NCJ Number
111808
Journal
Western State University Law Review Volume: 15 Issue: 1 Dated: (Fall 1987) Pages: 95-126
Date Published
1987
Length
32 pages
Annotation
The jurisprudence of capital punishment has been divided by three watershed years.
Abstract
In 1972, the proponents of judicial abolition of capital punishment temporarily achieved their goal. In 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that capital punishment was not abolished, but it left many questions unanswered about the specific application of the penalty. In the October 1986 term, it resolved many of these questions. In Tison v. Arizona, the Court addressed the issue of the degree of involvement and intent that would suffice for a capital sentence. In California v. Brown and in Booth v. Maryland, the Court narrowed the scope of the penalty hearing in capital cases by emphasizing the focus on the offender's moral culpability, limiting it to the circumstances of the crime and the objective aspects of the defendant's criminal history, primarily the prior criminal record. In Shuman v. Wolff, the Court addressed the issue of whether a mandatory death sentence is permissible in the case of murder by a life prisoner, holding that it is not. In McClesky v. Kemp, the Court addressed the issue of racial discrimination, equal protection, and whether capital punishment constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. In this case, the Court held that some degree of racial influence is inevitable, and, that while everything must be done to eliminate it, it is unnecessary to abolish capital punishment on those grounds. 198 footnotes.