While we are not going to be able to settle this dispute in this course, we will look at some of the legal issues surrounding the death penalty. The first issue we deal with is the use of victim impact statements at capital sentencing. Victim impact statements are statements made or testimony given by the family of the victim to the sentencer. They include information about how the death of the victim has impacted them and other members of the family or community. As illustrated in Payne , they are often very moving and heart wrenching.
Some people argue that they are also unconstitutional.
When dealing with victim impact statements there are two plausible ways of framing the issue involved. One way is to ask whether or not who the murder victim is should matter in determining the sentence for the murderer. The other is to ask whether it is proper to prevent the victim's family from having some input into the process that determines what will happen to the person who killed their loved one. As shown in Payne , reconciling these two relevant issues can be quite troubling and difficult. The Court held that the statistics contained in the Baldus study may show racial disparity, but they did not show that the government acted with a discriminatory purpose in dealing with capital punishment.