Opinion ID: 1664341
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Need for Incapacitation

Text: The appellant next argues that the life without parole instruction should have been given because death is in excess of that reasonably needed for incapacitation of the offender. Neither our statutes nor our case law has ever rested the overall philosophical justification for the death penalty upon the need for incapacitation. Rather, it is well recognized that the only two penological goals served by capital punishment are retribution and general deterrence of crime. See State v. Black, 815 S.W.2d 166, 190 (Tenn.1991); see also State v. Middlebrooks, 840 S.W.2d 317, 340 (Tenn.1992) (citing Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. at 183, 96 S.Ct. 2909). In fact, our research has uncovered no Tennessee case in which incapacitation has even been cited as a legitimate penological goal supporting the death penalty, no doubt for the very reasons cited by the appellant. In response, the appellant argues that even though incapacitation may not be a legitimate goal of capital punishment generally, social science data indicate that it is reasonably likely that jurors return death sentences solely to prevent a defendant's release into the community. However, the appellant provides no support for this assertion, and even if taken as true, we see no indication from the record of this case that the appellant was sentenced to death by the jury, in whole or in part, for incapacitative reasons. The district attorney did not argue that the appellant needed to be incapacitated or removed from society, and the judge certainly gave no such instruction allowing incapacitation to be considered. Accordingly, we conclude that the appellant was not entitled to a life without parole instruction on the basis that juries impose death for reasons of incapacitation.