A federal district court judge just ruled that the federal death penalty is unconstitutional.
The SCOTUS ruled fairly recently that the death penalty was constitutional, given certain precautions. Isn’t Judge Sessions required to follow the Supreme Court? Could Judge Sessions reinstall laws against abortion? I hope not! So, why is it OK for him to overthrow the death penalty decision?
December
Your link requires registration to view the contents, so I haven’t seen them.
My immediate guess is the the District Court has ruled on the constitutionality of the death penalty in specific circumstances which can be distinguished from those in relation to which the Supreme Court has already ruled.
Judge sessions ruled only that the particular federal death penalty statute at issue was unconstitutional, not that the death penalty was itself unconstitutional.
Headlines are so damn deceptive. As UDS said, the Judge ruled on the merits of the federal death penalty in whatever form it exists. (I.e., the federal statute doesn’t protect a defendant’s 4th Amendment rights. That doesn’t mean a new statute couldn’t be written which does allow the death penalty, subject to the court’s restrictions, and assuming the 2nd circuit and maybe even SCOTUS affirms his decision.) He’s not ruling on the death penalty per se, such that the ruling has no impact on state death penalty laws.
Here’s another link. http://www.herald-sun.com/firstnews/37-270141.html
You’re welcome.
minty is this a typo? Or, was it a sarcastic comment, implying that you had fully answered the question in the OP?
I do appreciate the explanations that you and ** ResIpsaLoquitor** provided, but would like to go farther. A clever judge can usually find some excuse for a ruling. I’m concerned that this district court judge may be making law. Here are some issues of interest to me:
– Was the judge’s decision legally forced on him, or was he stretching because he disapproves of the death penalty?
– Is his decision part of a broader campaign against the death penalty (as may be suggested by the Times’s headline)?
– I believe lawyers would tend to disapprove of judges who abuse their power to make law. Is there less disapproval when the issue is oopposition to the death penalty?
– A lawyer once told an anecdote about how his Harvard Law School Professor indicated that law was only about winning and losing, not about right and wrong. The two explanations above deal with the specifics of the judge’s decision, more than its correctness. Is it somehow inappropriate for us to second-guess this judge’s decision? Do lawyers hesitate to discuss whether some judicial decision was right or wrong?
december:
Judge Sessions did not ignore stare decisis. He ruled on a narrow point that has not been authoritatively established in federal court as yet - in other words, he has started the process by which precedential rulings are ultimately made.
The ruling says that the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994 is unconstitutional because it permits the finder of fact to ignore the rules of evidence when considering information relevant to death penalty eligibility. This is, according to Judge Sessions, a violation of the Due Process Clause and the rights of confrontation and cross-examination.
At issue how aggravating evidence - that is, evidence that worsens the accused’s case - may be presented. Paragraph © of 18 U.S.C § 3593 says in part:
In other words, having gained a conviction, the government may seek to pursuade the jury to impose death by submitting evidence not ordinarily admissible at trial, subject only to the judge’s finding that its prejudicial value is not outweighed by its probative value.
This is a problem, because of the on-going debate in the legal world on the subject of sentencing factors as opposed to elements of the crime.
Briefly, each and every element of the crime must be proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. But some laws sought to impose sentence enhancements under certain circumstances. For example, the penalty for first-offense armed robbery might be five to ten years; if the act is a second offense, the penalty might be ten to twenty years. The fact that a previous conviction existed was not considered an element of the crime of armed robbery, since it affected only the punishment, not the guilt. Or a law against assault might carry a one-year sentence, unless the assault was based on racial or sexual preference hatred; that motive might permit the imposition of a three-year sentence — even though motive is not an element of the crime of assault.
This came to a head in the relatively recent Apprendi decision, in which the Supreme Court said that any fact that enhances the penalty, other than a previous conviction, must be submitted to the jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt, just like an element of the crime.
Now comes the case which motivated the OP. If, as Apprendi taught, an aggravating sentencing fact must be found by the jury beyond a reasonable doubt, how can it be fair to remove those facts from the usual Due Process guarantees asscoiated with fact-finding at trial? Hearsay testimony is not generally permitted at trial, because an accused has a constitutional right to cross-examine his accuser. But hearsay testimony is admissible at a federal death penalty sentencing hearing. If we are to treat the facts that the hearsay testimony seeks to establish as Apprendi would have us do so, is there really room to admit them without a way to test their reliability by cross-examination?
I hope this sheds a bit of light on the issue.
I think that this is the opinion in question.
Darn straight we fully answered it. Our answers explained everything asked by your OP. If you wanted more, you’re certainly welcome to ask more, but at least acknowledge the three prompt, accurate, and complete answers to your original inquiry.
As I said, minty, I do appreciate the responses from you and RIL. And, Bricker, yes your answer sheds quite a bit of light on the issue.
minty, your response did not explicitly address the question of whether, in practice, stare decisis applies differently to the death penalty than to other rulings, such as Roe v. Wade. Bricker’s explanation makes it sound as though this is a normal part of the judicial interpretation process. In fact, he makes a convincing case that the judge’s decision is correct.
One question occurs to me, Bricker. Could Judge Sessions have kept the Federal Death Penalty, but added a requirement that the Due Process guarantees be followed in the sentencing hearing, rather than invaldiate the entire law? If so, does his decision suggest that he was looking for a reason to invalidate the law. Another question. Past criminal record has always been an aspect of sentencing. So, how can it be a Constitutional requirement that a sentencing decision ignore past crimes?
Getting back to the OP, ISTM that judges are chipping away at the death penalty, but not chipping away at, say, Roe V. Wade. I would be flabbergasted if, e.g., some district court judge required a hearing with the complete rules of evidence before a fetus could be “executed.” That would never happen. Roe v. Wade is settled law.
Yet, the death penalty seems not to be settled law. I wonder what the grounds were in the other case referred to by the Times. My guess is that it was different aspect of the law.
From my layperson’s POV, it appears that there is a broad campaign to invalidate the death penalty, and Judge Sessions’s decision was just one manifestation. Am I wrong?
Of course I didn’t address that question. You didn’t ask it.
Allow me to introduce you to Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), the case that demonstrates the fundamental flaw of your inquiry. To wit, Roe v. Wade has had a hell of a lot of chips taken out of it.
Thanks for the cite. You are correct that law-makers have tried to cut back on Roe v. Wade. However, your example does not contradict what I wrote:
Supreme Court = Judges
december:
I should point out, for whatever value it may have, that I am adamantly opposed to the death penalty, and this may well color either my analysis, or whatever credit you wish to give my analysis.
That bias disclosed, let us move on.
As I mentioned above, Apprendi stands for the proposition that any aggravating factors that enhance sentences with the exception of previous convictions must be submitted to a jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Prior convictions may be proved to a judge by certified copies of the conviction orders. Apprendi addresses things like quantities of drugs, especially cruel and heinous methods of killing, and other factors that are not elements of the crime, but may be used to enhance a sentence.
You ask:
Errr… maybe, but very doubtful.
In general, evidentiary rulings are left to the discretion of the trial court, and will not be disturbed on appeal unless they reflect an abuse of that discretion. In other words, a reviewing judge will not ask, “Would I have also made that decision?” but rather, “Could a reasonable judge, given the record, have made that decision?”
Presumably, Judge Sessions could have sustained any objection to evidence brought forth during the sentencing phase that did not comport with trial rules of evidence. Theoretically, he could have thus ensured that this particular trial was free from the flaw identified above.
However, this scheme would have required that the defense attorney somehow divined that this was the plan. He may not have, on his own, objected to hearsay testimony, knowing that the law permitted it. And while the judge may sua sponte (on his own motion) make rulings, for him to take such a role in this instance would mean abandoning his neutrality and becoming, effectively, an advocate for the defense’s position. This would have been inappropriate.
Even his rulings might have been subject to challenge by way of interlocutory appeal. An evidentiary ruling that flies in the face of black-letter law may well be seen as an abuse of discretion.
For this reason, I don’t think the judge could simply fashion this particular law in this particular case to make it conform to the requirements of the Constitution.
In general, I dislike judicial “legislation”. Even though I oppose the death penalty, it is the law of the land, and the proper avenue to change it rests with the legislature, not the courts.
The Constitution is the highest law by which the government of this land is exercised. As such, it should not be subject to judicial amendment to express whatever a majority of an appellate court happens to conclude at any given time is the more enlightened viewpoint on a particular controversial issue. If our constitution can be judicially amended in such a manner, that constitutes government by court, rather than government through a constitutional system of which the court is a separate and equal branch.
To hold otherwise would be to allow any and all disaffected groups unable to obtain legislative redress need only convince a majority of this court that what they seek is an implicit “right” afforded by the Constitution. Our constitution wisely provides for
separation of powers, and authorizes the legislature to make public policy determinations in this area.
At the same time, a mere act of Congress cannot override the protections afforded by the Constitution. The Constitution requires that we be able to confront witnesses against us. That simple principle has become enshrined in a number of evidentiary rules and laws. Congress may not abrogate that right by statute.
This ruling, if upheld, will merely require that the same guarantees go into evidence presented at sentencing as to evidence presented at trial. This doesn’t strike me as particularly onerous.
Man, too bad the act doesn’t apply to the University of Missouri law school. I’d like to ignore the FRE, that way I wouldn’t have any reading to do for tomorrow. Anyway, if this summarizes the issue in a nutshell, it looks like a wise decision to me. I’m generally skeptical of the amount of cases that are somehow shoved under the awning of “due process” and “equal protection”, usually just contrived reasoning approaches made by activist judges, but this seems like an excellent example of what “due process” is really about.
BTW, as I understand it, this isn’t GQ, so december really wasn’t obligated to “thank” anyone for their answers. If the OP is a starting point for a broader discussion, I’d think extending the issue to ask further questions is pretty natural, so I don’t understand the hostile sarcasm in this thread.
Rex, the OP proceeded from a giant misunderstanding about what Judge Sessions had ruled. That misunderstanding was quickly corrected, mooting the inquiries of his OP. But as is so often the case, december chose not to acknowledge his (perfectly understandable) error and ignored three people who set the record straight. I really don’t care about the courtesy of a thank you, but ignoring contrary evidence altogether is very, very bad form.
Minty, December didn’t have time to ignore you. The time between his OP and second post was less than two hours. How were you ignored? Did december put up another post that restated his OP or pushed his case without regard to your response? No, he did not.
Had I posted the same OP and (at someone’s request) a re-link 100 minutes later you wouldn’t have taken a snide shot at me. You weren’t being ignored, unless his getting into a more detailed discussion with bricker is tantamount to ignoring everyone else, which it isn’t.
Minty:
I don’t think december’s conduct in this thread is as bad as your post above suggests.
It’s true that the point originally raised was not accurate, but as you acknowledge, this error was perfectly understandable.
But I don’t agree that the responses posted by you, RIL, and UDS “mooted” the inquiry. While your responses were accurate, they were not exactly overwhelming in detail. The distinction between ruling the death penalty itself unconstitutional and a death penalty statute unconstitutional is one that may be immediately apparent to a lay reader. Indeed, I could argue that the Furman decision did precisely the same thing: invalidate not the death penalty itself, but the statutory trial and sentencing schemes at issue. But from a practical perspective, Furman halted all capital punishment in the country until Gregg came along. December can certainly be forgiven for wondering if this decision might ultimately have the same prospective effect, and if the decision was legally sound or the result of unfettered judicial activism.
Remember that Apprendi sent shock waves through the legal community, both of surprise and change, since prior to that it was common to permit aggravating sentencing factors to be proved to a judge by preponderence of the evidence. In my view, this decision is a natural consequence of Apprendi… but that’s a subtle point to the lay observer, I think.
I would echo RickJay’s observation that, had another poster engaged in the precise behavior december has, it would not have aroused your ire. Perhaps this is merely the natural price december must pay for obstreperous behavior in other threads, but in my humble view, in this thread, his hands are clean.
I obviously disagree, but will nevertheless be happy to withdraw the hijack.