Arbitrary and Capricious
Subtitle: The Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the Death Penalty
Publisher: Praeger Publishers; Praeger
Published: June 30, 2003
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 264
ISBN-13: 9780275975876
Subjects: Constitutional & administrative law; Constitutional; Criminal Law - General; Law / Constitutional; Legal Reference / Law Profession; Capital punishment; Due process of law; Equality before the law; History; United States; Law
First sentence: The Supreme Court began to scrutinize the constitutionality of the death penalty in 1878 in Wilkerson v. Utah.
Description: "Nearly 100 influential Supreme Court capital punishment-related cases from 1878-2002 are examined, beginning with Wilkerson v. Utah, which question not the legitimacy of capital punishment, but the methods of execution. Over time, focus shifted from the constitutionality of certain methods to the fairness of who was being sentenced for capital crimes - and why. The watershed 1972 ruling Furman v. Georgia reversed the Court's stand on capital punishment, holding that the arbitrary and capricious imposition of the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment, and therefore unconstitutional.

Furman clarified that any new death penalty legislation must contain sentencing procedures that avoid the arbitrary infliction of a life-ending verdict, which led to the current complex tangle of issues surrounding the death penalty and its constitutional viability."--Jacket.