The Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act of 1994

Special Procedures for Death Penalty Cases
The first significant general challenge to capital punishment that reached the Supreme
Court was the case of Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972). In a 5–4 decision, the
Supreme Court overturned the death sentences of Furman for murder, as well as two
other defendants for rape. Of the five justices voting to overturn the death penalty, two
found that capital punishment was unconstitutionally cruel and unusual, while three
found that the statutes at issue were implemented in a random and capricious fashion,
discriminating against blacks and the poor. Furman v. Georgia did not hold – even
though it is sometimes claimed that it did – that capital punishment is per se
unconstitutional.
States with
capital punishment rewrote their laws to address the
Supreme Court's decision, and the Court then revisited
the issue in a murder case: Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S.
153 (1976). In Gregg, the Court found, in a 7–2 ruling, that
Georgia's revised death penalty laws passed Eighth
Amendment scrutiny: the statutes provided a bifurcated trial in
which guilt and sentence were determined separately; and, the
statutes provided for "specific jury findings" followed by state
supreme court review comparing each death sentence "with the
sentences imposed on similarly situated defendants to ensure that
the sentence of death in a particular case is not disproportionate." Because of the
Gregg decision, executions resumed in 1977.
Some states have passed laws imposing mandatory death penalties in certain cases.
The Supreme Court found these laws unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment, in
the murder case of Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280 (1976), because these
laws remove discretion from the trial judge to make an individualized determination in
each case. Other statutes specifying factors for courts to use in making their decisions
have been upheld. Some have not: in Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U.S. 420 (1980), the
Supreme Court overturned a sentence based upon a finding that a murder was
"outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible, and inhuman," as it deemed that any murder
may be reasonably characterized in this manner.
Similarly, in Maynard v. Cartwright, 486 U.S. 356 (1988), the Court found that an
"especially heinous, atrocious or cruel" standard in a homicide case was too vague.
However, the meaning of this language depends on how lower courts interpret it. In
Walton v. Arizona, 497 U.S. 639 (1990), the Court found that the phrase "especially
heinous, cruel, or depraved" was not vague in a murder case, because the state
supreme court had expounded on its meaning.
The Court has generally held that death penalty cases require extra procedural
protections. As the Court said in Herrera v. Collins, 506 U.S. 390 (1993), which involved
the murder of a police officer, "the Eighth Amendment requires increased reliability of
the process..."
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