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State Constitutionalism and the Death Penalty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2009

Alan Rogers
Alan Rogers
Affiliation:
Boston College
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Extract

Concerned that the United States Supreme Court's abolition of the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia (1972) would not be sustained, abolitionists turned to state supreme courts. Through their efforts, two states succeeded in realizing that goal: California, briefly, and Massachusetts, where the death penalty remains unconstitutional.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , January 2008 , pp. 143 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2008

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References

Notes

1. Furman v. Georgia, 480 U.S. 238 (1972). People v. Anderson, 6 Cal. 3rd 628 (1972). Commonwealth v. O'Neal, 369 Mass. 242 (1975).

2. Michigan (1847), Rhode Island (1852), Wisconsin (1853), Iowa (1872), Maine (1887), Minnesota (1911), and North Dakota (1915). National Prisoner Statistics Report: Capital Punishment, 1984 (Washington, D.C., 1984), 12Google Scholar. West Virginia, New York, Vermont, and New Mexico.

3. Acker, James R. and Walsh, Elizabeth R., “Challenging the Death Penalty Under State Constitutions,” 42 Vanderbilt Law Review 1299 (1989)Google Scholar.

4. Mosk, Stanley, “The Eighth Amendment Rediscovered,” 1 Loyola University Law Review 15 (1968)Google Scholar and “State Constitutionalism: Both Liberal and Conservative,” 63 Texas Law Review 1081 (1985)Google Scholar. Commonwealth v. O'Neal, 369 Mass. 242, 278 (1975). Freisen, Jennifer, State Constitutional Law: Litigating Individual Rights, Claims, and Defenses, 2 vols. (New York, 2000)Google Scholar, champions state constitutionalism. Gardner, James, “The Failed Discourse of State Constitutionalism,” 90 Michigan Law Review 761 (1992)Google Scholar and Kahn, Paul W., “Interpretation and Authority in State Constitutionalism,” 106 Harvard Law Review 1147 (1993)Google Scholar, reject state constitutionalism. A Columbia Law School study noted that state courts made a high number of errors in capital cases, emphasizing the need for federal review. James S. Liebman et al., “A Broken System: Error Rates in Capital Cases, 1973–1995,” www.law.columbia.edu/instructionalservices/liebman/liebman/Liebman9620Study/docs/1/executivesummary.html. Marcotte, Paul, “Federalism and the Rise of State Courts,” 73 ABA Journal 60 (1987)Google Scholar.

5. Hofstadter, Richard, The Progressive Historians (New York, 1968), 454–455Google Scholar.

6. Judge Douglas quoted in O'Brien, David, Storm Center: The Supreme Court in American Politics, 7th ed. (New York, 2005), 345Google Scholar. Brennan, William, “State Constitutions and the Protection of Individual Rights,” 90 Harvard Law Review 489 (1970)Google Scholar, and “The Bill of Rights and the States: The Revival of State Constitutions as Guardians of Individual Rights,” 59 New York University Law Review 535 (1986)Google Scholar.

7. In Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032 (1983), the Court ruled that when a state court defends a right broader than approved by the Supreme Court, it must make a “plain statement” that it rests on “adequate and independent state grounds.”

8. Commonwealth v. O'Neal, 369 Mass. 242, 244, 263–64n23 (1975).

9. Banner, Stuart, The Death Penalty: An American History (Cambridge, Mass., 2002), 241Google Scholar. Gottlieb, Gerald H., “Testing the Death Penalty,” 34 Southern California Law Review (1961), 281Google Scholar. Gottlieb's, amicus brief In re Anderson, 69 Cal. 2nd 613 (1968)Google Scholar.

10. The Supreme Court incorporated the Eighth Amendment through the Fourteenth in Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660, 672 (1962). Twenty-one states ban “cruel and unusual punishment”; twenty-one prohibit “cruel or unusual punishment”; and six forbid “cruel punishment.”

11. Meltsner, Michael, Cruel and Unusual: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment (New York, 1973), 135, 136Google Scholar.

12. Ibid., 136–37, 107. Banner, The Death Penalty, 252.

13. Hill v. Nelson, 271 F.Supp. 439, 422 (N.D. Calif. 1967).

14. Meltsner, Cruel and Unusual, 137–38. Hill v. Nelson, 272 F. Supp. 790, 797–98 (N.D. Calif. 1967).

15. Meltsner, Cruel and Unusual, 140–41. In Re Anderson, 69 Cal. 2nd 613, 616, 617, 632 (1968).

16. In re Anderson, 69 Cal. 2nd 613, 634 (1968). Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510 (1968). The Court reversed Witherspoon's death sentence. The ruling affected California because by statute capital trials were bifurcated into a guilt and penalty phase. California Penal Code section 190.1. In re Anderson, 69 Cal. 2nd 613, 635, 669 (1968).

17. Ibid., 634 (1968). Mosk quoting Frankfurter, Felix, “The Supreme Court in the Mirror of the Justices,” 105 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 781, 794 (1957)Google Scholar. A few months before In re Anderson, Mosk published “The Eighth Amendment Rediscovered,” 1 Loyola University Law Review 15 (1968)Google Scholar. Meltsner, Cruel and Unusual, 143.

18. Ibid., 266–67. People v. Anderson, 6 Cal. 3rd 628, 634 (1972).

19. bid., 635, 637, 638 (1972).

20. New York Times, 20 February 1972. People v. Anderson, 6 Cal. 3rd 628, 640, 642 (1972). Wright noted that In re Anderson, 69 Cal. 2nd 613, the court had focused largely on the lack of standards and its brief discussion of cruel or unusual punishment did not focus on the differences between cruel and unusual and cruel or unusual. Ibid., 645.

21. People v. Anderson, 6 Cal. 3rd 628, 646, 648, 650, 651. Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86 (1958). Wright rejected the argument that the death penalty could be imposed as vengeance for murder. Williams v. New York, 337 U.S. 241, 248 (1949).

22. Ibid., 655. Justice McComb dissented.

23. New York Times, 20 February 1972.

24. San Francisco Chronicle, 19 February 1972, as quoted in Switzer, Walter E., “Capital Punishment,” 23 Pacific Historian 45, 63 (1979)Google Scholar.

25. Los Angeles Times, 19, 21 February 1972. The Times was the only major California newspaper to support the court's Anderson II decision. Barrett, Edward L. Jr., “Anderson and the Judicial Function,” 45 Southern California Law Review 739, 741 (1972)Google Scholar.

26. Los Angeles Times, 13 March 1972. Meltsner, Cruel and Unusual, 306–7. California Constitution, Article I, section 27. New York Times, 12 November 1972.

27. Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976). California S.B. 155, chap. 316 (1977).

28. Rogers, Alan, “‘Success—At Long Last’: The Abolition of the Death Penalty in Massachusetts, 1928–1984,” 22 Boston College Third World Law Journal 281, 286–90 (2002)Google Scholar. Nationwide about 1,700 prisoners were executed from 1930 to 1940.

29. Massachusetts Statutes, 1939, chap. 341. The SJC hesitated to us its new power, Commonwealth v. Gricus, 317 Mass. 403, 406 (1944) and Commonwealth v. Bellino, 320 Mass. 635, 645–46 (1947).

30. District Attorney v. Watson, 381 Mass. 648, 662 (1980). Davoren, John F. X., Election Statistics: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts (Boston, 1968), 400Google Scholar.

31. Boston Globe, 9 August 1973. “Request for an Opinion from the Supreme Judicial Court on Proposed House Bill No. 7231.” Boston Globe, 6 December 1973.

32. Commonwealth v. O'Neal, 367 Mass. 440, 449, 447 n. 5 (1975). The Boston Globe, 7 October 1994, greeted Tauro's appointment to the SJC with derision. But Tauro surprised his critics; Lombardo v. D. F. Frangloso, 269 N.E. 2nd 836, 840 (Mass. 1972) and Commonwealth v. Mutina, 323 N.E. 2nd 294 (Mass. 1975).

33. Commonwealth v. O'Neal, 369 Mass. 242, 249, 258, 263 (1975).

34. Ibid., 267, 270, 271, 272–73.

35. Boston Globe, 23, 26 December 1975.

36. Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976), Opinion of the Justices to the House of Representatives, 364 N.E. 2nd 184, 188 (1977).

37. 1979 Mass. Acts 488. District Attorney v. Watson, 381 Mass. 648 (1980).

38. District Attorney v. Watson, 381 Mass. 648, 650, 660, 662 (1988). For community opinion, see Boston Globe, 29 October 1980.

39. Massachusetts Constitution, part I, section 26, as amended. Commonwealth v. Colon-Cruz, 393 Mass. 150, 152, 158, 170 (1984). An editorial on 19 October 1984 in the Boston Globe supported the court's decision.