Opinion ID: 780117
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Constitutionality of the Federal Death Penalty Act

Text: 33 The District Court held that the FDPA is facially unconstitutional. 8 Questions of constitutional interpretation are reviewed de novo. See, e.g., United States v. King, 276 F.3d 109, 111(2d Cir.2002) (The district court's dismissal of the indictment raises questions of constitutional interpretation, and thus we review the district court's decision de novo. ); United States v. Cruz-Flores, 56 F.3d 461, 463 (2d Cir.1995) (We review the district court's application of constitutional due process standards de novo.). 34 In holding that the FDPA violates the Constitution, the District Court relied upon the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. 9 But three separate provisions in the Fifth Amendment — including the Due Process Clause itself — expressly contemplate the existence of capital punishment: 35 No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury ... nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb ... nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.... 36 U.S. Const. amend. V (emphasis added). Accordingly, it is apparent from the text of the Constitution itself that the existence of capital punishment was accepted by the Framers. Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 177, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976) (joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.). 37 While admitting that the Framers assume[d] the existence of the death penalty, Quinones II, 205 F.Supp.2d at 259, the District Court declared that it is settled law that the Fifth Amendment's broad guarantee of `due process' must be interpreted in light of evolving standards of fairness and ordered liberty, id. at 260. Applying this standard, it found that the death penalty no longer comports with due process of law because of recent evidence demonstrating the frequency with which innocent people are convicted and sentenced to death. 38 The District Court erred in looking to evolving standards in conducting its due process analysis: It is the Eighth Amendment — not the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment — that requires consideration of evolving standards in determining whether a particular punishment conforms to principles of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society. Hudson v. McMillian, 503 U.S. 1, 8, 112 S.Ct. 995, 117 L.Ed.2d 156 (1992) (quoting Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. 337, 346, 101 S.Ct. 2392, 69 L.Ed.2d 59 (1981)) (quoting Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86, 101, 78 S.Ct. 590, 2 L.Ed.2d 630 (1958) (plurality opinion)); see also Gregg, 428 U.S. at 173, 96 S.Ct. 2909 (quoting Trop, 356 U.S. at 101, 78 S.Ct. 590). And the Supreme Court expressly held in Gregg that, to the extent our standards of decency have evolved since the enactment of the Constitution, they still permit punishment by death for certain heinous crimes such as murder. Id. at 186-87, 96 S.Ct. 2909. 10 39 While the Supreme Court has held that the concept of due process of law is not final and fixed, Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165, 170, 72 S.Ct. 205, 96 L.Ed. 183 (1952), it has also made it clear that a criminal law violates the constitutional command of the Due Process Clause only if it offends some principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental. Id. at 169, 72 S.Ct. 205 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); see also, e.g., Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 720-21, 117 S.Ct. 2258, 138 L.Ed.2d 772 (1997); Medina v. California, 505 U.S. 437, 445, 112 S.Ct. 2572, 120 L.Ed.2d 353 (1992); Schad v. Arizona, 501 U.S. 624, 642, 111 S.Ct. 2491, 115 L.Ed.2d 555 (1991); United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 751, 107 S.Ct. 2095, 95 L.Ed.2d 697 (1987); Patterson v. New York, 432 U.S. 197, 201-02, 97 S.Ct. 2319, 53 L.Ed.2d 281 (1977); Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U.S. 97, 105, 54 S.Ct. 330, 78 L.Ed. 674 (1934), overruled on other grounds by Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1, 84 S.Ct. 1489, 12 L.Ed.2d 653 (1964). While the District Court failed to mention this standard expressly, it held that an innocent person sentenced to death has a liberty interest in the opportunity to seek exoneration during the course of his or her natural life and implied that this liberty interest amounts to a fundamental right. Quinones II, 205 F.Supp.2d at 261, 268 (recognizing the right of an innocent person not to be deprived, by execution, of the opportunity to demonstrate his innocence and holding that the Federal Death Penalty Act, by cutting off the opportunity for exoneration, denies due process...). 40 Despite suggestions by the District Court and the defendants that they are embracing a novel challenge to the constitutionality of capital punishment, the idea that a convicted person has a right to the continued opportunity for exoneration during the course of his natural life is not new: Because this proposition has been presented to the Supreme Court on a number of occasions and repeatedly rejected by the Court, we hold that the continued opportunity to exonerate oneself throughout the natural course of one's life is not a right so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental. Rochin, 342 U.S. at 171-72, 72 S.Ct. 205. 41 Our primary guide in determining whether the principle in question is fundamental is, of course, historical practice, Montana v. Egelhoff, 518 U.S. 37, 43-44, 116 S.Ct. 2013, 135 L.Ed.2d 361 (1996) (plurality opinion) (citing Medina, 505 U.S. at 446, 112 S.Ct. 2572). The majority of states as well as the federal government have provided for capital punishment for over two hundred years. 11 The defendants try to belittle the significance of this fact by arguing that courts have never before considered the constitutional implications of the execution of innocent defendants in light of new evidence that this is a problem of crisis proportions. Defendants' Br. at 15. But the argument that innocent people may be executed — in small or large numbers — is not new; it has been central to the centuries-old debate over both the wisdom and the constitutionality of capital punishment, and binding precedents of the Supreme Court prevent us from finding capital punishment unconstitutional based solely on a statistical or theoretical possibility that a defendant might be innocent. 42 Even before the founding of our country, European nations from which we derived our laws recognized that capital punishment inherently entails a risk that innocent people will be executed. See generally Hugo Adam Bedau & Michael L. Radelet, Miscarriages of Justice in Potentially Capital Cases, 40 Stan. L.Rev. 21, 22 (1987). In the mid-1770s, the British scholar Jeremy Bentham argued that capital punishment differs from all other punishments because [f]or death, there is no remedy. Jeremy Bentham, The Rationale of Punishment 186 (Robert Hewarded., 1830) (circa 1775). Bentham recognized that there could be no system of penal procedure which could insure the Judge from being misled by false evidence or the fallibility of his own judgment, id. at 187, and he argued that execution prevents the oppressed [from meeting] with some fortunate event by which his innocence may be proved, id. at 189. 43 In the United States, opponents of capital punishment began to argue that innocent people were often executed by mistake as early as the mid-Nineteenth Century. Stuart Banner, The Death Penalty: An American History 121 (2002). These abolitionists maintained that [the] government ought to abandon capital punishment in general because so many innocent people were going to their deaths on the gallows. Id. at 121-22. Since that time, there has been a prodigious scholarly debate over whether the likelihood that innocent people will be executed justifies abolition of the death penalty. See, e.g., Edwin M. Borchard, Convicting the Innocent: Errors of Criminal Justice Intro., passim (1932) (chronicling sixty-five prosecutions and convictions of completely innocent people, id. at xiii, and noting that, although exactly [h]ow many wrongfully convicted persons have actually been executed... is impossible to say ... these cases offer a convincing argument for the abolition of the death penalty, id. at xix); E. Roy Calvert, Capital Punishment in the Twentieth Century 123-134 (5th red. Patterson Smith 1973) (1936) (arguing that no human tribunal is ever competent to impose an irrevocable penalty, id. at 123, and noting that it is surprising how many cases are actually known of the execution of the innocent given that, [b]y the infliction of the capital penalty the person primarily concerned is prevented from urging his claim, id. at 125-26); George R. Scott, The History of Capital Punishment 248-63 (1950) (chronicling cases in which innocent persons have been executed and insisting that we have no means of knowing whether or not other persons have been wrongly convicted and executed [because] .... [t]he accused is dead and, therefore, unable to supply information and evidence which may be necessary [for his or her exoneration,] id. at 251-52); Jerome & Barbara Frank, Not Guilty 248-49 (1957) (noting the intolerably monstrous nature of any death sentence ... [because] [i]t cannot be undone and insisting that [n]o one knows how many innocent men, erroneously convicted of murder, have been put to death by American governments [because].... once a convicted man is dead, all interest in vindicating him usually evaporates); Charles L. Black, Jr., Capital Punishment: The Inevitability of Caprice and Mistake passim (1974) (arguing that the death penalty, no matter how it is administered, inherently encounters the possibility of mistake in its application); Hugo Adam Bedau & Michael L. Radelet, Miscarriages of Justice in Potentially Capital Cases, 40 Stan. L.Rev. 21 (1987) (citing their own study for the proposition that, from 1900 through 1985, at least 139 innocent persons were sentenced to death and at least 23 innocent persons were executed). 12 44 Further, prior to the FDPA's enactment, Congress had been presented with extensive evidence in support of the argument that innocent individuals might be executed. See, e.g., 140 Cong. Rec. S10394-02 (Aug. 2, 1994) (Statement of Sen. Simon) (discussing generally False Convictions and the Death Penalty and placing on the record a 1994 USA Today article that noted at least 85 instances in the past 20 years in which prosecutors — knowingly or unknowingly — relied on fabricated, mishandled, or tampered evidence to convict the innocent or free the guilty and suggesting that such miscarriages of justice are more common than we might like to believe); 140 Cong. Rec. H2322-02, H2330 (April 14, 1994) (Statement of Rep. Nadler) (The death penalty, once imposed, can never be recalled.... We have no way of judging how many innocent persons have been executed, but we can be certain that there were some.); id. at H2327 (Statement of Rep. Mfume) (a large body of evidence shows that innocent people are often convicted of crimes, including capital crimes, and that some of them have been executed. There have been, on the average, more than four cases per year in which an entirely innocent person was convicted of murder, and many of those persons were sentenced to death.); id. at H2326 (April 14, 1994) (Statement of Rep. Kopetski) (Stanford Law Review documented hundreds of cases in which innocent individuals were sentenced to death, 23 of whom were wrongly executed. Let me repeat that, because it's a staggering number: 23 people lay dead who were later exonerated of wrongdoing.); 139 Cong. Rec. S15745-01, S15766 (Nov. 16, 1993) (Statement of Sen. Levin) (noting case after case after case in which people have been sentenced to death only later to be found innocent and released and placing on the record an October 21, 1993 study by the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the House Judiciary Committee that describes 48 cases in the past 20 years where a convicted person has been released from death row either because their innocence was proven or because there was a reasonable doubt that was raised as to their guilt). While not determinative, it is noteworthy that Congress enacted the FDPA against the backdrop of repeated assertions by some members that innocent people have been executed. This informed, deliberative legislative action itself casts doubt on the assertion that the right to a continued opportunity for exoneration throughout the course of one's natural life is rooted in the ... conscience of our people. 45 Most importantly, the Supreme Court has upheld state and federal statutes providing for capital punishment for over two hundred years, and it has done so despite a clear recognition of the possibility that, because our judicial system — indeed, any judicial system — is fallible, innocent people might be executed and, therefore, lose any opportunity for exoneration. 46 Since 1878, the Supreme Court has upheld challenges to death penalty statutes based upon the Due Process Clause as well as the Eighth Amendment. See, e.g., Wilkerson v. Utah, 99 U.S. 130, 25 L.Ed. 345 (1878) (holding that execution by shooting as punishment for the crime of murder does not violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment); In re Kemmler, 136 U.S. 436, 449, 10 S.Ct. 930, 34 L.Ed. 519 (1890) (holding that punishment of death by electrocution does not violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment which, like the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, requires that no different or higher punishment shall be imposed upon one than is imposed upon all for like offenses .... [b]ut [] was not designed to interfere with the power of the State to protect the lives, liberties, and property of its citizens); State of Louisiana ex rel Francis v. Resweber, 329 U.S. 459, 470, 67 S.Ct. 374, 91 L.Ed. 422 (1947) (Frankfurter, J., concurring) (rejecting a petitioner's claim that Louisiana's second attempt at executing him where the first attempt had failed violates due process because multiple attempts at execution do not offend[ ] a principle of justice `[r]ooted in the traditions and conscience of our people'). 13 47 The Supreme Court first expressly acknowledged the argument pressed here — namely, that capital punishment might deprive innocent persons of the ability to exonerate themselves — in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972). In Furman, all nine Justices, each writing separately, found that application of a particular state death penalty statute was so arbitrary that it violated the Eighth Amendment. Despite this, only two members of the Court — Justice Thurgood Marshall and Justice William J. Brennan — were willing to hold the death penalty unconstitutional per se. Id. at 305, 358-59, 92 S.Ct. 2726. And, although the argument before us today was squarely before the Court in Furman, only Justice Marshall indicated any possibility that this argument, standing alone, might be sufficient to render the death penalty unconstitutional. See post, note 14. 48 The opinions of Justice Marshall and Justice Brennan make clear that the Furman Court was presented with, considered, and declined to adopt the argument that capital punishment unconstitutionally deprives innocent persons who have been sentenced to death of the opportunity to exonerate themselves. In his opinion, Justice Marshall expressly recognized that there is evidence that innocent people have been executed before their innocence can be proved. 408 U.S. at 364, 92 S.Ct. 2726 (Marshall, J., concurring): 49 Just as Americans know little about who is executed and why, they are unaware of the potential dangers of executing an innocent man. Our `beyond a reasonable doubt' burden of proof in criminal cases is intended to protect the innocent, but we know it is not foolproof. Various studies have shown that people whose innocence is later convincingly established are convicted and sentenced to death. 50 .... 51 No matter how careful courts are, the possibility of perjured testimony, mistaken honest testimony, and human error remain all too real. We have no way of judging how many innocent persons have been executed but we can be certain that there were some. 52 Id. at 366-68, 92 S.Ct. 2726 (footnotes omitted). 53 Justice Brennan took the argument one step further, expressly acknowledging that execution deprives innocent persons of the opportunity for exoneration: 54 [d]eath is truly an awesome punishment. The calculated killing of a human being by the State involves, by its very nature, a denial of the executed person's humanity. The contrast with the plight of a person punished by imprisonment is evident. An individual in prison does not lose `the right to have rights.' A prisoner retains, for example, the constitutional rights to the free exercise of religion, to be free of cruel and unusual punishments, and to treatment as a `person' for purposes of due process of law and the equal protection of the laws. A prisoner remains a member of the human family. Moreover, he retains the right of access to the courts. His punishment is not irrevocable. Apart from the common charge, grounded upon the recognition of human fallibility, that the punishment of death must inevitably be inflicted upon innocent men, we know that death has been the lot of men whose convictions were unconstitutionally secured in view of later, retroactively applied, holdings of this Court. The punishment itself may have been unconstitutionally inflicted, yet the finality of death precludes relief. An executed person has indeed `lost the right to have rights.' 55 408 U.S. at 290, 92 S.Ct. 2726 (internal citation omitted) (emphasis added). 14 56 These excerpts demonstrate beyond any possible doubt that the basic thesis of the District Court's opinion — that capital punishment is unconstitutional because it denies individuals the opportunity for exoneration — is not a new one. The Furman Court understood that innocent persons may be executed before obtaining evidence necessary to exonerate themselves. Nevertheless, seven justices declined to find that the death penalty is unconstitutional per se.  408 U.S. at 311, 92 S.Ct. 2726 (White, J., concurring). In doing so, they effectively denied the existence of a fundamental right to the opportunity for exoneration over the course of one's natural life. 57 More importantly, just four years after Furman, the Court expressly held in Gregg v. Georgia that capital punishment does not constitute a per se violation of the Eighth Amendment. 428 U.S. at 207, 96 S.Ct. 2909, The Court reached this conclusion despite the petitioner's argument that the death penalty entail[s] both mistake and caprice, and that some people will be killed wrongly, Br. for Petitioner in Gregg at 10a, and despite its own acknowledgment that [t]here is no question that death as a punishment is unique in its severity and irrevocability. 428 U.S. at 187, 96 S.Ct. 2909 (joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.) (citing Furman, 408 U.S. at 286-291, 92 S.Ct. 2726 (Brennan, J., concurring); id., at 306, 92 S.Ct. 2726 (Stewart, J., concurring)). Moreover, in his dissent in Gregg, Justice Brennan reiterated his view that the death penalty is excessive because [a]n executed person has indeed `lost the right to have rights.' 428 U.S. at 230, 96 S.Ct. 2971 (quoting Furman, 408 U.S. at 290, 92 S.Ct. 2726 (Brennan, J., concurring)). The Gregg Court was therefore keenly aware of the argument asserted here, that execution terminates any asserted right to the opportunity for exoneration during one's natural life. Despite this awareness, the Court rejected the proposition that capital punishment is unconstitutional per se. 58 More recently, in Herrera v. Collins, 506 U.S. 390, 113 S.Ct. 853, 122 L.Ed.2d 203 (1993), the Supreme Court affirmed the denial of a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in which the petitioner claimed that his execution would violate both the Due Process Clause and the Eighth Amendment because new evidence could prove his actual innocence. 15 The Court noted that [c]laims of actual innocence based on newly discovered evidence have never been held to state a ground for federal habeas relief absent an independent constitutional violation occurring in the underlying state criminal proceeding.  Id. at 400, 113 S.Ct. 853 (emphasis added). The Court then declined to hold that execution of a person who is innocent of the crime for which he was convicted amounts to an independent violation of either the Eighth Amendment or the Due Process Clause. Id. at 398, 113 S.Ct. 853. The Court noted that [t]his proposition has an element of appeal, as would the similar proposition that the Constitution prohibits the imprisonment of one who is innocent of the crime for which he was convicted .... Id. But the Court recognized that it had previously observed that `[d]ue process does not require that every conceivable step be taken, at whatever cost, to eliminate the possibility of convicting an innocent person.' Id. at 398-99, 113 S.Ct. 853 (quoting Patterson v. New York, 432 U.S. 197, 208, 97 S.Ct. 2319, 53 L.Ed.2d 281 (1977)). 59 The Herrera Court recognized that a petitioner otherwise subject to defenses of abusive or successive use of the writ may have his federal constitutional claim considered on the merits if he makes a proper showing of actual innocence. Id. at 404, 113 S.Ct. 853. It emphasized, however, that our habeas jurisprudence [thus far] makes clear that a claim of `actual innocence' is not itself a constitutional claim. ...' Id. (emphasis added). 60 Despite this precedent, the Herrera Court  assume[d], for the sake of argument in deciding [that] case, that in a capital case a truly persuasive demonstration of `actual innocence' made after trial would render the execution of a defendant unconstitutional .... id. at 417, 113 S.Ct. 853 (emphasis added). But, while the Court assumed, only for the sake of its analysis, that capital punishment of a person who is able to demonstrate his innocence prior to execution violates the Constitution, it made no such holding. It follows, therefore, that Herrera did not suggest, much less hold, that the mere speculative possibility that one might be able to demonstrate his innocence at some point in the future renders capital punishment unconstitutional. 61 Moreover, the Herrera Court made clear that, even if the Constitution did protect innocent persons from execution, the threshold showing for such an assumed right would necessarily be extraordinarily high. Id. 16 Similarly, in his concurrence, Justice White expressed the view that, for an innocent person to be entitled to relief, he would at the very least be required to show that based on proffered newly discovered evidence and the entire record before the jury that convicted him, no rational trier of fact could [find] proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. at 429, 113 S.Ct. 853 (internal quotation marks omitted). And even the three dissenters in Herrera, who maintained that execution of actually innocent individuals violates both the Eighth Amendment and the Due Process Clause, id. at 430, 113 S.Ct. 853, would hold that, to obtain relief on a claim of actual innocence, the petitioner must show that he probably is innocent. Id. at 442, 113 S.Ct. 853 (Blackmun, J., dissenting). 17 Herrera therefore establishes, at a minimum, that it is lawful under the Due Process Clause to end the judicial review process at some point, despite the purely theoretical possibility that the defendant might have been able to demonstrate his innocence in the future. 62 Further, despite its recognition of the unalterable fact that our judicial system, like the human beings who administer it, is fallible, id. at 415, 113 S.Ct. 853, the Court held in Herrera that a state's refusal to grant a new trial to a capital defendant based upon newly-discovered evidence that could prove his innocence does not transgress[] a principle of fundamental fairness rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people, id. at 411, 113 S.Ct. 853 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Supreme Court thereby made clear that, once an individual has exhausted his available legal remedies, the Due Process Clause no longer entitles him to an opportunity to demonstrate his innocence. Accordingly, the Supreme Court established in Herrera that there is no fundamental right to the opportunity for exoneration even before one's execution date, much less during the entire course of one's natural lifetime. 63 The District Court found the Supreme Court's decision in Herrera to be inapposite because it was not informed by the ground-breaking DNA testing and other exonerative evidence developed in the years since. Quinones II, 205 F.Supp.2d at 263. Yet, Herrera prevents us from finding capital punishment unconstitutional based solely on a statistical or theoretical possibility that a defendant might be innocent. And the Supreme Court has expressly mandated that [i]f a precedent of this Court has direct application in a case... the Court of Appeals should follow the case which directly controls, leaving to this Court the prerogative of overruling its own decisions. Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/Am. Express, Inc., 490 U.S. 477, 484, 109 S.Ct. 1917, 104 L.Ed.2d 526 (1989); see also Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203, 238, 117 S.Ct. 1997, 138 L.Ed.2d 391 (1997) (holding that lower courts must follow Supreme Court case law unless and until this Court reinterpret[s] the binding precedent). Accordingly, in light of Herrera, the District Court erred in recognizing a [fundamental] right of an innocent person not to be deprived, by execution, of the opportunity to demonstrate his innocence, Quinones II, 205 F.Supp.2d at 261, and we likewise would err if we were to ignore or reject the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court on this subject. 64 In sum, if the well-settled law on this issue is to change, that is a change that only the Supreme Court or Congress is authorized to make. 65