Contemporary Death Penalty Issues: New Dimensions/international Perspectives

• In Event: Capital Punishment: Sentencing Issues and Controversies

Abstract

On January 12, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court in Hurst v. Florida (#24-7505), in a 8-1 decision, struck down Florida’s death penalty statute stating that by using the sentencing phase jury’s decision as being only advisory to a judge ( who determines the sentence and hence the fate of the convicted felon), violates the 6th Amendment Constitutional Right to a “fair trial by an impartial jury”. This comes 40-years following the reinstatement of the death sentence in 1976 in which Florida (Proffit v. Florida) joined Georgia and Texas in challenging Furman v. Georgia (1972) which outlawed the death sentence as it was being practiced in the U.S. This decision will resonate throughout the 31 states (and federal jurisdiction) that currently have the death penalty on their books. Added to this argument is the EU ban on the sale of sodium thiopental used in the “death-by-injection” procedure. Also, more conservative states are weighting the cost of a death sentence vis-a-vis “life in prison without parole.” Nebraska is currently addressing this issue. And the idea of “social justice” factors in these arguments given that the vast majority of death-qualified sentences and actual executions occur in conservative states, notably those in the South.

Author

• Laurence Armand French, University of New Hampshire