The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects against imposing excessive bail, excessive fines, or cruel and unusual punishments. This amendment was adopted on December 15, 1791, along with the rest of the United States Bill of Rights. The amendment serves as a limitation upon the state or federal government to impose unduly harsh penalties on criminal defendants before and after a conviction. This limitation applies equally to the price for obtaining pretrial release and the punishment for crime after conviction. The phrases in this amendment originated in the English Bill of Rights of 1689.
A jury is a sworn body of people (jurors) convened to hear evidence and render an impartial verdict officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a penalty or judgment.
Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972), was a landmark criminal case in which the United States Supreme Court invalidated all then existing legal constructions for the death penalty in the United States. It was 5–4 decision, with each member of the majority writing a separate opinion. Following Furman, in order to reinstate the death penalty, states had to at least remove arbitrary and discriminatory effects in order to satisfy the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
In the U.S. state of California, capital punishment is a legal penalty. However it is not allowed to be carried out as of June 2023, because executions were halted by an official moratorium ordered by Governor Gavin Newsom. Prior to the moratorium, executions were frozen by a federal court order since 2006, and the litigation resulting in the court order has been on hold since the promulgation of the moratorium. Thus, there will be a court-ordered moratorium on executions after the termination of Newsom's moratorium if capital punishment remains a legal penalty in California by then.
The U.S. state of Washington enforced capital punishment until the state's capital punishment statute was declared null and void and abolished in practice by a state Supreme Court ruling on October 11, 2018. The court ruled that it was unconstitutional as applied due to racial bias however it did not render the wider institution of capital punishment unconstitutional and rather required the statute to be amended to eliminate racial biases. From 1904 to 2010, 78 people were executed by the state; the last was Cal Coburn Brown on September 10, 2010. In April 2023, Governor Jay Inslee signed SB5087 which formally abolished capital punishment in Washington State and removed provisions for capital punishment from state law.
Gregg v. Georgia, Proffitt v. Florida, Jurek v. Texas, Woodson v. North Carolina, and Roberts v. Louisiana, 428 U.S. 153 (1976), is a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. It reaffirmed the Court's acceptance of the use of the death penalty in the United States, upholding, in particular, the death sentence imposed on Troy Leon Gregg. The set of cases is referred to by a leading scholar as the July 2 Cases, and elsewhere referred to by the lead case Gregg. The court set forth the two main features that capital sentencing procedures must employ in order to comply with the Eighth Amendment ban on "cruel and unusual punishments". The decision essentially ended the de facto moratorium on the death penalty imposed by the Court in its 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia 408 U.S. 238 (1972).
The People of the State of California v. Robert Page Anderson, 493 P.2d 880, 6 Cal. 3d 628, was a landmark case in the state of California that outlawed capital punishment for nine months until the enactment of a constitutional amendment reinstating it, Proposition 17.
The Wendy's massacre was a mass murder that took place in a Wendy's fast-food restaurant at 40-12 Main Street in Flushing, New York, on May 24, 2000. Seven employees were shot in the head and five of them died. The killings were committed by former Wendy's employee John Taylor along with Craig Godineaux, who had planned to rob the restaurant's safe. Taylor was subsequently sentenced to death, while Godineaux was sentenced to life in prison. After the shooting, the Wendy’s location was closed and boarded up until it was eventually re-opened as a shopping center.
Uttecht v. Brown, 551 U.S. 1 (2007), was a case dealing with jury selection in capital cases in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that appeals courts must defer to a trial judge’s decision on whether a potential juror would be able to overcome demur about capital punishment and be open to voting to impose a death sentence.
United States criminal procedure derives from several sources of law: the baseline protections of the United States Constitution; federal and state statutes; federal and state rules of criminal procedure ; and state and federal case law. Criminal procedures are distinct from civil procedures in the US.
The Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides: "[N]or shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb..." The four essential protections included are prohibitions against, for the same offense:
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Florida.
Capital punishment was outlawed in New York after the New York Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state, declared the practice as currently practiced unconstitutional under the state's constitution in 2004. However certain crimes occurring in the state that fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government are subject to the federal death penalty.
Spaziano v. Florida was two United States Supreme Court cases dealing with the imposition of the death penalty. In the first case, 454 U.S. 1037 (1981), the Supreme Court, with two dissents, refused Spaziano's petition for certiorari. However, the Florida Supreme Court would reverse Spaziano's death sentence based on the judge's receipt of a confidential report which was not received by either party. On remand, the judge reimposed the death penalty and the Florida Supreme Court upheld the sentence. In the second case, 468 U.S. 447 (1984), the Court heard Spaziano's appeal of his death sentence.
The United States Constitution contains several provisions related to criminal sentencing.
In the United States and other nations that use jury trials, a judicial override is when a judge overrules a jury's sentencing determination.
Hurst v. Florida, 577 U.S. 92 (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court, in an 8–1 ruling, applied the rule of Ring v. Arizona to the Florida capital sentencing scheme, holding that the Sixth Amendment requires a jury to find the aggravating factors necessary for imposing the death penalty. In Florida, under a 2013 statute, the jury made recommendations but the judge decided the facts.
Simmons v. South Carolina, 512 U.S. 154 (1994), is a United States Supreme Court case holding that, where a capital defendant's future dangerousness is at issue, and the only alternative sentence available is life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, the sentencing jury must be informed that the defendant is ineligible for parole.
Sumner v. Shuman, 483 U.S. 66 (1987), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that a mandatory death penalty for a prison inmate who is convicted of murder while serving a life sentence without possibility of parole is unconstitutional. The decision in this case was a significant development in the Court's capital punishment jurisprudence, further clarifying the limits on the application of the death penalty in the United States.
