Judgment of the Court, and opinion of MR. JUSTICE STEWART, MR. JUSTICE POWELL, and MR. JUSTICE STEVENS, announced by MR. JUSTICE STEWART.
The question in this case is whether the imposition of a death sentence for the crime of first-degree murder under the law of North Carolina violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.
I
The petitioners were convicted of first-degree murder as the result of their participation in an armed robbery
The evidence for the prosecution established that the four men had been discussing a possible robbery for some time. On the fatal day Woodson had been drinking heavily. About 9:30 p. m., Waxton and Tucker came to the trailer where Woodson was staying. When Woodson came out of the trailer, Waxton struck him in the face and threatened to kill him in an effort to make him sober up and come along on the robbery. The three proceeded to Waxton's trailer where they met Carroll. Waxton armed himself with a nickel-plated derringer, and Tucker handed Woodson a rifle. The four then set out by automobile to rob the store. Upon arriving at their destination Tucker and Waxton went into the store while Carroll and Woodson remained in the car as lookouts. Once inside the store, Tucker purchased a package of cigarettes from the woman cashier. Waxton then also asked for a package of cigarettes, but as the cashier approached him he pulled the derringer out of his hip pocket and fatally shot her at point-blank range. Waxton then took the money tray from the cash register and gave it to Tucker, who carried it out of the store, pushing past an entering customer as he reached the door. After he was outside, Tucker heard a second shot from inside the store, and shortly thereafter Waxton emerged, carrying a handful of paper money. Tucker and Waxton got in the car and the four drove away.
During the trial Waxton asked to be allowed to plead guilty to the same lesser offenses to which Tucker had pleaded guilty,
The petitioners were found guilty on all charges,
II
The petitioners argue that the imposition of the death penalty under any circumstances is cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. We reject this argument for the reasons stated today in Gregg v. Georgia, ante, at 168-187.
III
At the time of this Court's decision in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972), North Carolina law provided that in cases of first-degree murder, the jury in its unbridled discretion could choose whether the convicted defendant should be sentenced to death or to life imprisonment.
The North Carolina General Assembly in 1974 followed the court's lead and enacted a new statute that was essentially unchanged from the old one except that it made the death penalty mandatory. The statute now reads as follows:
It was under this statute that the petitioners, who committed their crime on June 3, 1974, were tried, convicted, and sentenced to death.
North Carolina, unlike Florida, Georgia, and Texas, has thus responded to the Furman decision by making death the mandatory sentence for all persons convicted
A
The Eighth Amendment stands to assure that the State's power to punish is "exercised within the limits of civilized standards." Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86, 100 (1958) (plurality opinion). See id., at 101; Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349, 373, 378 (1910); Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber, 329 U.S. 459, 468-469 (1947) (Frankfurter, J., concurring);
This reform, however, left unresolved the problem posed by the not infrequent refusal of juries to convict murderers rather than subject them to automatic death sentences. In 1794, Pennsylvania attempted to alleviate the undue severity of the law by confining the mandatory death penalty to "murder of the first degree" encompassing all "wilful, deliberate and premeditated" killings. Pa. Laws 1794 c. 1766.
Despite the broad acceptance of the division of murder into degrees, the reform proved to be an unsatisfactory means of identifying persons appropriately punishable by death. Although its failure was due in part to the amorphous nature of the controlling concepts of willfulness,
The inadequacy of distinguishing between murderers solely on the basis of legislative criteria narrowing the definition of the capital offense led the States to grant juries sentencing discretion in capital cases. Tennessee in 1838, followed by Alabama in 1841, and Louisiana in 1846, were the first States to abandon mandatory death sentences in favor of discretionary death penalty statutes.
The history of mandatory death penalty statutes in
Still further evidence of the incompatibility of mandatory death penalties with contemporary values is provided by the results of jury sentencing under discretionary statutes. In Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510 (1968), the Court observed that "one of the most important functions any jury can perform" in exercising its discretion to choose "between life imprisonment and capital punishment" is "to maintain a link between contemporary community values and the penal system." Id., at 519, and n. 15. Various studies indicate that even in first-degree murder cases juries with sentencing discretion do not impose the death penalty "with any great frequency." H. Kalven & H. Zeisel, The American Jury 436 (1966).
Although the Court has never ruled on the constitutionality of mandatory death penalty statutes, on several occasions dating back to 1899 it has commented upon our society's aversion to automatic death sentences. In Winston v. United States, 172 U.S. 303 (1899), the Court noted that the "hardship of punishing with death every crime coming within the definition of murder at common law, and the reluctance of jurors to concur in a capital conviction, have induced American legislatures, in modern times, to allow some cases of murder to be punished by imprisonment, instead of by death." Id., at 310.
More recently, the Court in McGautha v. California, 402 U.S. 183 (1971), detailed the evolution of discretionary imposition of death sentences in this country, prompted by what it termed the American "rebellion against the common-law rule imposing a mandatory death sentence on all convicted murderers." Id., at 198 See id., at 198-202. Perhaps the one important factor about evolving social values regarding capital punishment upon which the Members of the Furman Court agreed was the accuracy of McGautha's assessment of our Nation's rejection of mandatory death sentences. See Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S., at 245-246 (Douglas, J., concurring); id., at 297-298 (BRENNAN, J., concurring); id., at 339 (MARSHALL, J., concurring); id., at 402-403 (BURGER, C. J., with whom BLACKMUN, POWELL, and REHNQUIST, JJ., joined, dissenting); id., at 413 (BLACKMUN, J., dissenting). MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN, for example, emphasized that legislation requiring an automatic death sentence for specified crimes would be "regressive and of an antique mold" and would mark a return to a "point in our criminology [passed beyond] long ago." Ibid. THE CHIEF JUSTICE, speaking for the four dissenting Justices in Furman, discussed the question of mandatory death sentences at some length:
Although it seems beyond dispute that, at the time of the Furman decision in 1972, mandatory death penalty statutes had been renounced by American juries and legislatures, there remains the question whether the mandatory statutes adopted by North Carolina and a number of other States following Furman evince a sudden reversal of societal values regarding the imposition of capital punishment. In view of the persistent and unswerving legislative rejection of mandatory death penalty statutes beginning in 1838 and continuing for more than 130 years until Furman,
A brief examination of the background of the current North Carolina statute serves to reaffirm our assessment of its limited utility as an indicator of contemporary values regarding mandatory death sentences. Before 1949, North Carolina imposed a mandatory death sentence on any person convicted of rape or first-degree murder. That year, a study commission created by the state legislature recommended that juries be granted discretion to recommend life sentences in all capital cases:
The 1949 session of the General Assembly of North Carolina adopted the proposed modifications of its rape and murder statutes. Although in subsequent years numerous bills were introduced in the legislature to limit further or abolish the death penalty in North Carolina, they were rejected as were two 1969 proposals to return to mandatory death sentences for all capital offenses. See State v. Waddell, 282 N. C., at 441, 194 S. E. 2d, at 26 (opinion of the court); id., at 456-457, 194 S. E. 2d, at 32-33 (Bobbitt, C. J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).
As noted, supra, at 285-286, when the Supreme Court of North Carolina analyzed the constitutionality of the State's death penalty statute following this Court's decision in Furman, it severed the 1949 proviso authorizing jury sentencing discretion and held that "the remainder of the statute with death as the mandatory punishment. . . remains in full force and effect." State v. Waddell, supra, at 444-445, 194 S. E. 2d. at 28. The North Carolina General Assembly then followed the course found constitutional in Waddell and enacted a first-degree murder provision identical to the mandatory statute in operation prior to the authorization of jury discretion. The State's brief in this case relates that the legislature sought to remove "all sentencing discretion [so that] there could be no successful Furman based attack on the North Carolina statute."
B
A separate deficiency of North Carolina's mandatory death sentence statute is its failure to provide a constitutionally tolerable response to Furman's rejection of unbridled jury discretion in the imposition of capital sentences. Central to the limited holding in Furman was the conviction that the vesting of standardless sentencing power in the jury violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. See Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S., at 309-310 (STEWART, J., concurring); id., at 313 (WHITE, J., concurring); cf. id., at 253-257 (Douglas, J., concurring). See also id., at 398-399 (BURGER, C. J., dissenting). It is argued that North Carolina has remedied the inadequacies of the death penalty statutes held unconstitutional in Furman by withdrawing all sentencing discretion from juries in capital cases. But when one considers the long and consistent American experience with the death penalty in first-degree murder cases, it becomes evident that mandatory statutes enacted in response to Furman have simply papered over the problem of unguided and unchecked jury discretion.
As we have noted in Part III-A, supra, there is general agreement that American juries have persistently refused to convict a significant portion of persons charged with first-degree murder of that offense under mandatory death penalty statutes. The North Carolina study commission, supra, at 299-300, reported that juries in that State "[q]uite frequently" were deterred from rendering guilty verdicts of first-degree murder because of the enormity of the sentence automatically imposed. Moreover,
C
A third constitutional shortcoming of the North Carolina statute is its failure to allow the particularized consideration of relevant aspects of the character and record of each convicted defendant before the imposition upon him of a sentence of death. In Furman, members of the Court acknowledged what cannot fairly be denied —that death is a punishment different from all other
This Court has previously recognized that "[f]or the determination of sentences, justice generally requires consideration of more than the particular acts by which the crime was committed and that there be taken into account the circumstances of the offense together with the character and propensities of the offender." Pennsylvania ex rel. Sullivan v. Ashe, 302 U.S. 51, 55 (1937). Consideration of both the offender and the offense in order to arrive at a just and appropriate sentence has been viewed as a progressive and humanizing development. See Williams v. New York, 337 U. S., at 247-249; Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S., at 402-403 (BURGER, C. J., dissenting). While the prevailing practice of individualizing sentencing determinations generally reflects simply enlightened policy rather than a constitutional imperative, we believe that in capital cases the fundamental respect for humanity underlying the Eighth Amendment, see Trop v. Dulles, 356 U. S., at 100 (plurality opinion), requires consideration of the character and record of the individual offender and the circumstances of the particular offense as a constitutionally indispensable part of the process of inflicting the penalty of death.
For the reasons stated, we conclude that the death sentences imposed upon the petitioners under North Carolina's mandatory death sentence statute violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments and therefore must be set aside.
It is so ordered.
MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, concurring in the judgment.
For the reasons stated in my dissenting opinion in Gregg v. Georgia, ante, p. 227, I concur in the judgment
MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL, concurring in the judgment.
For the reasons stated in my dissenting opinion in Gregg v. Georgia, ante, p. 231, I am of the view that the death penalty is a cruel and unusual punishment forbidden by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. I therefore concur in the Court's judgment.
MR. JUSTICE WHITE, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE and MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST join, dissenting.
Following Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972), the North Carolina Supreme Court considered the effect of that case on the North Carolina criminal statutes which imposed the death penalty for first-degree murder and other crimes but which provided that "if at the time of rendering its verdict in open court, the jury shall so recommend, the punishment shall be imprisonment for life in the State's prison, and the court shall so instruct the jury." State v. Waddell, 282 N.C. 431, 194 S.E.2d 19 (1973), determined that Furman v. Georgia invalidated only the proviso giving the jury the power to limit the penalty to life imprisonment and that thenceforward death was the mandatory penalty for the specified capital crimes. Thereafter N. C. Gen. Stat. § 14-17 was amended to eliminate the express dispensing power of the jury and to add kidnaping to the underlying felonies for which death is the specified penalty. As amended in 1974, the section reads as follows:
It was under this statute that the petitioners in this case were convicted of first-degree murder and the mandatory death sentences imposed.
The facts of record and the proceedings in this case leading to petitioners' convictions for first-degree murder and their death sentences appear in the opinion of MR. JUSTICE STEWART, MR. JUSTICE POWELL, and MR. JUSTICE STEVENS. The issues in the case are very similar, if not identical, to those in Roberts v. Louisiana, post, p. 325. For the reasons stated in my dissenting opinion in that case, I reject petitioners' arguments that the death penalty in any circumstances is a violation of the Eighth Amendment and that the North Carolina statute, although making the imposition of the death penalty mandatory upon proof of guilt and a verdict of first-degree murder, will nevertheless result in the death penalty being imposed so seldom and arbitrarily that it is void under Furman v. Georgia. As is also apparent from my dissenting opinion in Roberts v. Louisiana, I also disagree with the two additional grounds which the plurality sua sponte offers for invalidating the North Carolina statute. I would affirm the judgment of the North Carolina Supreme Court.
MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN, dissenting.
I dissent for the reasons set forth in my dissent in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 405-414 (1972), and
MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST, dissenting.
I
The difficulties which attend the plurality's explanation for the result it reaches tend at first to obscure difficulties at least as significant which inhere in the unarticulated premises necessarily underlying that explanation. I advert to the latter only briefly, in order to devote the major and following portion of this dissent to those issues which the plurality actually considers.
As an original proposition, it is by no means clear that the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments embodied in the Eighth Amendment, and made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment, Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660 (1962), was not limited to those punishments deemed cruel and unusual at the time of the adoption of the Bill of Rights. McGautha v. California, 402 U.S. 183, 225 (1971) (opinion of Black, J.). If Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349 (1910), dealing not with the Eighth Amendment but with an identical provision contained in the Philippine Constitution, and the plurality opinion in Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86 (1958), are to be taken as indicating the contrary, they should surely be weighed against statements in cases such as Wilkerson v. Utah, 99 U.S. 130 (1879); In re Kemmler, 136 U.S. 436 (1890); Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber, 329 U.S. 459, 464 (1947), and the plurality opinion in Trop itself, that the infliction of capital punishment is not in itself violative of the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause. Thus for the plurality to begin its analysis with the assumption that it need only demonstrate that "evolving standards of decency" show that contemporary "society"
The plurality relies first upon its conclusion that society has turned away from the mandatory imposition of death sentences, and second upon its conclusion that the North Carolina system has "simply papered over" the problem of unbridled jury discretion which two of the separate opinions in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972), identified as the basis for the judgment rendering the death sentences there reviewed unconstitutional. The third "constitutional shortcoming" of the North Carolina statute is said to be "its failure to allow the particularized consideration of relevant aspects of the character and record of each convicted defendant before the imposition upon him of a sentence of death." Ante, at 303.
I do not believe that any one of these reasons singly, or all of them together, can withstand careful analysis. Contrary to the plurality's assertions, they would import into the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause procedural requirements which find no support in our cases. Their application will result in the invalidation of a death sentence imposed upon a defendant convicted of first-degree murder under the North Carolina system, and the upholding of the same sentence imposed on an identical defendant convicted on identical evidence of first-degree murder under the Florida, Georgia, or Texas systems—a result surely as "freakish" as that condemned in the separate opinions in Furman.
II
The plurality is simply mistaken in its assertion that "[t]he history of mandatory death penalty statutes in the United States thus reveals that the practice of sentencing
There can be no question that the legislative and other materials discussed in the plurality's opinion show a widespread conclusion on the part of state legislatures during the 19th century that the penalty of death was being required for too broad a range of crimes, and that these legislatures proceeded to narrow the range of crimes for which such penalty could be imposed. If this case involved the imposition of the death penalty for an offense such as burglary or sodomy, see ante, at 289, the virtually unanimous trend in the legislatures of the States to exclude such offenders from liability for capital punishment might bear on the plurality's Eighth Amendment argument. But petitioners were convicted of first-degree murder, and there is not the slightest suggestion in the material relied upon by the plurality that there had been any turning away at all, much less any such unanimous turning away, from the death penalty as a punishment for those guilty of first-degree murder. The legislative narrowing of the spectrum of capital crimes, therefore, while very arguably representing a general societal judgment since the trend was so widespread, simply never
The second string to the plurality's analytical bow is that legislative change from mandatory to discretionary imposition of the death sentence likewise evidences societal rejection of mandatory death penalties. The plurality simply does not make out this part of its case, however, in large part because it treats as being of equal dignity with legislative judgments the judgments of particular juries and of individual jurors.
There was undoubted dissatisfaction, from more than one sector of 19th century society, with the operation of mandatory death sentences. One segment of that society was totally opposed to capital punishment, and was apparently willing to accept the substitution of discretionary imposition of that penalty for its mandatory imposition as a halfway house on the road to total abolition. Another segment was equally unhappy with the operation of the mandatory system, but for an entirely different reason. As the plurality recognizes, this second segment of society was unhappy with the operation of the mandatory system, not because of the death sentences imposed under it, but because people obviously guilty of criminal offenses were not being convicted under it. See ante, at 293. Change to a discretionary system was accepted by these persons not because they thought mandatory imposition of the death penalty was cruel and unusual, but because they thought that if jurors were permitted to return a sentence other than death upon the conviction of a capital crime, fewer guilty defendants would be acquitted. See McGautha, 402 U. S., at 199.
So far as the action of juries is concerned, the fact that in some cases juries operating under the mandatory system refused to convict obviously guilty defendants does not reflect any "turning away" from the death penalty, or the mandatory death penalty, supporting the
The introduction of discretionary sentencing likewise creates no inference that contemporary society had rejected the mandatory system as unduly severe. Legislatures enacting discretionary sentencing statutes had no reason to think that there would not be roughly the same number of capital convictions under the new system as under the old. The same subjective juror responses which resulted in juror nullification under the old system were legitimized, but in the absence of those subjective responses to a particular set of facts, a capital sentence could as likely be anticipated under the discretionary system as under the mandatory. And at least some of those who would have been acquitted under the mandatory system would be subjected to at least some punishment under the discretionary system, rather than escaping altogether a penalty for the crime of which they were guilty. That society was unwilling to accept the
Nor do the opinions in Furman which indicate a preference for discretionary sentencing in capital cases suggest in the slightest that a mandatory sentencing procedure would be cruel and unusual. The plurality concedes, as it must, that following Furman 10 States enacted laws providing for mandatory capital punishment. See State Capital Punishment Statutes Enacted Subsequent to Furman v. Georgia, Congressional Research Service Pamphlet 17-22 (June 19, 1974). These enactments the plurality seeks to explain as due to a wrongheaded reading of the holding in Furman. But this explanation simply does not wash. While those States may be presumed to have preferred their prior systems reposing sentencing discretion in juries or judges, they indisputably preferred mandatory capital punishment to no capital punishment at all. Their willingness to enact statutes providing that penalty is utterly inconsistent with the notion that they regarded mandatory capital sentencing as beyond "evolving standards of decency." The plurality's glib rejection of these legislative decisions as having little weight on the scale which it finds in the Eighth Amendment seems to me more an instance of its desire to save the people from themselves than a conscientious effort to ascertain the content of any "evolving standard of decency."
III
The second constitutional flaw which the plurality finds in North Carolina's mandatory system is that it has simply "papered over" the problem of unchecked
In North Carolina jurors unwilling to impose the death penalty may simply hang a jury or they may so assert themselves that a verdict of not guilty is brought in; in Louisiana they will have a similar effect in causing some juries to bring in a verdict of guilty of a lesser included offense even though all the jurors are satisfied that the elements of the greater offense are made out. Such jurors, of course, are violating their oath, but such violation is not only consistent with the majority's hypothesis; the majority's hypothesis is bottomed on its occurrence.
For purposes of argument, I accept the plurality's hypothesis; but it seems to me impossible to conclude from it that a mandatory death sentence statute such as North Carolina enacted is any less sound constitutionally than are the systems enacted by Georgia, Florida, and Texas which the Court upholds.
In Georgia juries are entitled to return a sentence of life, rather than death, for no reason whatever, simply
The Texas system much more closely approximates the mandatory North Carolina system which is struck down today. The jury is required to answer three statutory questions. If the questions are unanimously answered in the affirmative, the death penalty must be imposed. It is extremely difficult to see how this system can be any less subject to the infirmities caused by juror nullification which the plurality concludes are fatal to North Carolina's statute. JUSTICES STEWART, POWELL, and STEVENS apparently think they can sidestep this inconsistency because of their belief that one of the three questions will permit consideration of mitigating factors justifying imposition of a life sentence. It is, however, as those Justices recognize, Jurek v. Texas, ante, at 272-273,
The plurality seems to believe, see ante, at 303, that provision for appellate review will afford a check upon the instances of juror arbitrariness in a discretionary system. But is not at all apparent that appellate review of death sentences, through a process of comparing the facts of one case in which a death sentence was imposed with the facts of another in which such a sentence was imposed, will afford any meaningful protection against whatever arbitrariness results from jury discretion. All that such review of death sentences can provide is a comparison of fact situations which must in their nature be highly particularized if not unique, and the only relief which it can afford is to single out the occasional death sentence which in the view of the reviewing court does not conform to the standards established by the legislature.
It is established, of course, that there is no right to appellate review of a criminal sentence. McKane v. Durston, 153 U.S. 684 (1894). That question is not at issue here, since North Carolina, along with the other four States whose systems the petitioners are challenging in these cases, provides appellate review for a death sentence imposed in one of its trial courts.
By definition, of course, there can be no separate appellate review of the factual basis for the sentencing decision
But the plurality sees another role for appellate review in its description of the reasons why the Georgia, Texas, and Florida systems are upheld, and the North Carolina system struck down. And it is doubtless true that Georgia in particular has made a substantial effort to respond to the concerns expressed in Furman, not an easy task considering the glossolalial manner in which those concerns were expressed. The Georgia Supreme Court has indicated that the Georgia death penalty statute requires it to review death sentences imposed by juries on the basis of rough "proportionality." It has announced that it will not sustain, at least at the present time, death penalties imposed for armed robbery because that penalty is so seldom imposed by juries for that offense. It has also indicated that it will not sustain death penalties imposed for rape in certain fact situations, because the death penalty has been so seldom imposed on facts similar to those situations.
But while the Georgia response may be an admirable one as a matter of policy, it has imperfections, if a failure to conform completely to the dictates of the separate opinions in Furman be deemed imperfections, which the opinion of JUSTICES STEWART, POWELL, and STEVENS does not point out. Although there may be some disagreement
Identical defects seem inherent in the systems of appellate review provided in Texas and Florida, for neither requires the sentencing authority which concludes that a death penalty is inappropriate to state what mitigating factors were found to be present or whether certain aggravating factors urged by the prosecutor were actually found to be lacking. Without such detailed factual findings JUSTICES STEWART, POWELL, and STEVENS' praise of appellate review as a cure for the constitutional infirmities which they identify seems to me somewhat forced.
Appellate review affords no correction whatever with respect to those fortunate few who are the beneficiaries
The plurality's insistence on "standards" to "guide the jury in its inevitable exercise of the power to determine which . . . murderers shall live and which shall die" is squarely contrary to the Court's opinion in McGautha v. California, 402 U.S. 183 (1971), written by Mr. Justice Harlan and subscribed to by five other Members of the Court only five years ago. So is the plurality's latter-day recognition, some four years after the decision of the case, that Furman requires "objective standards to guide, regularize, and make rationally reviewable the process for imposing a sentence of death." Its abandonment of stare decisis in this repudiation of McGautha is a far lesser mistake than its substitution of a superficial and contrived constitutional doctrine for the genuine wisdom contained in McGautha. There the Court addressed the "standardless discretion" contention in this language:
It is also worth noting that the plurality opinion repudiates not only the view expressed by the Court in McGautha, but also, as noted in McGautha, the view which had been adhered to by every other American jurisdiction which had considered the question. See id., at 196 n. 8.
IV
The plurality opinion's insistence, in Part III-C, that if the death penalty is to be imposed there must be "particularized consideration of relevant aspects of the character and record of each convicted defendant" is buttressed by neither case authority nor reason. Its principal claim to distinction is that it contradicts important parts of Part III-A in the same opinion.
Part III-A, which describes what it conceives to have been society's turning away from the mandatory imposition of the death penalty, purports to express no opinion as to the constitutionality of a mandatory statue for "an extremely narrow category of homicide, such as murder by a prisoner serving a life sentence." See ante, at 287 n. 7. Yet if "particularized consideration" is to be required in every case under the doctrine expressed in Part III-C, such a reservation in Part III-A is disingenuous at best.
None of the cases half-heartedly cited by the plurality in Part III-C comes within a light-year of establishing the proposition that individualized consideration is a constitutional requisite for the imposition of the death penalty. Pennsylvania ex rel. Sullivan v. Ashe, 302 U.S. 51 (1937), upheld against a claim of violation of
These words of Mr. Justice Butler, speaking for the Court in that case, and those of Mr. Justice Black in Williams v. New York, 337 U.S. 241 (1949), the other opinion relied on by the plurality, lend no support whatever to the principle that the Constitution requires individualized consideration. This is not surprising, since even if such a doctrine had respectable support, which it has not, it is unlikely that either Mr. Justice Butler or Mr. Justice Black would have embraced it.
The plurality also relies upon the indisputable proposition that "death is different" for the result which it reaches in Part III-C. But the respects in which death is "different" from other punishment which may be imposed
One of the principal reasons why death is different is because it is irreversible; an executed defendant cannot be brought back to life. This aspect of the difference between death and other penalties would undoubtedly support statutory provisions for especially careful review of the fairness of the trial, the accuracy of the factfinding process, and the fairness of the sentencing procedure where the death penalty is imposed. But none of those aspects of the death sentence is at issue here. Petitioners were found guilty of the crime of first-degree murder in a trial the constitutional validity of which is unquestioned here. And since the punishment of death is conceded by the plurality not to be a cruel and unusual punishment for such a crime, the irreversible aspect of the death penalty has no connection whatever with any requirement for individualized consideration of the sentence.
The second aspect of the death penalty which makes it "different" from other penalties is the fact that it is indeed an ultimate penalty, which ends a human life rather than simply requiring that a living human being be confined for a given period of time in a penal institution. This aspect of the difference may enter into the decision of whether or not it is a "cruel and unusual" penalty for a given offense. But since in this case the offense was first-degree murder, that particular inquiry need proceed no further.
The plurality's insistence on individualized consideration of the sentencing, therefore, does not depend upon any traditional application of the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment contained in the Eighth Amendment. The punishment here is concededly not
I agree with the conclusion of the plurality, and with that of MR. JUSTICE WHITE, that death is not a cruel and unusual punishment for the offense of which these petitioners were convicted. Since no member of the Court suggests that the trial which led to those convictions in any way fell short of the standards mandated by the Constitution, the judgments of conviction should be affirmed. The Fourteenth Amendment, giving the fullest scope to its "majestic generalities," Fay v. New York, 332 U.S. 261, 282 (1947), is conscripted rather than interpreted when used to permit one but not another system for imposition of the death penalty.
FootNotes
"The evidence that Waxton planned and directed the robbery and that he fired the shots which killed Mrs. Butler and wounded Mr. Stancil is overwhelming. No extenuating circumstances gave the solicitor any incentive to accept the plea he tendered at the close of the State's evidence." 287 N.C. 578, 595-596, 215 S.E.2d 607, 618 (1975).
"§ 14-17. Murder in the first and second degree defined; punishment. —A murder which shall be perpetrated by means of poison, lying in wait, imprisonment, starving, torture, or by any other kind of willful, deliberate and premeditated killing, or which shall be committed in the perpetration or attempt to perpetrate any arson, rape, robbery, burglary or other felony, shall be deemed to be murder in the first degree and shall be punished with death: Provided, if at the time of rendering its verdict in open court, the jury shall so recommend, the punishment shall be imprisonment for life in the State's prison, and the court shall so instruct the jury. All other kinds of murder shall be deemed murder in the second degree, and shall be punished with imprisonment of not less than two nor more than thirty years in the State's prison." N. C. Gen. Stat. § 14-17 (1969).
"Upon the return of a verdict of guilty of any such offense, the court must pronounce a sentence of death. The punishment to be imposed for these capital felonies is no longer a discretionary question for the jury and therefore no longer a proper subject for an instruction by the judge." 282 N. C., at 445, 194 S. E. 2d, at 28-29.
The Court's decision in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972), involved statutes providing for jury discretion in the imposition of death sentences. Several members of the Court in Furman expressly declined to state their views regarding the constitutionality of mandatory death sentence statutes. See id., at 257 (Douglas, J., concurring); id., at 307 (STEWART, J., concurring); id., at 310-311 (WHITE, J., concurring).
Many States during the early 19th century significantly reduced the number of crimes punishable by death. See Davis, The Movement to Abolish Capital Punishment in America, 1787-1861, 63 Am. Hist. Rev. 23, 27, and n. 15 (1957).
Prior to the Tennessee reform in 1838, Maryland had changed from a mandatory to an optional death sentence for the crimes of treason, rape, and arson. Md. Laws 1809, c. 138. For a time during the early colonial period Massachusetts, as part of its "Capitall Lawes" of 1636, apparently had a nonmandatory provision for the crime of rape. See Bedau 28.
Prior to this Court's 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, there remained a handful of obscure statutes scattered among the penal codes in various States that required an automatic death sentence upon conviction of a specified offense. These statutes applied to such esoteric crimes as trainwrecking resulting in death, perjury in a capital case resulting in the execution of an innocent person, and treason against a state government. See Bedau 46-47 (1964 compilation). The most prevalent of these statutes dealt with the crime of treason against state governments. Ibid. It appears that no one has ever been prosecuted under these or other state treason laws. See Hartung, supra, n. 16, at 10. See also T. Sellin, The Death Penalty, A Report for the Model Penal Code Project of the American Law Institute 1 (1959) (discussing the Michigan statute, subsequently repealed in 1963, and the North Dakota statute). Several States retained mandatory death sentences for perjury in capital cases resulting in the execution of an innocent person. Data covering the years from 1930 to 1961 indicate, however, that no State employed its capital perjury statute during that period. See Bedau 46.
The only category of mandatory death sentence statutes that appears to have had any relevance to the actual administration of the death penalty in the years preceding Furman concerned the crimes of murder or assault with a deadly weapon by a life-term prisoner. Statutes of this type apparently existed in five States in 1964. See id., at 46-47. In 1970, only five of the more than 550 prisoners under death sentence across the country had been sentenced under a mandatory death penalty statute. Those prisoners had all been convicted under the California statute applicable to assaults by life-term prisoners. See Brief For NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., et al., as Amici Curiae in McGautha v. California, O. T. 1970, No. 70-203, p. 15 n. 19. We have no occasion in this case to examine the constitutionality of mandatory death sentence statutes applicable to prisoners serving life sentences.
A study of the death penalty submitted to the American Law Institute noted that juries in Massachusetts and Connecticut had "for many years" resorted to second-degree murder convictions to avoid the consequences of those States' mandatory death penalty statutes for first-degree murder, prior to their replacement with discretionary sentencing in 1951. See Sellin, supra, n. 25, at 13.
A 1973 Pennsylvania legislative report surveying the available literature analyzing mandatory death sentence statutes concluded:
"Although the data collection techniques in some instances are weak, the uniformity of the conclusions in substantiating what these authors termed `jury nullification' (i. e. refusal to convict because of the required penalty) is impressive. Authors on both sides of the capital punishment debate reached essentially the same conclusions. Authors writing about the mandatory death penalty who wrote in 1892 reached the same conclusions as persons writing in the 1950's and 1960's." McCloskey, A Review of the Literature Contrasting Mandatory and Discretionary Systems of Sentencing Capital Cases, in Report of the Governor's Study Commission on Capital Punishment 100, 101 (Pa., 1973).
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