Caldwell v. Mississippi (1985)
Decision: The Court sets aside a Mississippi inmate’s death sentence after the prosecutor told the jury that an appeals court would review its determination of life or death. The Court writes “it is constitutionally impermissible to rest a death sentence on a determination made by a sentencer who has been led to believe that the responsibility for determining the appropriateness of the defendant’s death rests elsewhere.”
Ford v. Wainwright (1986)
Decision: The Court rules that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the execution of insane persons.
LegalSpeak: Gregg v. Georgia (1976)
Justice Potter Stewart (plurality): “The most marked indication of society’s endorsement of the death penalty for murder is the legislative response to Furman. The legislatures of at least 35 States have enacted new statutes that provide for the death penalty for at least some crimes that result in the death of another person…. These recently adopted statutes have attempted to address the concerns expressed by the Court in Furman primarily (i) by specifying the factors to be weighed and the procedures to be followed in deciding when to impose a capital sentence, or (ii) by making the death penalty mandatory for specified crimes. But all of the post-Furman statutes make clear that capital punishment itself has not been rejected by the elected representatives of the people.”
Justice Byron White (concurring): “Imposition of the death penalty is surely an awesome responsibility for any system of justice and those who participate in it. Mistakes will be made and discriminations will occur which will be difficult to explain. However, one of society’s most basic tasks is that of protecting the lives of its citizens and one of the most basic ways in which it achieves the task is through criminal laws against murder. I decline to interfere with the manner in which Georgia has chosen to enforce such laws on what is simply an assertion of lack of faith in the ability of the system of justice to operate in a fundamentally fair manner.”
Justice William Brennan (dissenting): “Death is not only an unusually severe punishment, unusual in its pain, in its finality, and in its enormity, but it serves no penal purpose more effectively than a less severe punishment; therefore the principle inherent in the Clause that prohibits pointless infliction of excessive punishment when less severe punishment can adequately achieve the same purposes invalidates the punishment. The fatal constitutional infirmity in the punishment of death is that it treats ‘members of the human race as nonhumans, as objects to be toyed with and discarded.’”
While instruments like the electric chair and guillotine are no longer used, some states still exercise the death penalty, usually by injecting lethal drugs into the condemned inmate (iStock).
Justice Thurgood Marshall (dissenting): “The death penalty, unnecessary to promote the goal of deterrence or to further any legitimate notion of retribution, is an excessive penalty forbidden by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.”
Darden v. Wainwright (1986)
Decision: The Court rules that a prosecutor’s improper comments during closing arguments in a death penalty case did not justify vacating the sentence. The Court wrote that a sentence should be set aside based on a prosecutor’s comments only when the comments “so infected the trial with unfairness as to make the resulting conviction a denial of due process.”
Skipper v. South Carolina (1986)
Decision: The Court sets aside a death sentence when the trial judge excluded as mitigating evidence the testimony of jailers regarding the good behavior of the defendant before his trial.
McCleskey v. Kemp (1987)
Decision: The Court ruled that a death penalty defendant cannot invalidate his death penalty based on a broad statistical study showing correlation between race and the death penalty. Rather, the majority rules that the defendant must show “that the decisionmakers in his case acted with discriminatory purpose.”
Tison v. Arizona (1987)
Decision: The Court ruled that the Eighth Amendment does not prohibit the death penalty for a defendant who participates in a felony that leads to a murder.
Thompson v. Oklahoma (1988)
Decision: The Court ruled that it is unconstitutional for a state to execute a criminal defendant who was 15 years old when he committed murder.
Penry v. Lynaugh (1989)
Decision: The Court ruled that the Eighth Amendment does not prohibit the execution of a mentally retarded inmate.
Stanford v. Kentucky (1989)
Decision: The Court ruled that the Eighth Amendment does not prohibit the execution of a criminal defendant who was 16 or 17 when he or she committed murder. This decision was overruled by the Court in its 2005 decision Roper v. Simmons.
Coleman v. Thompson (1991)
Decision: In a controversial ruling, the Court ruled that a federal court could not review a death sentence issued by state courts when the defendant’s lawyer in his habeas corpus appeal missed the appeal deadline by one day. The case is controversial because some believe the inmate in question, Roger Coleman, was innocent of the convicted crime.
Payne v. Tennessee (1991)
Decision: The Court ruled that a death-penalty jury can hear evidence from the victim’s family during the sentencing phase. This case effectively overruled Booth v. Maryland (1987).
Herrera v. California (1993)
Decision: The Court ruled that “actual innocence” is not a constitutional claim in and of itself in a federal habeas corpus claim. This means that a defendant is not entitled to federal court review of his death sentence unless he or she can show an independent constitutional violation that occurred during the original state court trial proceedings.
Romano v. Oklahoma (1994)
Decision: The Court ruled that it was not a constitutional violation for a capital jury to hear evidence that the defendant had received a prior death sentence for another murder.
Buchanan v. Angellone (1998)
