Opinion ID: 2449451
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Arbitrariness and capriciousness of the penalty.

Text: I am convinced that it is inevitable that the death penalty will be applied capriciously and arbitrarily. [5] Again, I quote approvingly from the opinion of the Massachusetts court in Watson : We know that, each year during the decades of the 1930s through the 1960s, thousands of persons were convicted of criminal homicides in states where death was an authorized punishment for those crimes. However, death was inflicted in only a minute fraction of those cases. `When a country of over 200 million people inflicts an unusually severe punishment no more than fifty times a year, the inference is strong that the punishment is not regularly and fairly applied. To dispel it would indeed require a clear showing of nonarbitrary infliction.' Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 293 [92 S.Ct. 2726, 2754, 33 L.Ed.2d 346] (1972) (Brennan, J., concurring). No rational basis can be offered to explain why the few were executed and many others were not. It cannot be said that only the `worst' offenders were executed. All murderers are extreme offenders. Fine distinctions, designed to select a very few from the many, are inescapably capricious when applied to murders and murderers. As a consequence, the death penalty is `wantonly and . .. freakishly' inflicted. Furman v. Georgia, supra, at 310 [92 S.Ct. at 2763] (Stewart, J., concurring). Watson, supra, 411 N.E.2d at 1283-84. I also agree with the Massachusetts court that while unguided jury discretion is intolerable, statutory guidelines cannot cure that uncertainty entirely; the subtle distinctions in the elements of crimes can be virtually impossible to define with certainty. As Mr. Justice Harlan wrote in McGautha v. California, 402 U.S. 183, 204, 91 S.Ct. 1454, 1465, 28 L.Ed.2d 711 (1971): `Those who have come to grips with the hard task of actually attempting to draft means of channeling capital sentencing discretion have confirmed the lesson taught by ... history. .. . To identify before the fact those characteristics of criminal homicides and their perpetrators which call for the death penalty, and to express these characteristics in language which can be fairly understood and applied by the sentencing authority, appear to be tasks which are beyond present human ability.' A basic criterion, for example, in `channeling' the death penalty decision lies in the choice between first and second degree murder. Mr. Justice Cardozo said of the distinction between degrees of murder, that it is `so obscure that no jury hearing it for the first time can fairly be expected to assimilate and understand it. I am not at all sure that I understand it myself after trying to apply it for many years and after diligent study of what has been written in the books. Upon the basis of this fine distinction with its obscure and mystifying psychology, scores of men have gone to their death.' Cardozo, What Medicine Can Do For Law, in Law & Literature 100-101 (1931). Watson, supra, 411 N.E.2d at 1284. I think the Massachusetts court is correct in its conclusion that even if guidelines could cure the arbitrariness in the jury's determination of the crime and the sentence, the death penalty still would be arbitrarily inflicted because of the unguided, discretionary powers exercised by others in the judicial process: Power to decide rests not only in juries but in police officers, prosecutors, defense counsel, and trial judges. (Footnote omitted.) [6] In the totality of the process, most life or death decisions will be made by these officials, unguided and uncurbed by statutory standards. In any given case, decisions rest upon such considerations as the level of public outcry.  Furman stands indifferent to the exercise of the prosecutor's `untrammeled discretion.' For reasons which may be valid in the context of his duties, but which do not assist evenhandedness, the prosecutor in a homicide case may forego a first degree murder indictment and seek an indictment for second degree murder or a lesser charge. Also, in a first degree murder case, perhaps pursuant to plea bargaining, the prosecutor may in his uncurbed discretion nol prosse that part of the indictment which charges murder in the first degree. Similarly, the judge may dismiss the first degree murder charge, in his sole discretion, pursuant to accepting a plea of guilty to a lesser offense. [7] We do not think that our comments denigrate the general administration of criminal justice, or the good will of those who administer the system. It can be said that these officials must necessarily have these discretionary powers in the exercise of most of their functions. Nevertheless, the criminal justice system allows chance and caprice to continue to influence sentencing, and we are here dealing with the decisions as to who shall live and who shall die. With regard to the death penalty, such chance and caprice are unconstitutional under art. 26... . Watson, supra, 411 N.E.2d at 1285 (footnote omitted). We have a response to those who might argue that our comments as to arbitrariness and discrimination apply as well to all punishments, not merely to the death penalty. While other forms of punishment may also be arbitrary in some measure, the death penalty requires special scrutiny for constitutionality. `The penalty of death differs from all other forms of criminal punishment, not in degree but in kind.' Furman, supra, 408 U.S. at 306, 92 S.Ct. at 2760. (Stewart, J., concurring). Accord, Commonwealth v. O'Neal, 369 Mass. 242, 249, 339 N.E.2d 676 (Tauro, C.J., concurring). `[T]he penalty of death is qualitatively different from a sentence of imprisonment, however long. Death, in its finality, differs more from life imprisonment than a 100-year prison term differs from one of only a year or two.' Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280, 305, 96 S.Ct. 2978, 2991, 49 L.Ed.2d 944 (1976). Our society's failure to bring evenhandedness to the entire spectrum of criminal punishment calls for great and persistent effort toward improvement. However, we are not required to abandon all such punishments on constitutional grounds. At the same time, the supreme punishment of death, inflicted as it is by chance and caprice, may not stand. Id. 411 N.E.2d at 1286. See also Furman v. Georgia, supra, 408 U.S. at 286-300 and 287 n. 34, 92 S.Ct. at 2750-2757 and 2751 n. 34 (Brennan, J., concurring); Lockett v. Ohio, supra, 438 U.S. at 604-05, 98 S.Ct. at 2964-65 (opinion of Burger, C.J.). I would apply the foregoing reasoning to the Tennessee death penalty statute and hold that is is a cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by Article I, Section 16, of the Tennessee Constitution because, inevitably, it is arbitrarily and capriciously imposed. [8]