Court Opinion

ID: 9430268
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:29:23.103724+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:23.981851
License: Public Domain

Justice Stevens,
with whom Justice Brennan joins, dissenting.
The justification for executing the defendant depends on the degree of his culpability — “what [his] intentions, expecta*408tions, and actions were. American criminal law has long considered a defendant’s intention — and therefore his moral guilt — to be critical to ‘the degree of [his] criminal culpability/ Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U. S. 684, 698 (1975), and the Court has found criminal penalties to be unconstitutionally excessive in the absence of intentional wrongdoing.” Enmund v. Florida, 458 U. S. 782, 800 (1982). The Eighth Amendment therefore precludes the imposition of a death sentence upon a defendant whose “crime did not reflect ‘a consciousness materially more “depraved” than that of any person guilty of murder.’” Id., at 800-801.
Because the finding of moral culpability required by Enmund is but one part of a judgment that “is ultimately understood only as an expression of the community’s outrage— its sense that an individual has lost his moral entitlement to live,”* I believe that the decision whether a death sentence is the only adequate response to the defendant’s moral culpability must be made by a single decisionmaker, be it the trial court or the jury. The State of Mississippi has wisely decided that the jury is the decisionmaker that is best able to “express the conscience of the community on the ultimate question of life or death.” Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U. S. 510, 519 (1968). As the Court points out, ante, at 383-384, a Mississippi jury has not found that respondent Bullock killed, attempted to kill, or intended that a killing take place or that lethal force be used. It follows, in my view, that a Mississippi jury has not determined that a death sentence is the only response that will satisfy the outrage of the community, and that a new sentencing hearing must be conducted if respondent is ultimately to be sentenced to die. In accordance with this reasoning, I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

Spaziano v. Florida, 468 U. S. 447, 467 (1984) (Stevens, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).