Supreme Court refuses to consider constitutionality of death penalty; two justices dissent
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to hear a case contending that the death penalty violates the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer dissented from the cert denial in an opinion (PDF) joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The same justices called for briefing on the constitutionality of the death penalty in a dissent last year.
In the new case, Tucker v. Louisiana, Breyer noted that the petitioner, Lamondre Tucker, was sentenced to death in Caddo Parish. The county that imposes almost half the death sentences in Louisiana, though it accounts for only 5 percent of the state’s population and 5 percent of its homicides.
“Given these facts,” Breyer wrote, “Tucker may well have received the death penalty not because of the comparative egregiousness of his crime, but because of an arbitrary feature of his case, namely, geography. … One could reasonably believe that if Tucker had committed the same crime but been tried and sentenced just across the Red River in, say, Bossier Parish, he would not now be on death row.”
Hat tip to SCOTUSblog.
