Supreme Court: Juries Must Decide Death Penalty

Reuters / ABC ^

[RCW2001]

Supreme Court: Juries Must Decide Death Penalty

June 24

— By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional on Monday for judges rather than juries to decide whether to sentence a convicted killer to death, a ruling that could affect nearly 800 death-row inmates in nine states.

The high court by a 7-2 vote overturned its 1990 decision and struck down an Arizona capital sentencing law that gives sole responsibility to the judge to make factual findings necessary to sentence a convicted murderer to death.

The ruling followed a landmark decision last week in which the nation's highest court by a 6-3 vote declared that executing the mentally retarded in capital cases violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

In striking down Arizona's law, the ruling could affect the death sentences of nearly 800 inmates, accounting for more than a fifth of the national total, legal experts have said.

Although juries decide guilt or innocence, Arizona requires that a trial judge must decide whether a particular case involved certain "aggravating circumstances" that justify the death sentence.

"We hold that the Sixth Amendment secures to capital defendants, no less than to noncapital defendants, the right to a jury determination of any fact on which the legislature conditions an increase in their maximum punishment," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said from the bench for the majority.

Juries in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Nebraska have no role in sentencing those convicted in capital cases. In Florida, Alabama, Delaware and Indiana, juries make sentencing recommendations, but judges have the final decision.

In the 29 other states with the death penalty and in the federal system, juries determine whether aggravating factors exist and weigh those against any mitigating circumstances.

ARIZONA MURDER CASE

The Supreme Court ruling represented a victory for Timothy Stuart Ring, who was sentenced to death by an Arizona judge for the 1994 killing of an armored van driver in Phoenix.

After the verdict, the jury was discharged. The judge at a separate hearing said Ring deserved the death penalty after finding two aggravating circumstances -- committing the murder for financial gain and carrying it out in an especially heinous way.

His lawyers argued that the Arizona death penalty law was put in doubt by a Supreme Court ruling two years ago that overturned a hate crime sentence imposed on a New Jersey man.

In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that it violates a defendant's constitutional right to a jury trial when a jury is removed from assessing facts that increase the penalties for a defendant.

Ginsburg said the 1990 Supreme Court ruling was overruled to the extent that it allowed a sentencing judge sitting without a jury to find an aggravating circumstance necessary to impose the death penalty.

She said the 2000 Supreme Court decision and the Constitution's Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial required that the aggravating circumstances by found by a jury and not a judge.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor dissented. O'Connor said she would overrule the 2000 decision rather than overruling the 1990 ruling that upheld Arizona's death penalty law.

[PhiKapMom]

Didn't even know that judges could give someone the death penality without a jury. If you are to be judged by a jury of your peers, it only seems right that the jury should be the ones to give the death penalty.

[goldstategop]

The Supreme Court liberals have just secured trials for 800 murderers all on a technicality that was the Court's own fault. They originally gave judges the power to impose a sentences in death penalty cases, now they've decided to entrust it to juries. This is one more decision less based on precedent than it is on the SCOTUS justices' whims on how to administer the death penalty. And who's to say the SCOTUS will not overrule this decision in the future and toss out the death penalty altogether.

[onedoug]

...Then, to be overturned by judges anyway, as most deem themselves of superior intellectual and moral character than the riff-raff of juries. Hmph!

[ned]

The Supreme Court liberals have just secured trials for 800 murderers all on a technicality

I haven't seen the opinion, but this report states that it was 7-2, with only Renquist and O'Connor dissenting. I guess Thomas and Scalia were with the majority here.

[goldstategop]

Yup. I think the SCOTUS should have said this in the first place than creating a technicality that needed to be fixed later. I don't know what Eugene Scalia and Clarence Thomas were thinking when they joined this decision. As it stands the states will now have to retry 800 murderers at considerable expense thanks to the Court's own stupidity. No doubt the states are asking themselves if they have to be wonder where a future change of mind by the SCOTUS down the road will force them into second guessing what policies will acceptable to the Brethen.

[CatoRenasci]

I think this decision is correct. In our system, the jury is the trier of fact, and the whether or not aggravating circumstances are present is a question of fact. Hence the determination should be made by a jury.

[vannrox]

YAY!. THis means that when a Judge overturns a Juries ruling giveing the Death Sentence, that he can't do it. There was a case posted just last week where this happenned. YEY!

[Zon]

What is the keystone of a jury? That it is impartial.

The Supreme Court, by ruling that the jury must define the sentence to be handed down is in alignment with the impartial jury as stated in the Sixth Amendment. To remain consistent the Supreme Court needs to acknowledge that an impartial jury is to judge the facts of the case as well as judge the law as it applies to the case.

For when the Supreme Court acknowledges the fact as supported by the Sixth Amendment that the jury is to judge how the law is to be applied in the life or death of a person, surely the jury must be judging how the law applies to the person.

When a judge fails to inform the jury that it is to be impartial and judge both the facts and the law as it applies to the case is subverting honest justice. Honest justice cannot be attained void of an impartial jury and instead upholds political agenda "justice".

Comments posted to another thread on the same subject:

It makes me wonder why they [Supreme Court] understand some of the Constitution but not other parts. 21

Selective omission to support political ends/agendas.

IMHO anything that takes power away from activist judges = good. 27

Especially good at doing that is the impartial jury. That is why judges in 1893 stopped routinely telling the jury that they were to judge both the facts and the law as it applies to that case.

[Alberta's Child]

I don't know what Eugene Scalia and Clarence Thomas were thinking when they joined this decision. As it stands the states will now have to retry 800 murderers at considerable expense thanks to the Court's own stupidity.

Scalia and Thomas are probably correct on this one, and I don't see how the "expense" of all those retrials should even be a factor in a Supreme Court decision on constitutional issues.