Opinion ID: 1394902
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Post-Furman Death Penalty Jurisprudence Also Outlaws Getsy Death Sentence

Text: Modern post- Furman Eighth Amendment proportionality analysis dramatically reinforces the ancient rule's policy against unequal or disproportionate punishments in connection with the same criminal event. The post- Furman line of Eighth Amendment death penalty cases based on evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society [1] emphasize the need to eliminate the kind of grossly disproportionate, arbitrary death sentences found in this case. As I will explain below, the Supreme Court's Enmund Eighth Amendment proportionality case reinforces the Supreme Court's adoption of the ancient rule in the Morrison due process case. The modern, post- Furman mode of death penalty analysis  based on the more humane set of evolving standards of decency that now limit the death penalty  reinforces the ancient rule's natural law requirements of rationality and symmetry. Therefore, the more formalist, originalist judge and the more pragmatic, living-constitution judge should be able to agree on the outcome of this case. But my brothers and sisters in the majority are unable to open their minds to a consideration of either mode of analysis. In Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972), the Supreme Court, in a one paragraph per curiam opinion, held that the death penalty was unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. Id. at 239-40, 92 S.Ct. 2726. The concurring opinions that followed explained that the death penalty was being imposed so discriminatorily, id. at 240, 92 S.Ct. 2726 (Douglas, J., concurring), and so wantonly and freakishly, id. at 306, 92 S.Ct. 2726 (Stewart, J., concurring), that any given death sentence was unconstitutionally cruel and unusual. Indeed, the death sentences examined by the Supreme Court in Furman were cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual. For, of all the people convicted of [capital crimes], many just as reprehensible as these, the petitioners [in Furman were] among a capriciously selected random handful upon whom the sentence of death ha[d] in fact been imposed. Id. at 309-10, 92 S.Ct. 2726 (Stewart, J., concurring). Thus, Furman established that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments cannot tolerate the infliction of a sentence of death under legal systems that permit this penalty to be arbitrarily, capriciously and inconsistently imposed. Id. at 310, 92 S.Ct. 2726; Spaziano v. Florida, 468 U.S. 447, 460, 104 S.Ct. 3154, 82 L.Ed.2d 340 (1984) ( Furman established that [i]f a State has determined that death should be an available penalty for certain crimes, then it must administer that penalty in a way that can rationally distinguish between those individuals for whom death is an appropriate sanction and those for whom it is not.); Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U.S. 420, 428, 100 S.Ct. 1759, 64 L.Ed.2d 398 (1980) ( Furman established that if a State wishes to authorize capital punishment it has a constitutional responsibility to . . . apply its law in a manner that avoids the arbitrary and capricious infliction of the death penalty.). It is now also well settled that the penalty of death is different in kind from any other punishment imposed under our system of justice. From the point of view of the defendant, it is different both in its severity and its finality. From the point of view of society, the action of the sovereign in taking the life of one of its citizens also differs dramatically from any other legitimate state action. Gardner v. Florida, 430 U.S. 349, 357, 97 S.Ct. 1197, 51 L.Ed.2d 393 (1977). The qualitative difference of death from all other punishments requires a correspondingly greater need for reliability, consistency, and fairness in capital sentencing decisions. It is of vital importance to the defendant and to the community that any decision to impose the death sentence be, and appear to be, based on reason rather than caprice or emotion. Gardner, 430 U.S. at 357, 97 S.Ct. 1197. Accordingly, the courts must carefully scrutinize sentencing decisions to minimize the risk that the penalty will be imposed in error or in an arbitrary and capricious manner. There must be a valid penological reason for choosing from among the many criminal defendants the few who are sentenced to death. Spaziano, 468 U.S. at 460 n. 7, 104 S.Ct. 3154. The death-is-different principle can only be observed here by holding that the inconsistent and disproportionate sentences in the same case violate the clearly established Furman arbitrariness principle and hence the Eighth Amendment. In evaluating whether a death sentence is arbitrary, the Supreme Court has directed courts to evaluate a defendant's culpability both individually and in terms of the sentences of codefendants and accomplices in the same case. Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S. 782, 788, 798, 102 S.Ct. 3368, 73 L.Ed.2d 1140 (1982). In Enmund, the Supreme Court found a violation of the Eighth Amendment when defendants with plainly different culpability received the same capital sentence. The Court required proportionality comparison with others participating in the same crime: Enmund did not kill or intend to kill and thus his culpability is plainly different from that of the robbers who killed; yet the State treated them alike and attributed to Enmund the culpability of those who killed the Kerseys. This was impermissible under the Eighth Amendment. Id. at 798, 102 S.Ct. 3368. The instant case presents the situation where the defendant with the lesser culpability received the harsher sentence  the death penalty. Numerous state courts have applied the Enmund principle to require reasonable symmetry between culpability and the sentencing of codefendants. See, e.g., People v. Kliner, 185 Ill.2d 81, 235 Ill.Dec. 667, 705 N.E.2d 850, 897 (1998) ([S]imilarly situated codefendants should not be given arbitrarily or unreasonably disparate sentences.); Larzelere v. State, 676 So.2d 394, 406 (Fla.1996) (When a codefendant . . . is equally as culpable or more culpable than the defendant, disparate treatment of the codefendant may render the defendant's punishment disproportionate.); Hall v. State, 241 Ga. 252, 244 S.E.2d 833, 839 (1978) (We find that . . . the death sentence, imposed on Hall for the same crime in which the co-defendant triggerman received a life sentence, is disproportionate.). Similarly, the Federal Death Penalty Act recognizes that a comparison of the sentences received by codefendants is required. See 18 U.S.C. § 3592(a)(4) (listing as a mitigating factor the lack of death sentences for equally or more culpable codefendants). The principle requiring rational, proportionate punishment is the essence of the rule of law. It has deep roots in our cultural and biological heritage. Aristotle observed in the Nicomachean Ethics that basic notions of justice require treating like cases alike: If, then, the unjust is unequal, the just is equal, as all men suppose it to be, even apart from argument. . . . This, then, is what the just is  the proportional; the unjust is what violates the proportion. . . . [I]t is by proportionate requital that the city holds together. Aristotle, Ethica Nichomachea, in The Works of Aristotle V.3.1131 a-113 1b, V.5.1132b (W.D. Ross ed. & trans.1954). In a recent article, Judge Morris Hoffman and Timothy Goldsmith, a distinguished Yale biologist, make this point: [I]t is not surprising that collectively we struggle to balance the form and amount of punishment that is appropriate, a struggle that lies at the heart of what we mean by justice.. . . . The two faces of justice  to deal firmly with transgressors, but not too harshly  reflect an intrinsic human sense of fairness and are important to the political ideal of equality. When Aristotle commands that like cases be treated alike, he is touching both on the personal notion that none of us wants to be punished more than anyone else (and therefore on our self-interest) and on the social notion that none of us wants to punish others more than they deserve (and therefore on the equilibrium between our inclination to punish and our intuitions about fairness and sympathy). Morris B. Hoffman & Timothy H. Goldsmith, The Biological Roots of Punishment, 1 Ohio St. J.Crim. L. 627, 638-39 (2004). In another instance of obfuscation, the majority argues that the Supreme Court's decision in Pulley v. Harris, 465 U.S. 37, 104 S.Ct. 871, 79 L.Ed.2d 29 (1984), precludes our consideration of the comparative proportionality of sentences in this case. Pulley's holding has nothing to do with this case. Pulley simply held that the Eighth Amendment does not require a state supreme court to systematically review the comparative proportionality of sentences in other cases unrelated to the case at hand. Id. at 50-51. Pulley concerned whether the Eighth Amendment mandates in every case a proportionality review of a particular death sentence in comparison with the punishment imposed on others for the same general type of crime in unrelated cases. Our holding neither contradicts this rule nor requires systematic comparative proportionality review of unrelated cases. Instead, we simply adhere to the clearly established, common sense principle of Enmund that, in a capital case with respect to the very same crime stemming from the very same facts, the Eighth Amendment does not permit the codefendant with less culpability to receive the death penalty when the codefendant with greater culpability receives a lesser sentence. The majority's view is in conflict with the holding of Enmund and allows the less culpable participant in the same criminal episode to receive the death penalty when the more culpable participant receives the lesser sentence. Thus both the ancient rule invalidating inconsistent conspiracy verdicts and the modern rule directly phrased in terms of consistency, rationality and proportionality require the conclusion that Getsy's death verdict should be set aside.