Supreme Court will consider need to instruct capital jurors on mitigation burden of proof
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide three death-penalty cases in which the defendants contend jurors were not properly instructed about mitigating evidence.
The issue in the three cases is whether jurors weighing the death penalty must be told that evidence mitigating against capital punishment need not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, according to SCOTUSblog and Reuters. The Kansas Supreme Court had held the Eighth Amendment required the instruction.
Two of the cases involve brothers Jonathan and Reginald Carr, convicted in connection with a December 2000 crime spree in Wichita, Kansas, that included a carjacking, forced ATM withdrawals, home invasion, rape, the shooting death of a woman in her vehicle, and the shooting deaths of four people on a soccer field, according to the state’s cert petition (PDF) in Jonathan Carr’s case. A fifth soccer-field shooting victim survived.
In the third case, defendant Sidney Gleason of Kansas was sentenced to death for the 2004 murders of two people. The cert petition (PDF) is here.
The justices will also consider whether the Carr brothers should have had separate capital sentencing hearings.
