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Page Number: 60.0

10 

GLOSSIP v. GROSS 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

be) unconstitutional if “inflicted in an arbitrary and capri­
cious  manner.”  Gregg,  428  U. S.,  at  188  (joint  opinion  of 
Stewart,  Powell,  and  Stevens,  JJ.);  see  also  id.,  at  189 
(“[W]here  discretion  is  afforded  a  sentencing  body  on  a
matter so grave as the determination of whether a human
life  should  be  taken  or  spared,  that  discretion  must  be 
suitably directed and limited so as to minimize the risk of
wholly  arbitrary  and  capricious  action”);  Godfrey  v.  Geor­
gia, 446 U. S. 420, 428 (1980) (plurality opinion) (similar).
The Court has consequently sought to make the applica­
tion  of  the  death  penalty  less  arbitrary  by  restricting  its 
use to those whom Justice Souter called “ ‘the worst of the 
worst.’ ”    Kansas  v.  Marsh,  548  U. S.,  at  206  (dissenting 
opinion);  see  also  Roper  v.  Simmons,  543  U. S.  551,  568 
(2005)  (“Capital  punishment  must  be  limited  to  those
offenders who commit a narrow category of the most seri­
ous crimes and whose extreme culpability makes them the 
most  deserving  of  execution”  (internal  quotation  marks 
omitted)); Kennedy v. Louisiana, 554 U. S. 407, 420 (2008) 
(citing Roper, supra, at 568). 
  Despite the Gregg Court’s hope for fair administration of
the death penalty, 40 years of further experience make it 
increasingly clear that the death penalty is imposed arbi­
trarily,  i.e.,  without  the  “reasonable  consistency”  legally 
necessary  to  reconcile  its  use  with  the  Constitution’s
commands.  Eddings  v.  Oklahoma,  455  U. S.  104,  112 
(1982).

Thorough  studies  of  death  penalty  sentences  support 
this conclusion.  A recent study, for example, examined all 
death  penalty  sentences  imposed  between  1973  and  2007
in Connecticut, a State that abolished the death penalty in
2012.  Donohue, An Empirical Evaluation of the Connecti­
cut Death Penalty System Since 1973: Are There Unlawful
Racial, Gender, and Geographic Disparities? 11 J. Empiri­
cal  Legal  Studies  637  (2014).    The  study  reviewed  treat­
ment of all homicide defendants.  It found 205 instances in