Court Opinion

ID: 9473099
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:19:11.408614+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:19.009824
License: Public Domain

R. LANIER ANDERSON, III, Circuit Judge,
concurring with whom KRAVITCH, Circuit Judge, joins as to the constitutional application of the Georgia Death Statute:
I join Judge Roney’s opinion for the majority, and write separately only to emphasize, with respect to the Part entitled “Constitutional Application of Georgia’s Death Penalty,” that death is different in kind from all other criminal sanctions, Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280, 305, 96 S.Ct. 2978, 2991, 49 L.Ed.2d 944 (1976). Thus, the proof of racial motivation required in a death case, whether pursuant to an Eighth Amendment theory or an equal protection theory, presumably would be less strict than that required in civil cases or in the criminal justice system generally. Constitutional adjudication would tolerate less risk that a death sentence was influenced by race. The Supreme Court’s Eighth Amendment jurisprudence has established a constitutional supervision over the conduct of state death penalty systems which is more exacting than that with respect to the criminal justice system generally. Woodson v. North Carolina, id. at 305, 96 S.Ct. at 2991 (“Because of that qualitative difference, there is a corre-
sponding difference in the need for reliability in the determination that death is the appropriate punishment.”). There is no need in this ease, however, to reach out and try to define more precisely what evidentia-ry showing would be required. Judge Ro-ney’s opinion demonstrates with clarity why the evidentiary showing in this case is insufficient.