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An Alabama inmate was put to death by lethal injection on Thursday after a deadlocked Supreme Court refused to stay his execution, The Associated Press reported. The inmate, Ronald B. Smith, had been sentenced to death by a judge despite a jury's recommendation of life without parole.
Mr. Smith was convicted in 1995 of murdering Casey Wilson, a convenience store clerk, the previous year. By a vote of 7 to 5, the jury rejected the death penalty and recommended a sentence of life without parole. The judge overrode that recommendation, sentencing Mr. Smith to death.
[...] In January, the Supreme Court struck down Florida's capital sentencing system, which also allowed judicial overrides of jury recommendations of life sentences. "The Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death,"
Should judges be allowed to overrule a jury's decision for sentencing?
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday December 11 2016, @09:14PM
In practice though, I'm sure there's jurors that ultimately can't sentence somebody to death even if the law demands it.
Yes, while people who object to the death penalty exist, they often don't end up on juries in capital cases. In such cases, during voir dire, lawyers generally query to find out if jurors are willing to impose the death sentence. And if they have moral objections to the death penalty in general, they are usually summarily dismissed from the jury pool. It's known as creating a death-qualified jury [wikipedia.org], or colloquially in the legal profession as "Witherspooning a jury," since it's a procedure that came about after a SCOTUS ruling (Witherspoon v. Illiinois) on such things.
Obviously sometimes such objectors still do lie their way through the jury selection process, but that's actually relatively rare. Most people don't want to serve the long jury duty time of capital cases anyway, so lying through that process just to have a CHANCE to end up on a jury which MIGHT have an opportunity to decide on a death penalty?
Of course this process introduces a lot of problems in jury selection in general. Specifically, it's been shown that jurors who advocate the death penalty are generally more likely to convict in general, so just the appearance of a capital charge can basically ensure a jury that's more likely to convict.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Sunday December 11 2016, @11:09PM
It's not just about lying, some people genuinely believe that they could impose it, but when push comes to shove it's different when it's real.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday December 12 2016, @01:34AM
Sure, that can happen too. But given the number of people who have been sentenced to death row and were later exonerated, I think any safeguard in the system is necessary. If you can't get 12 death-qualified folks to look at the defendant and say "he deserves to die," then I don't think their opinions (whatever their reasons) should be overruled by a judge.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Monday December 12 2016, @03:36AM
I completely agree. While I think it's unrealistic to ever make it 100% mistake free, other than by removing the possibility completely, it seems like the process is far more error prone than it ought to be. Not just the people on trial, but the color of the victim plays an unreasonable role in the decision.
And to make matters worse, if you kill enough people, they'll often times let you off with life in prison, just so that they can find the bodies. If serial killers aren't sentenced to death, then the whole concept is rather meaningless.
There's also the issue of there being no evidence that the death penalty actually deters crime. People don't commit crimes assuming that they'll be caught, there's few that do that. So, what's the point of getting blood on society's hands unnecessarily?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 12 2016, @10:55AM
It seems to me that the group of people for the death penalty largely intersects with the group of people who believe that if you are arrested, you must be guilty.
Filtering the jury for the first thus has a high probability of also filtering the jury for the second.