Limitations on Capital Punishment: Proportionality
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Annotations
Limitations on Capital Punishment: Proportionality.— The Court has also considered whether, based on the nature of the underlying offense (or, as explored in the next topic, the capacity of the defendant), the imposition of capital punishment may be inappropriate in particular cases. “[T]he Eighth Amendment’s protection against excessive or cruel and unusual punishments flows from the basic ‘precept of justice that punishment for [a] crime should be graduated and proportioned to [the] offense.’ Whether this requirement has been fulfilled is determined not by the standards that prevailed when the Eighth Amendment was adopted in 1791 but by the norms that ‘currently prevail.’ The Amendment ‘draw[s] its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.’”156 However, the “Court has . . . made it clear that ‘[t]he Eighth Amendment is not a ratchet, whereby a temporary consensus on leniency for a particular crime fixes a permanent constitutional maximum, disabling States from giving effect to altered beliefs and responding to changed social conditions.’”157
In Coker v. Georgia,158 the Court held that the state may not impose a death sentence upon a rapist who did not take a human life. In Kennedy v. Louisiana,159 the Court held that this was true even when the rape victim was a child.160 In Coker the Court announced that the standard under the Eighth Amendment was that punishments are barred when they “are ‘excessive’ in relation to the crime committed. Under Gregg, a punishment is ‘excessive’ and unconstitutional if it (1) makes no measurable contribution to acceptable goals of punishment and hence is nothing more than the purposeless and needless imposition of pain and suffering; or (2) is grossly out of proportion to the severity of the crime. A punishment might fail the test on either ground. Furthermore, these Eighth Amendment judgments should not be, or appear to be, merely the subjective views of individual Justices; judgment should be informed by objective factors to the maximum possible extent. To this end, attention must be given to the public attitudes concerning a particular sentence—history and precedent, legislative attitudes, and the response of juries reflected in their sentencing decisions are to be consulted.”161 Although the Court thought that the death penalty for rape passed the first test (“it may measurably serve the legitimate ends of punishment”),162 it found that it failed the second test (proportionality). Georgia was the sole state providing for death for the rape of an adult woman, and juries in at least nine out of ten cases refused to impose death for rape. Aside from this view of public perception, the Court independently concluded that death is an excessive penalty for an offender who rapes but does not kill; rape cannot compare with murder “in terms of moral depravity and of the injury to the person and to the public.”163 In Kennedy v. Louisiana, the Court found that both “evolving standards of decency” and “a national consensus” preclude the death penalty for a person who rapes a child.164
Applying the Coker analysis, the Court ruled in Enmund v. Florida165 that death is an unconstitutional penalty for felony murder if the defendant did not himself kill, or attempt to take life, or intend that anyone be killed. Although a few more states imposed capital punishment in felony murder cases than had imposed it for rape, nonetheless the weight was heavily against the practice, and the evidence of jury decisions and other indicia of a modern consensus also opposed the death penalty in such circumstances. Moreover, the Court determined that death was a disproportionate sentence for one who neither took life nor intended to do so. Because the death penalty is likely to deter only when murder is the result of premeditation and deliberation, and because the justification of retribution depends upon the degree of the defendant’s culpability, the imposition of death upon one who participates in a crime in which a victim is murdered by one of his confederates and not as a result of his own intention serves neither of the purposes underlying the penalty.166 In Tison v. Arizona, however, the Court eased the “intent to kill” requirement, holding that, in keeping with an “apparent consensus” among the states, “major participation in the felony committed, combined with reckless indifference to human life, is sufficient to satisfy the Enmund culpability requirement.”167
156 Kennedy v. Louisiana, 128 S. Ct. 2641, 2649 (2008) (citations omitted).
157 128 S. Ct. at 2675 (Alito, J., dissenting) (quoting Harmelin v. Michigan, 501 U.S. 957, 990 (1991)).
158 433 U.S. 584 (1977). Justice White’s opinion was joined only by Justices Stewart, Blackmun, and Stevens. Justices Brennan and Marshall concurred on their view that the death penalty is per se invalid, id. at 600, and Justice Powell concurred on a more limited basis than Justice White’s opinion. Id. at 601. Chief Justice Burger and Justice Rehnquist dissented. Id. at 604.
159 128 S. Ct. 2641 (2008). Justice Kennedy’s opinion was joined by Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer. Justice Alito filed a dissenting opinion, in which Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia and Thomas joined.
160 The Court noted, however, that “[o]ur concern here is limited to crimes against individual persons [where a victim’s life is not taken]. We do not address, for example, crimes defining and punishing treason, espionage, terrorism, and drug kingpin activity, which are offenses against the State.” 128 S. Ct. at 2659.
161 433 U.S. at 592.
162 433 U.S. at 593 n.4.
163 433 U.S. at 598.
164 128 S. Ct. 2641, 2649, 2653 (2008). The Court noted that, since Gregg, it had “spent more than 32 years articulating limiting factors that channel the jury’s discretion to avoid the death penalty’s arbitrary imposition in the case of capital murder. 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.” Id. at 2661.
165 458 U.S. 782 (1982). Justice White wrote the opinion of the Court and was joined by Justices Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun, and Stevens. Justice O’Connor, with Justices Powell and Rehnquist and Chief Justice Burger, dissented. Id. at 801. Accord, Cabana v. Bullock, 474 U.S. 376 (1986) (also holding that the proper remedy in a habeas case is to remand for state court determination as to whether Enmund findings have been made).
166 Justice O’Connor thought the evidence of contemporary standards did not support a finding that capital punishment was not appropriate in felony murder situations. 458 U.S. at 816–23. She also objected to finding the penalty disproportionate, first because of the degree of participation of the defendant in the underlying crime, id. at 823–26, but also because the Court appeared to be constitutionalizing a standard of intent required under state law.
167 481 U.S. 137, 158 (1987). The decision was 5–4. Justice O’Connor’s opinion for the Court viewed a “narrow” focus on intent to kill as “a highly unsatisfactory means of definitively distinguishing the most culpable and dangerous of murderers,” id. at 157, and concluded that “reckless disregard for human life” may be held to be “implicit in knowingly engaging in criminal activities known to carry a grave risk of death.” Id.
