Jury Determination of Facts Necessary To Support The Death Sentence
Note: This holding is no longer good law in light of Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584 (2002).
Walton's first contention before the Court was that "every finding of fact underlying the sentencing decision must be made by a jury, not by a judge, and that the Arizona scheme would be constitutional only if a jury decides what aggravating and mitigating circumstances are present in a given case and the trial judge then imposes the sentence based on those findings." But the Court had consistently rejected the suggestion that the Constitution required jury sentencing. Aggravating factors were not "elements" of the crime; as the Court had previously held, they were merely standards to guide the choice between a death sentence or a sentence of life imprisonment. Moreover, the Constitution does allow a judge to make the findings required by Enmund v. Florida and Tison v. Arizona. The Enmund/Tison finding is not a substantive limit on the definition of a crime, and neither were aggravating factors. Accordingly, the Sixth Amendment did not require a jury to pass on aggravating factors.
Justice Scalia concurred in this part of the holding in Walton. It would be another eight years before he would first express his view that every fact necessary to a criminal defendant's punishment must be submitted to a jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt, and six more years after that before that view would become fully articulated as the law of the land.
Read more about this topic: Walton V. Arizona
Famous quotes containing the words jury, facts, support, death and/or sentence:
“A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)
“Neither moral relations nor the moral law can swing in vacuo. Their only habitat can be a mind which feels them; and no world composed of merely physical facts can possibly be a world to which ethical propositions apply.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“The wisest thing a parent can do is to let preschool children figure out themselves how to draw the human figure, or solve a whole range of problems, from overcoming Saturday-morning boredom to dealing with a neighborhood bully. But even while standing on the sidelines, parents can frequently offer support in helping children discover what they want to accomplish.”
—John F. Clabby (20th century)
“If society gives up the right to impose the death penalty, then self help will appear again and personal vendettas will be around the corner.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)