Number: RL33008
Title: Capital Punishment: A Legal Overview Including the Supreme Court Decisions of the 2004-2005 Term
Authors: Paul Starett Wallace, Jr., American Law Division 
Abstract: Executions declined through the 1950s and 1960s and ceased after 1967, pending definitive Supreme Court decisions. This interval ended only after States altered their laws in response to the 1972 Supreme Court decision in Furman v. Georgia, a 5-4 decision deciding that the death penalty, as imposed under existing law, constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. In Furman, the Court ruled that the death penalty was arbitrarily and capriciously applied under existing law based on the unlimited discretion accorded to sentencing authorities in capital trials. In response, States began to revise their statutes to modify the discretion given to sentencing authorities. These statutes went untested until the Court decided Gregg v. Georgia in 1976 in which it found in a 7-2 decision, that the death penalty did not per se violate the Eighth Amendment. The Gregg decision allowed States to establish the death penalty under guidelines that excluded the arbitrariness of sentencing in capital cases. As a result, statutory safeguards were developed to make sentencing more just and fair. Some of the changes included (1) in death penalty cases, the determination of guilt or innocence must be decided separately from hearings in which sentences of life imprisonment or death are decided; (2) the court must consider aggravating and mitigating circumstances in relationship to the crime and the defendant; and (3) the death sentence must be subject to review by the highest State court of appeals to make sure that the penalty is in proportion to the seriousness or gravity of the offense and is imposed even-handedly under State law. Like the statutory safeguards, the capital cases decided by the Court in the 2004-5 term also reflect its sentiment that if there is going to be a death penalty, the process must be fair.
Pages: 30
Date: July 22, 2005