Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/14-7955_aplc.pdf
Page Number: 43

Cite as:  576 U. S. ____ (2015) 

3 

THOMAS, J., concurring 

501  U. S.  957,  966  (1991)  (opinion  of  SCALIA,  J.)—merits 
further  comment.    His  conclusion  is  based  on  an  analysis
that  itself  provides  a  powerful  case  against  enforcing  an
imaginary constitutional rule against “arbitrariness.” 

The thrust of JUSTICE BREYER’s argument is that empir-
ical  studies  performed  by  death  penalty  abolitionists
reveal  that  the  assignment  of  death  sentences  does  not
necessarily  correspond  to  the  “egregiousness”  of  the
crimes, but instead appears to be correlated to “arbitrary”
factors,  such  as  the  locality  in  which  the  crime  was  com-
mitted.  Relying on these studies to determine the consti-
tutionality of the death penalty fails to respect the values
implicit in the Constitution’s allocation of decisionmaking
in  this  context.  The  Donohue  study,  on  which  JUSTICE 
BREYER relies most heavily, measured the “egregiousness” 
(or  “deathworthiness”)  of  murders  by  asking  lawyers  to
identify  the  legal  grounds  for  aggravation  in  each  case,
and by asking law students to evaluate written summaries
of the murders and assign “egregiousness” scores based on 
a  rubric  designed  to  capture  and  standardize  their  moral
judgments.    Donohue,  An  Empirical  Evaluation  of  the 
Connecticut Death Penalty System Since 1973, Are There
Unlawful  Racial,  Gender,  and  Geographic  Disparities?  11
J.  of  Empirical  Legal  Studies  637,  644–645  (2014).    This 
exercise  in  some  ways  approximates  the  function  per-
formed  by  jurors,  but  there  is  at  least  one  critical  differ-
ence: The law students make their moral judgments based 
on  written  summaries—they  do  not  sit  through  hours, 
days, or weeks of evidence detailing the crime; they do not 
have an opportunity to assess the credibility of witnesses, 
to  see  the  remorse  of  the  defendant,  to  feel  the  impact  of
the  crime  on  the  victim’s  family;  they  do  not  bear  the 
burden  of  deciding  the  fate  of  another  human  being;  and
they  are  not  drawn  from  the  community  whose  sense  of 
security and justice may have been torn asunder by an act 
of  callous  disregard  for  human  life.  They  are  like  appel-