Court Opinion

ID: 9473097
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:19:11.404131+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:19.009344
License: Public Domain

VANCE, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
Although I concur in Judge Roney’s opinion, I am troubled by its assertion that there is “little difference in the proof that might be required to prevail” under either eighth amendment or fourteenth amendment equal protection claims of the kind presented here 1. According to Furman, an eighth amendment inquiry centers on the general results of capital sentencing systems, and condemns those governed by such unpredictable factors as chance, caprice or whim. An equal protection inquiry is very different. It centers not on systemic irrationality, but rather the independent evil of intentional, invidious discrimination against given individuals.
I am conscious of the dicta in the various Furman opinions which note with disapproval the possibility that racial discrimination was a factor in the application of the death penalty under the Georgia and Texas statutes then in effect. To my mind, however, such dicta merely indicate the possibility that a system that permits the exercise of standardless discretion not only may be capricious, but may give play to discriminatory motives which violate equal protection standards as well. Whether a given set of facts make out an eighth amendment claim of systemic irrationality under Fur-man is, therefore, a question entirely independent of whether those facts establish deliberate discrimination violative of the equal protection clause.
I am able to concur because in neither the case before us nor in any of the others presently pending would the difference influence the outcome. As Judge Roney points out, petitioner’s statistics are insufficient to establish intentional discrimination in the capital sentence imposed in his case. As to the eighth amendment, I doubt that a claim of arbitrariness or caprice is even presented, since petitioner’s case is entirely devoted to proving that the death penalty is being applied in an altogether explicable— albeit impermissible — fashion.
*906Claims such as that of petitioner are now presented with such regularity that we may reasonably hope for guidance from the Supreme Court by the time my expressed concerns are outcome determinative in a given case.

. I have not addressed the due process analysis employed by the district court because the petitioner did not rely on it in his brief.