Opinion ID: 2203429
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the death penalty is arbitrarily inflicted.

Text: It is inevitable that the death penalty will be applied arbitrarily. Also, experience has shown that the death penalty will fall discriminatorily upon minorities, particularly blacks. For these reasons the death penalty is unconstitutionally cruel under art. 26 of the Declaration of Rights. [9] We know that, each year during the decades of the 1930's through the 1960's, 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 50 times a year, the inference is strong that the punishment is not being regularly and fairly applied. To dispel it would indeed require a clear showing of nonarbitrary infliction. Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 293 (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 (Stewart, J., concurring). We think that arbitrariness in sentencing will continue even under the discipline of a post- Furman statute like the one before us. In 1972, in Furman v. Georgia, supra , the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Eighth Amendment (applied to the States through the Fourteenth) invalidated a Georgia statute which allowed the jury untrammeled discretion in choosing between death and life imprisonment as the penalty for the crime of murder. In July, 1976, the United States Supreme Court handed down a series of cases indicating that a majority of that Court are prepared, as far as the Federal Constitution is concerned, to validate State statutes which channel or regulate discretion in sentencing, thus curing those aspects of arbitrariness which concerned the Court in the Furman case. See Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976); Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U.S. 242 (1976); Jurek v. Texas, 428 U.S. 262 (1976); Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280 (1976); Roberts v. Louisiana, 428 U.S. 325 (1976). In summary, the concerns expressed in Furman that the penalty of death not be imposed in an arbitrary or capricious manner can be met by a carefully drafted statute that ensures that the sentencing authority is given adequate information and guidance. As a general proposition these concerns are best met by a system that provides for a bifurcated proceeding at which the sentencing authority is apprised of the information relevant to the imposition of sentence and provided with standards to guide its use of the information. Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. at 195 (Stewart, J.). The Legislature of Massachusetts clearly attempted, in the statute now before us, to follow the mandates of the Furman opinion and its progeny by promulgating a law of guided and channeled jury discretion. It may be that c. 488 would meet the Federal constitutional requirements, if tested, but here we appraise the statute under art. 26 of the Declaration of Rights of the State Constitution. We accept the Furman principle that untrammeled discretion in imposing the death penalty is intolerable; we find unacceptable under the State Constitution the premise of the post- Furman cases that statutory guidelines and standards may be entirely curative. As Mr. Justice Harlan wrote in McGautha v. California, 402 U.S. 183, 204 (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). Even if it were possible by statutory language to bring evenhandedness to the death penalty decisional process, we should still conclude that a statute (like c. 488) that presumably complies with the Furman principle is unconstitutional under art. 26. The Federal constitutional requirements are a constraint only upon certain aspects of jury discretion. Furman and subsequent cases do not address the discretionary powers exercised at other points in the criminal justice process. Power to decide rests not only in juries but in police officers, prosecutors, defense counsel, and trial judges. [10] 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 may 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 forgo 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-pros 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. 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. The death penalty has been described by many commentators not only as arbitrary and capricious but also as discriminatory. For example, the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice concluded that there is evidence that the imposition of the death sentence and the exercise of dispensing power by the courts and the executive follow discriminatory patterns. The death sentence is disproportionately imposed and carried out on the poor, the Negro, and the members of unpopular groups. The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, A Report by the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice 143 (1967). C. Black, Capital Punishment: The Inevitability of Caprice and Mistake (1974). Examination of death sentences imposed in Florida, Georgia, and Texas under post- Furman statutes upheld by the Supreme Court in 1976 indicates that very little has changed as to arbitrariness and discrimination. The criminal homicide data from the date of the post- Furman statutes through 1977 indicate the following: In Florida, of 286 blacks who had killed whites, forty-eight (16.8%) were sentenced to death; of 111 whites who killed blacks, none were sentenced to death. In Georgia, of 258 blacks who killed whites, thirty-seven (14.3%) were sentenced to death; of seventy-one whites who killed blacks, two (2.8%) were sentenced to death. In Texas, of 344 blacks who killed whites, twenty-seven (7.8%) were sentenced to death; of 143 whites who killed blacks, none were sentenced to death. [11] One commentator stated as to this post- Furman experience, The conclusion is inescapable that the death penalty is reserved for those who kill whites, because the criminal justice system in these states simply does not put the same value on the life of a black person as it does on the life of a white. [12] Another commentator concluded that there is no evidence to suggest that post- Furman statutes have been successful in reducing the discretion which leads to a disproportionate number of nonwhite offenders being sentenced to death. [13] We reject any suggestion that racial discrimination is confined to the South or to any other geographical area. The experience of Ohio under a post- Furman statute through 1977 shows that, of 173 black persons who killed white persons, thirty-seven of them (21.4%) were sentenced to death. Of forty-seven whites who killed blacks, none were sentenced to death. [14] Moreover, the existence of racial prejudice in some persons in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a fact of which we take notice. Cf. Commonwealth v. Soares, 377 Mass. 461, cert. denied, 444 U.S. 881 (1979); Commonwealth v. Franklin, 376 Mass. 885, 891-892 (1978). From the foregoing discussion, it follows that we accept the wisdom of Furman, that arbitrary and capricious infliction of the death penalty is unconstitutional. However, we add that such arbitrariness and discrimination, which inevitably persist even under a statute which meets the demands of Furman, offend art. 26 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights. 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 at 306 (Stewart, J., concurring). Accord, O'Neal II, 369 Mass. 242-249 (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 (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.