U.S. Supreme Court

BOOTH v. MARYLAND

CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF GEORGIA

Argued March 1, 2006
Decided March 15, 2006

JUSTICE REKHI delivered the opinion of the Court, with whom CHIEF JUSTICE HANSON joins, and with whom Justice BOOCH joins in all but part III. Justice BOOCH writes a dissenting opinion.

I

The Supreme Court has gone to great lengths to establish procedural safeguards within capital punishment sentencing to ensure jury impartiality. In Caldwell vs Mississipi, Justice O’Connor argued “a death sentence must be struck down when the circumstances under which it has been imposed "creat[e] an unacceptable risk that `the death penalty [may have been] meted out arbitrarily or capriciously' or through `whim or mistake.”[1] In Gregg vs Georgia, the Supreme Court codified strict standards and procedures for death penalty cases, instituting a bi-furcated trial with different proceedings to determine the guilt and sentence of the defendant. During the latter proceeding, the Supreme Court also established guidelines to aid juries in their assessment of the defendant’s culpability—that is, the Supreme Court enumerated a variety of mitigating factors pertaining to the defendant’s life experiences that ought to be considered in the jury’s decision. Justice Brennan underscored the importance of these safeguards in Kemp vs McCleskey:

“A concern for arbitrariness focuses on the rationality of the system as a whole, and that a system that features a significant probability that sentencing decisions are influenced by impermissible considerations cannot be regarded as rational… a constitutional violation is established if a plaintiff demonstrates a "pattern of arbitrary and capricious sentencing.”[2]

The admission of victim impact statements undermines the defendant’s right to fairness in judicial proceedings guaranteed by the Constitution.

The victim impact statements are not integral to an assessment of the defendant’s culpability or character—rather, they run the risk of distorting the jury’s reasoning during the sentencing phase of the trial. The utility of the victim impact statements has yet to be established; any risk that they detract from evaluating the defendant as a “uniquely human being” warrants their removal from consideration.[3] Past precedent, namely Zant vs Stephens and Eddings vs Oklahoma, establishes the necessity for the jury to make individualized determinations in their decision. The victim impact statements divert the focus in sentencing proceedings from the suspect’s moral character to the emotional impact on the victim’s loved ones. This diversion places undue negative attention on the defendant, who was not likely to have known the victims’ family.

The defendant ought to be held accountable for the death of the victim alone, not for impacts on unknown persons in the victim’s community. In People vs Levitt, the Supreme Court ruled:

A defendant’s level of culpability depends not on fortuitous circumstances such as the composition of his victim’s family, but on circumstances over which he had control. A defendant may choose, or decline, to premeditate, to act callously, to attack a vulnerable victim, to commit a crime while on probation…In contrast, the fact that a victim’s family is irredeemably bereaved can be attributable to no act of will of the defendant other than his commission of homicide in the first place. Such bereavement is relevant to damages in a civil action, but it has no relationship to the proper purposes of sentencing in a criminal case[4]

The victim impact statement and their concomitant emotional zeal have the capacity to sway the jury. The New York Times reports on the victim’s family statements, which emerged after Judge Alfred A. Delucchi, delivered Scott Peterson the death sentence:

In a wrenching display toward the end of the hearing, Ms. Peterson's mother, Sharon Rocha, assumed the roles of her daughter and the grandchild that was never born, pleading aloud in a trembling voice for ''Daddy'' not to kill ''Mommy and me.'' ''Daddy, why are you killing us?'' Ms. Rocha said, weeping as she spoke on behalf of the 8-month-old fetus, which was to be named Conner. ''I know you will love me.''[5]

These victim impact statements were not critical to the trial—they revealed the great loss that the victim’s family suffers from. However, in this case, the jury was able to assess Peterson’s guilt and sentence him to death even in the absence of the victim impact statements.

II

Victim statements encourage juries to value the life of a dead person differently from case to case: the lives of victims, who played a vital role in their community or who are part of a large family, will be valued more than the victims, who have been sole providers, drug dealers, or of poor socio-economic status. Racism within jury decision-making also devalues the lives of many victims. The Constitution states, “All men were created equal.” The racist application of death sentencing devalues the lives of the non-White victims, who died without receiving recourse comparable to that of White victims.

The victim’s character should not be factored into the jury’s decision calculus. In Kemp vs McCleskey, Justice Brennan ruled that the court must outlaw factors that are “inconsistent with the reasoned decisionmaking we require in capital cases and as such create the likelihood that the sentence of death would be imposed in an arbitrary and capricious manner.”[6] Citing the Supreme Court’s ruling in Gregg vs Georgia, Brennan further denounced arbitrary application of the death penalty as cruel and unusual punishment, a violation of a defendant’s constitutional rights. In diverting the focus of the case from the defendant’s moral character to the victim’s character and race, the Court undermines the defendant’s access to an unbiased judicial proceeding. Consideration of the victim’s race, gender, age, and socio-economic status has the potential to undermine the jury’s ability to objectively assess particulars of the defendant’s case.

Assessment of the victim’s status uniquely encourages racial discrimination. In Kemp vs McCleskey, the defendant claimed that the Georgia capital sentencing process was administered in a racially discriminatory manner that violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. He offered the Baldus study, a statistical study based on over two thousand murder cases that occurred in Georgia during the 1970s, to demonstrate the disproportionate sentencing of defendants to death based on the victim's race. Evaluating data relating to the victim's race, the defendant's race, and the various combinations of such persons' races, the study concluded that black defendants who murdered white victims have the greatest likelihood of receiving the death penalty. “Murder defendants in Georgia with white victims are more than four times as likely to receive the death sentence as are defendants with black victims.” [7] In contrast, the study indicated that six of eleven defendants would not have received the death penalty if they had killed black victims. Twenty of thirty-four defendants, who had killed a police officer as McCleskey had, would not have received the death penalty if the police officers had been black. “Finally, the assessment would not be complete without the information that cases involving black defendants and white victims are more likely to result in a death sentence than cases featuring any other racial combination of defendant and victim.” [8] The racial prejudice revealed by the Baldus Study exemplifies the danger of admitting information regarding the victim’s identity and character. Race has the potential to become the determinant of defendants’ sentences. The use of materials that encourage capricious and racist sentencing, namely victim impact statements, ought to be prohibited.

III

Further, the Court takes this case as an opportunity to reject the death penalty in its entirety. We can no longer support any procedure that would give juries the discretion to deliver a death sentence. In Woodson vs North Carolina, the Supreme Court ruled, “death is different because it is a punishment different from all other sanctions.” In Furman vs Georgia, Justice Marshall argues “Death is irrevocable; life imprisonment is not. Death, of course, makes rehabilitation impossible; life imprisonment does not.”[9] Furthermore, capital punishment violates the eighth amendment of the Declaration of Rights, which outlaws the infliction of “cruel and unusual punishment.” In his decision in Furman, Marshall indicates that the founders equated capital punishment with cruel punishment, stating “There is evidence in the debates of the various state conventions that were called upon to ratify the Constitution of great concern for the omission of any prohibition against torture or other cruel punishments.”[10] Additionally, the death penalty “serves no valid legislative purpose” as it has not empirically deterred criminals from violating the law.

Admittedly, there are some persons who would rather die than languish in prison for a lifetime. But, whether or not they should be able to choose death as an alternative is a far different question from that presented here - i. e., whether the State can impose death as a punishment.[11]

Additionally, the State has the responsibility to seek redress against those who have broken its laws, not to use retribution to justify punishment at all cost. Because death is irrevocable, capital punishment precludes the possibility of rehabilitation. Jurisprudence has accepted isolation of dangerous persons and rehabilitation as proper goals of punishment, while condemning retaliation, vengeance, and retribution as illegitimate forms of recourse. Adhering to the view that the death penalty is in all circumstances cruel and unusual punishment forbidden by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, we vacate the decision below insofar as it left undisturbed the death sentence imposed in this case.

JUSTICE BOOCH dissenting on part III

I feel it is out of line for this court to strike down the death penalty when the case before us does not raise that question. The use of capitol punishment is a strong tradition in this nation that has been affirmed throughout the years as an appropriate response to the most aggravated forms of murder committed by criminals. State execution itself is neither unnecessarily cruel nor unusual, and the 8th amendment certainly does not strike it down (as found in Stanford v Kentucky). While questions surrounding the fairness of its application are appropriate to raise, and we may strike down practices that inherently create an unfair application of the punishment (such as the victim impact statements in question), that does not lead to this court having the cause to find the death penalty unconstitutional.

[3] Woodson vs North Carolina established the criteria that the defendant ought to be treated as a “uniquely human being”

[11]Justice Marshall in Furman vs Georgia 408 U.S. 238 p. , 346