judicata."
Brown v. Allen - Reed
84
"We are not final because we are infallible, we are infallible because we are final."
Brown v. Allen - Jackson Concurrence
85
“But a forfeiture of remedies does not legitimize the unconstitutional conduct by which his conviction was procured.”
Fay v. Noia - Brennan Majority
86
“Surely no fair minded person will contend that those who have been deprived of their liberty without due process of the law ought nevertheless to languish in prison.”
Fay v. Noia - Brennan Majority
87
“This decision, both in its abrupt break with the past and its consequences for the future, is one of the most disquieting that the court has rendered in a long time”
Fay v. Noia - Harlan Dissent
88
“We think that the rule of Fay v. Noia may encourage sandbagging on the part of defense lawyers, who may take their chances on a verdict of not guilty in a state trial court with the intent to raise their constitutional claims in a FH court if their initial gamble does not pay off.”
Wainwright v. Sykes - Rehnquist Majority
89
“The cause and prejudice exemption of the Francis rule will afford an adequate guarantee, we think, that the rule will not prevent FH court from adjudicating for the first time the federal constitutional claim of a D who in the absence of such an adjudication will be the victim of a miscarriage of justice.”
Wainwright v. Sykes - Rehnquist Majority
90
“Punishing a lawyer’s unintentional errors by closing the federal courthouse door to his client is both a senseless and misdirected method of deterring the slighting of state rules.”
Wainwright v. Sykes - Brennan Dissent
91
"...initial review collateral proceeding..."
Martinez v. Ryan - Kennedy Majority
92
“Even if today’s holding could be restricted to IAC claims, it would have essentially the same practical consequences as a holding that a collateral review counsel is constitutionally required.”
Martinez v. Ryan - Scalia Dissent
93
“Johnson was tried by little better than mob law before the state court. He had the right to a fair trial, and the mandate of the Supreme Court has for the first time in the history of the country been openly defied by a community.”
US v. Shipp - Harlan I (to the Washington Post before trial)
94
"This court, and this court alone, has jurisdiction to decide whether a case is properly before it, and until its judgment declining jurisdiction is announced, it has authority to make orders to preserve existing conditions, and a willful disregard of those orders constitutes contempt. The power and dignity of this court are paramount."
US v. Shipp - Holmes (rejecting Shipp's motion to dismiss)
95
"It is apparent that a dangerous portion of the community was seized with the awful thirst for blood which only killing can quench. The persons who hung and shot this man were so impatient for his blood that they utterly disregarded the act of Congress as well as the order of this court."
US v. Shipp - Fuller Majority
96
"[When anyone in custody] is at the mercy of a mob, the administration of justice becomes a mockery. When this court granted a stay of execution on Johnson’s application, it became its duty to protect him until his case should be disposed of. And when its mandate, issued for his protection, was defied, punishment of those guilty of such attempt must be awarded."
US v. Shipp - Fuller Majority
97
“evolving standard of decency that marked the progress of a maturing society”
Trop v. Dulles - Warren Majority
98
“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 human ability.”
McGautha - Harlan Majority
99
“In light of history, experience, and the present limitations of human knowledge, we find it quite impossible to say that committing to the untrammeled discretion of the jury the power to pronounce life or death in capital cases is offensive to anything in the Constitution. The States are entitled to assume that jurors confronted with the truly awesome responsibility of decreeing death for a fellow human 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. For a court to attempt to catalog the appropriate factors in this elusive area could inhibit rather than expand the scope of consideration, for no list of circumstances would ever really be complete. The infinite variety of cases and facets to each case would make general standards either meaningless ‘boiler-plate’ or a statement of the obvious that no jury would need.”
McGautha - Harlan Majority
100
“It would seem to be incontestable that the death penalty inflicted on one defendant is ‘unusual’ if it discriminates against him by reason of his race, religion, wealth, social position, or class, or if it is imposed under a procedure that give room for the play of such prejudices…What the legislature may not do for all classes uniformly and systematically, a judge or jury may not do for a class that prejudice sets apart from the community.”
Furman - Douglas
101
“In a Nation committed to equal protection of the laws there is no permissible ‘caste’ aspect of law enforcement. Yet we know that the discretion of judges and juries in imposing the death penalty enables the penalty to be selectively applied, feeding prejudices against the accused if he is poor and despised, and lacking political clout, or if he is a member of a suspect or unpopular minority, and saving those who by social position may be in a more protected position. In ancient Hindu law a Brahman was exempt from capital punishment, and under that law, ‘generally, in the law books, punishment increased in severity as social status diminished.’ We have, I fear, taken in practice the same position, partially as a result of making the death penalty discretionary and partially as a result of the ability of the rich to purchase the services of the most respected and most resourceful legal talent in the Nation.”
Furman - Douglas
102
“A law that stated that anyone making more that $50,000 would be exempt from the death penalty would plainly fall, as would a law that in terms said that blacks, those who never went beyond th fifth grade in school, those who made less than $3,000 a year, or those who were unpopular or unstable should be the only people executed. A law which in the overall view reaches that result in practice has no more sanctity than a law which in terms provides the same.”
Furman - Douglas
103
“The only explanation for the uniqueness of death is its extreme severity. Death is today an unusually severe punishment, unusual in its pain, in its finality, and in its enormity. No other existing punishment is comparable to death in terms of physical and mental suffering. Although our information is not conclusive, it appears that there is no method available that guarantees an immediate and painless death…In comparison to all other punishments today, then, the deliberate extinguishment of human life by the State is uniquely degrading to human dignity. I would not hesitate to hold, on that ground alone, that death is today a ‘cruel and unusual’ punishment, were it not that death is a punishment of longstanding usage and acceptance in this country.”
Furman - Brennan
104
“When an unusually severe punishment is authorized for wide-scale application but not, because of society’s refusal, inflicted save in a few instances, the inference is compelling that there is a deep-seated reluctance to inflict it. Indeed, the likelihood is great that the punishment is tolerated only because of its disuse.”
Furman - Brennan
105
“In sum, the punishment of death is inconsistent with all four principles: Death is an unusually severe and degrading punishment; there is a strong probability that it is inflicted arbitrarily; its rejection by contemporary society is virtually total; and there is no reason to believe that it serves any penal purpose more effectively than the less severe punishment of imprisonment. The function of these principles is to enable a court to determine whether a punishment comports with human dignity. Death, quite simply, does not.”
Furman - Brennan
106
“The penalty of death differs from all other forms of criminal punishment, not in degree but in kind. It is unique in its total irrevocability. It is unique in its rejection of the rehabilitation of the convict as a basic purpose of criminal justice. And it is unique, finally, in its absolute renunciation of all that is embodied in our concept of humanity.”
Furman - Stewart
107
“These death sentences are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual. For, of all the people convicted of rapes and murders in 1967 and 1968, many just as reprehensible as these, the petitioners are among a capriciously selected random handful upon whom the sentence of death has in fact been imposed…I simply conclude that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments cannot tolerate the infliction of a sentence of death under legal systems that permit this unique penalty to be so wantonly and so freakishly imposed.”
Furman - Stewart
108
“I begin with what I consider a near truism: that the death penalty could be so seldom imposed that it would cease to be a credible deterrent or measurably to contribute to any other end of punishment in the criminal justice system.”
Furman - White
109
“It is undoubtedly correct that there is a demand for vengeance on the part of many persons in a community against one who is convicted of a particularly offensive act. At times a cry is heard that morality requires vengeance to evidence society’s abhorrence of the act. But the Eighth Amendment is our insulation from our baser selves.”
Furman - Marshall
110
“The most hotly contested issue regarding capital punishment is whether it is better than life imprisonment as a deterrent to crime…No one can ever know how many people have refrained from murder because of the fear of being hanged. This is the nub of the problem and it is exacerbated by the paucity of useful data.”
Furman - Marshall
111
“...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 - Marshall
112
“It is not a punishment such as burning at the stake that everyone would ineffably find to be repugnant to all civilized standards. Nor is it a punishment so roundly condemned that only a few aberrant legislatures have retained it on the statute books.”
Furman - Burger Dissent
113
“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…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 - Burger Dissent
114
“Rather than providing a final and unambiguous answer on the basic constitutional question, the collective impact of the majority’s ruling is to demand an undetermined measure of change from the various state legislatures and the Congress…If today’s opinions demonstrate nothing else, they starkly show that this is an area where legislatures can act far more effectively than courts.”
Furman - Burger Dissent
115
“Cases such as these provide for me an excruciating agony of the spirit. I yield to no one in the depth of my distaste, antipathy, and indeed, abhorrence, for the death penalty, with all its aspects of physical distress and fear and of moral judgment exercised by finite minds…Were I a legislator, I would vote against the death penalty…”
Furman - Blackmun Dissent
116
“We hold that the death penalty is not a form of punishment that may never be imposed, regardless of the circumstances of the offense, regardless of the character of the offender, and regardless of the procedure followed in reaching the decision to impose it.”
Gregg - Stewart Plurality
117
“No longer can a Georgia jury do as Furman’s jury did: reach a finding of the defendant’s guilt and then, without guidance or direction, decide whether he should live or die.”
Gregg - Stewart Plurality
118
“Left unguided, juries imposed the death sentence in a way that could only be called freakish. The new Georgia sentencing procedures, by contrast, focus the jury’s attention on the particularized nature of the crime and the particularized characteristics of the defendant…no longer can a jury wantonly and freakishly impose the death sentence; it is always circumscribed by the legislative guidelines.”
Gregg - Stewart Plurality
119
“The Georgia Legislature has plainly made an effort to guide the jury in the exercise of its discretion, while at the same time permitting the jury to dispense mercy on the basis of factors too intangible to write into a statute, and I cannot accept the naked assertion that the effort is bound to fail.”
Gregg - White Concurrence
120
“Absent facts to the contrary it cannot be assumed that prosecutors will be motivated in their charging decision by factors other than the strength of their case and the likelihood that a jury would impose the death penalty if it convicts.”
Gregg - White Concurrence
121
“...an indictment of our entire system of justice. Petitioner has argued in effect that no matter how effective the death penalty may be as a punishment, government, created and run as it must be by humans, is inevitably incompetent to administer it.”
Gregg - White Concurrence
122
“In Furman v. Georgia, I read ‘evolving standards of decency’ as requiring focus upon the essence of the death penalty itself and not primarily or solely upon the procedures under which the determination to inflict the penalty upon a particular person was made. That continues to be my view.”
Gregg - Brennan Dissent
123
“In the case before us the Georgia Supreme Court has affirmed a sentence of death based upon no more than finding that the offense was ‘outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible and inhuman.’ There is nothing in these few words, standing alone, that implies any inherent restraint on the arbitrary and capricious infliction of the death sentence.”
Godfrey - Stewart Plurality
124
“Nearly every week of every year, this Court is presented with at least one petition for certiorari raising troubling issues of noncompliance with the strictures of Gregg and its progeny…the task of eliminating arbitrariness in the infliction of capital punishment is proving to be one which our criminal justice system - and perhaps any criminal justice system - is unable to perform.”
Godfrey - Marshall Concurrence
125
“But I believe that the Court in McGautha was substantially correct in concluding that the task of selecting in some objective way those persons who should be condemned to die is one that remains beyond the capacities of the criminal justice system.”
Godfrey - Marshall Concurrence
126
“...an aggravating circumstance must genuinely narrow the class of persons eligible for the death penalty and must reasonably justify the imposition of a more severe sentence on the defendant compared to others found guilty of murder.”
Stephens - Stevens Majority
127
“The Georgia scheme provides for categorical narrowing at the definition stage, and for individualized determination and appellate review at the selection stage. We therefore remain convinced, as we were in 1976, that the structure of the statute is constitutional.”
Stephens - Stevens Majority
128
“Today we learn for the first time that the Court did not mean what it said in Gregg v. Georgia…we are now told that the State need do nothing whatsoever to guide the jury’s ultimate decision whether to sentence a defendant to death or spare his life.”
Stephens - Marshall Dissent
129
“Under today’s decision all the State has to do is require the jury to make some threshold finding. Once that finding is made, the jurors can be left completely at large, with nothing to guide them but their whims and prejudices.”
Stephens - Marshall Dissent
130
“Today’s decision makes an absolute mockery of this Court’s precedents concerning capital sentencing procedures. There is no point in requiring State legislatures to identify specific aggravating circumstances if sentencers are to be left free to ignore them in deciding which defendants are to die.”
Stephens - Marshall Dissent
131
“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. Nor are we impressed with the claim that without written jury findings concerning mitigating circumstances, appellate courts cannot perform their proper role.”
Clemons - White Majority
132
“In my view, the majority’s discussion of the reweighing issue is sadly flawed. If a jury’s verdict rests in part upon a constitutionally impermissible aggravating factor, and the State’s appellate court upholds the death sentence based upon its own reweighing of legitimate aggravating and mitigating circumstances, the appellate court, in any real sense, has not approved or affirmed the verdict of the jury. Rather, the reviewing court in that situation has assumed for itself the role of sentencer. The logical implication of the majority’s approach is that no trial-level sentencing procedure need be conducted at all. Instead, the record of a capital trial…might as well be shipped to the appellate court, which then would determine the appropriate sentence in the first instance.”
Clemons - Blackmun Dissent
133
“But, given the heightened concern for reliability when a sentence of death is imposed, I find inexplicable the majority’s willingness in a capital case to countenance the resolution of disputed factual issues by means of a procedure that this Court has deemed insufficiently reliable even for the adjudication of a civil lawsuit.”
Clemons - Blackmun Dissent
134
“I also believe that, if a sentence of death is to be imposed, it should be pronounced by a decision maker who will look upon the face of the defendant as he renders judgment. The bloodless alternative approved by the majority conveniently may streamline the process of capital sentencing, but at a cost that seems to me to be intolerable.”
Clemons - Blackmun Dissent
135
“An invalidated sentencing factor…will render the sentence unconstitutional by reason of its adding an improper element to the aggravation scale in the weighing process unless one of the other sentencing factors enables the sentencer to give aggravating weight to the same facts and circumstances.”
Brown v. Sanders - Scalia Majority
136
“The petitioner sought an evidentiary hearing to establish…that the statutory aggravating circumstances set forth…apply to virtually every first-degree murder case in the State.”
Hidalgo - Breyer Denial
137
“This evidence indicated that ‘one or more aggravating circumstances were present in 856 of 866’ cases examined…in other words, about 98% of first-degree murder defendants were eligible for the death penalty.”
Hidalgo - Breyer Denial
138
“Although, in my view, the Arizona Supreme Court misapplied our precedent, I agree with the Court’s decision today to deny certiorari…[petitioner’s empirical evidence] points to a possible constitutional problem…However, in this case, the opportunity to develop the record through an evidentiary hearing was denied…Capital defendants may have the opportunity to fully develop a record with the kind of empirical evidence that the petitioner points to here. And the issue presented in this petition will be better suited for certiorari with such a record.”
Hidalgo - Breyer Denial
139
“The history of mandatory death penalty statutes in the United States thus reveals that the pratice of sentencing to death all persons convicted of a particular offense has been rejected as unduly harsh and unworkably rigid. The two crucial indicators of evolving standards of decency respecting the imposition of punishment in our society - jury determinations and legislative enactments - both point conclusively to the repudiation of automatic death sentences.”
Woodson - Stewart Plurality
140
“While a mandatory death penalty statute may reasonably be expected to increase the number of persons sentenced to death, it does not fulfill Furman’s basic requirement by replacing arbitrary and wanton jury discretion with objective standards to guide, regularize, and make rationally reviewable the process for imposing a sentence of death.”
Woodson - Stewart Plurality
141
“In Furman, members of the Court acknowledge what cannot fairly be denied - that death is a punishment different from all other sanctions in kind rather than degree. A process that accords no significance to relevant facets of the character and record of the individual offender or the circumstances of the particular offense excludes from consideration in fixing the ultimate punishment of death the possibility of compassionate or mitigating factors stemming from the diverse frailties of humankind. 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 - Stewart Plurality
142
“We conclude that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments require that the sentencer, in all but the rarest kind of capital case not be precluded from considering, as a mitigating factor, 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…Given that the imposition of death by public authority is so profoundly different from all other penalties, we cannot avoid the conclusion that an individualized decision is essential in capital cases.”
Lockett - Burger Majority
143
“We find that the limitations placed by these courts upon the mitigating evidence they would consider violated the rule in Lockett. 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. In this instance, it was as if the trial judge had instructed a jury to disregard the mitigating evidence Eddings proffered on his behalf.”
Eddings - Powell Majority
144
“The trial judge recognized that youth must be considered a relevant mitigating factor. But youth is more than a chronological fact. It is a time and condition of life when a person may be most susceptible to influence and to psychological damage. Our history is replete with laws and judicial recognition that minors, especially in their earlier years, generally are less mature and responsible than adults.”
Eddings - Powell Majority
145
“Just as the chronological age of a minor is itself a relevant mitigating factor of great weight, so must the background and mental and emotional development of a youthful defendant be duly considered in sentencing.”
Eddings - Powell Majority
146
“So far as consideration of aggravating circumstances is concerned, therefore, the principal difference between Texas and the other two States [Georgia and Florida] is that the death penalty is an available sentencing option even potentially for a smaller class of murders in Texas. Otherwise the statutes are similar. Each requires the sentencing authority to focus on the particularized nature of the crime.”
Jurek - Stevens Plurality
147
“It is, of course, not easy to predict future behavior. The fact that such a determination is difficult, however, does not mean that it cannot be made. Indeed, prediction of future criminal conduct is an essential element in many of the decisions rendered throughout our criminal justice system.”
Jurek - Stevens Plurality
148
“Underlying Lockett and Eddings is the principle that punishment should be directly related to the personal culpability of the criminal defendant…Moreover, Eddings makes clear that it is not enough simply to allow the defendant to present mitigating evidence to the sentencer.”
Penry - O'Connor Majority
149
“Penry argues that his mitigating evidence of mental retardation and childhood abuse has relevance to his moral culpability beyond the scope of the special issue, and that the jury was unable to express its ‘reasoned moral response’ to that evidence in determining whether death was the appropriate punishment.”
Penry - O'Connor Majority
150
“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.’” (quoting Franklin, quoting CA v. Brown).
Penry - O'Connor Majority
151
“In holding that this scheme unconstitutionally limits the jury’s discretion to consider the mitigating evidence of Penry’s mental retardation and abused childhood, the Court today entirely disregards one of the two lines of our concern, requiring individualized consideration to displace the channeling of discretion, and throwing away Jurek in the process.”
Penry - Scalia Dissent
152
“While rejection of a facial challenge to a statute does not preclude all as-applied attacks, surely it precludes one resting upon the same asserted principle of law.”
Penry - Scalia Dissent
153
“In providing for juries to consider all mitigating circumstances insofar as they bear upon (1) deliberateness, (2) future dangerousness, and (3) provocation, it seems to me Texas had adopted a rational scheme that meets the two concerns of our Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. The Court today demands that it be replaced, however, with a scheme that simply dumps before the jury all sympathetic factors…The Court seeks to dignify this by calling it a process that calls for a ‘reasoned moral response’ - but reason has nothing to do with it, the Court having eliminated the structure that required reason. It is an unguided, emotional “moral response” that the Court demands be allowed - an outpouring of personal reaction to all the circumstances of a defendant’s life and personality, an unfocused sympathy. Not only have we never before said the Constitution requires this, but the line of cases following Gregg sought to eliminate precisely the unpredictability it produces.”
Penry - Scalia Dissent
154
“The decision whether to impose the death penalty is a unitary one; unguided discretion not to impose is unguided discretion to impose as well.”
Penry - Scalia Dissent
