Cite as: 578 U. S. ____ (2016) 1 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

RICHARD DELMER BOYER v. RONALD DAVIS,
 

WARDEN
 

ON PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED 

STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
 

No. 15–8119. Decided May 2, 2016
 

The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied. 

JUSTICE BREYER, dissenting from denial of certiorari. 

Richard Boyer was initially sentenced to death 32 years 

ago. He now asks us to consider whether the Eighth

Amendment allows a State to keep a prisoner incarcerated 

under threat of execution for so long. Boyer’s first trial 

ended with a mistrial after his jury was unable to reach a 

verdict. Brief in Opposition 1. Boyer’s second trial, in 

1984, yielded a conviction and capital sentence that the 

California Supreme Court reversed on the ground that 

police officers had obtained evidence by violating his constitutional rights. Ibid.; see Boyer v. Chappell, 793 F. 3d 

1092, 1094, n. 1 (CA9 2015). Boyer’s third trial took place

in 1992 and took 14 years to wend its way through California’s appellate process. Id., at 1097. In all, 22 years

elapsed between his first trial and our denial of his petition for certiorari on direct appeal. See Boyer v. California, 549 U. S. 1021 (2006). Since then, 10 more years 

have elapsed.

These delays are the result of a system that the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice 

(Commission), an arm of the State of California, see Cal. 

S. Res. 44 (2004), has labeled “dysfunctional.” Report and 

Recommendations on the Administration of the Death 

Penalty in California 6 (2008). Eight years ago, the Commission wrote that more than 10 percent of the capital

sentences issued in California since 1978 had been re-
 

 

 

2 BOYER v. DAVIS 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

versed. See id., at 20. It noted that many prisoners had 

died of natural causes before their sentences were carried 

out, and more California death row inmates had committed suicide than had been executed by the State. Ibid. 

Indeed, only a small, apparently random set of death row 

inmates had been executed. See ibid. A vast and growing

majority remained incarcerated, like Boyer, on death row 

under a threat of execution for ever longer periods of time. 

See id., at 19–20. The Commission added that California’s 

death penalty system was expensive, with its system for 

capital cases costing more than 10 times what the Commission estimated the cost would be for a system that 

substituted the death penalty with life imprisonment

without the possibility of parole. Id., at 83–84. 

Put simply, California’s costly “administration of the

death penalty” likely embodies “three fundamental defects” about which I have previously written: “(1) serious 

unreliability, (2) arbitrariness in application, and 

(3) unconscionably long delays that undermine the death 

penalty’s penological purpose.” Glossip v. Gross, 576 U. S. 

___, ___ (2015) (BREYER, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 2); see 

Lackey v. Texas, 514 U. S. 1045 (1995) (memorandum of 

Stevens, J., respecting denial of certiorari); see also Valle 

v. Florida, 564 U. S. 1067 (2011) (BREYER, J., dissenting 

from denial of stay); Knight v. Florida, 528 U. S. 990, 993 

(1999) (BREYER, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari).

For these reasons, I respectfully dissent from the denial 

of certiorari.