{"id":168,"date":"2026-06-08T14:37:33","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T14:37:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=168"},"modified":"2026-06-08T14:37:33","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T14:37:33","slug":"one-of-the-supreme-courts-worst-decisions-is-about-to-turn-50-its-past-time-to-reverse-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=168","title":{"rendered":"One of the Supreme Court\u2019s Worst Decisions Is About to Turn 50. It\u2019s Past Time to Reverse It."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

This is part of <\/em>Opinionpalooza<\/em>, Slate\u2019s coverage of the major decisions from the Supreme Court. Keep up with all of our Supreme Court coverage and analysis by <\/em>signing up for weekly email roundups<\/em>. The best way to support our work\u2014and unlock exclusive legal analysis\u2014is by joining <\/em>Slate Plus<\/em>. (If you are already a member, consider a <\/em>donation<\/em> or <\/em>merch<\/em>!)<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more The Catholic Church Fired an In-House Exorcist for Saying UFOs Are Actually Demons. I Can Explain.<\/a><\/p>\n

So far this year, 15 people have been executed in the United States. More than half of them were Black men; nearly all of them were put to death in Florida, Oklahoma, or Texas. Last year, the number of executions was 47, the largest number in 16 years. Fifteen of them were people of color: 14 Black people and one Hispanic person.<\/p>\n

Fifty years after the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty as constitutionally permissible after a brief ban, these figures are a reminder that executions still play a role in American life. If the Trump administration gets its way, they will play an even bigger role. Capital punishment may be \u201calive\u201d in the United States, but it is not well.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

The death penalty system is rife with miscarriages of justice, racial discrimination, execution failures, and arbitrariness from beginning to end.\u00a0None of this is news, but on the 50th<\/sup> anniversary of the death penalty\u2019s reinstatement in the United States, it is worth reflecting on why those problems persist.<\/p>\n

The death penalty returned after a brief period of suspension when the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision in Gregg v. Georgia<\/em> on July 2, 1976. Gregg<\/em> said that death sentences and executions could resume because the court was satisfied that the penalty could be administered in a way that guaranteed that capital defendants would be treated fairly and equally.<\/p>\n

The court\u2019s decision in Gregg<\/em> was an exercise in smoke and mirrors and wishful thinking. Fifty years of constitutional fiction is enough. It is time to face the fact that Gregg<\/em> failed to put the death penalty on a sound footing and that nothing can improve on Gregg<\/em>\u2019s frailties.<\/p>\n

Four years before Gregg<\/em>, the Supreme Court had brought the death penalty to a halt in Furman v. Georgia<\/em>. It found that statutes which left it to \u201cthe [complete] discretion of the judge or of the jury\u201d whether or not to sentence someone to death were not sufficient to guarantee against arbitrary or discriminatory results.<\/p>\n

Borrowing language from an earlier case, Justice William Douglas argued that giving \u201cuntrammeled discretion\u201d to the judge or jury to make sentencing decisions in capital cases was \u201coffensive to \u2026 the Constitution.\u201d Such \u201cdiscretionary statutes are unconstitutional,\u201d he added, \u201cin their operation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are pregnant with discrimination,\u201d Douglas added, \u201cand discrimination is an ingredient not compatible with the idea of equal protection of the laws that is implicit in the ban on \u2018cruel and unusual\u2019 punishments.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mere risk of discrimination was intolerable to the Furman<\/em> court.<\/p>\n

But instead of ending capital punishment in the United States, the Furman<\/em> decision set off a scramble in which states reenacted their death penalty laws in the hope of curing the problem Justice Douglas identified. As professor Evan Mandery observes, \u201cBetween the Furman<\/em> decision and 1976, 35 states passed new death penalty statutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSeven,\u201d he says, \u201cmade the death penalty mandatory for murder. Others, including Georgia, instead attempted to make the process less \u2018arbitrary\u2019 by requiring capital jurors to find \u2018aggravating\u2019 factors, by separating capital trials into the guilt\/innocence and sentencing phases we see today and by guaranteeing appellate review of all death sentences.\u201d<\/p>\n

Georgia identified the conditions under which someone who committed a capital crime would be \u201cdeath-eligible.\u201d It specified 10 aggravating factors, the presence of which would allow a jury to return a death sentence in the belief that such \u201cguided discretion\u201d would pass constitutional muster.<\/p>\n

And it did.<\/p>\n

Mandery suggests that the \u201cpolitical and legal momentum against Furman<\/em>\u201dweighed on the Supreme Court justices when they heard Gregg v. Georgia<\/em>. That led them to \u201creject the mandatory statutes, which they regarded as barbaric, but uphold the guided discretion approach.\u201d<\/p>\n

Writing for the majority in Gregg<\/em>, Justice Potter Stewart said that \u201cFurman<\/em> mandates that, where discretion is afforded a sentencing body on a matter so grave as the determination of whether a human life should be taken or spared, that discretion must be suitably directed and limited so as to minimize the risk of wholly arbitrary and capricious action.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Will Graham Platner Make It to November?<\/a><\/p>\n

Discretion that is \u201csuitably directed and limited\u201d would \u201censure \u2026 the sentencing authority is apprised of the information relevant to the imposition of sentence and provided with standards to guide its use of that information.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGuided\u201d discretion sounds good. But, as the Gregg<\/em> court recognized, that guidance could only take a jury so far. Once it was found that a capital crime fell within the aggravating factors specified in the statute, the offender could<\/em> be given a death sentence.<\/p>\n

Whether they would<\/em> receive such a sentence was again left to the jury, to be exercised in a wholly discretionary manner. In Stewart\u2019s view, what a jury was not to be trusted to do without the guidance given in the Georgia statute, they could now be entrusted to do.<\/p>\n

Do you believe in magic? Apparently, Stewart and the six other justices who joined the majority did.<\/p>\n

But even he recognized that his formula could only \u201cminimize (not eliminate) the risk of wholly arbitrary and capricious action.\u201d Nonetheless, the deed was done, and the death penalty was reborn.<\/p>\n

Gregg<\/em>, Mandery writes, \u201ccreated the bedrock principles of modern death penalty jurisprudence: that a non-arbitrary death penalty satisfies the Constitution and that the requirement of non-arbitrariness could be satisfied by Georgia\u2019s approach.\u201d But since Gregg<\/em> was handed down, we have learned that arbitrary and capricious action has remained characteristic of America\u2019s death penalty system.<\/p>\n

Studies have shown that even after Gregg<\/em>, the race of the victim plays a powerful role in determining who gets a death sentence. \u00a0Someone who murders a white victim is much more likely to receive such a sentence than someone who murders a person of color, regardless of the defendant\u2019s race.<\/p>\n

We know that geography also matters. Defendants who commit a capital crime in one county may stand very different chances of getting a death sentence than someone who did the same thing in another county in the same state.<\/p>\n

And we know that death sentences are often reversed on appeal because of problems in the trials of someone accused of a capital crime.<\/p>\n

Looking back at the legacy of Gregg<\/em> 10 years ago, Mandery concluded that \u201cexces\u00adsive racism, a fail\u00adure to iden\u00adti\u00adfy the \u200b\u2018worst of the worst\u2019 among mur\u00adder\u00aders, the death penalty\u2019s spo\u00adradic use, or sim\u00adple geo\u00adgraph\u00adi\u00adcal ran\u00addom\u00adness\u201d remain persistent problems in the death penalty system.<\/p>\n

Ten years later, nothing has changed.<\/p>\n

We continue to send people to their death under \u201cthe \u200b\u2018guid\u00aded dis\u00adcre\u00adtion\u2019 statutes endorsed in Gregg<\/em>.\u201d Mandery is right to conclude that such statutes \u201chaven\u2019t remote\u00adly ful\u00adfilled their promise.\u201d<\/p>\n

We should think of that as this year\u2019s execution total grows. Surely, now 50 years after Gregg<\/em>, it is time to stop, as Justice Harry Blackmun once famously said, tinkering with the machinery of death.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more What if the Entire Election Took a Month?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

None of this is news, but on the 50th anniversary of the death penalty\u2019s reinstatement, it is worth reflecting on why those problems persist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":167,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[87,18,11,73,15],"class_list":["post-168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jurisprudence","tag-death-penalty","tag-judiciary","tag-jurisprudence","tag-opinionpalooza-2026","tag-supreme-court"],"yoast_head":"\nOne of the Supreme Court\u2019s Worst Decisions Is About to Turn 50. 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