Victim impact testimony can't include sentencing recommendation, Supreme Court rules
The U.S. Supreme Court said Tuesday that it has not overruled a decision that bars victims’ family members from recommending a death sentence, and the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals was wrong to conclude it wasn’t bound by the decision.
The Supreme Court’s per curiam decision (PDF) vacated the Oklahoma ruling and asked the state court to take another look at the Eighth Amendment challenge by death-row inmate Shaun Michael Bosse, who was convicted of killing a woman and her two children.
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals had upheld the testimony in a decision that found a 1987 Supreme Court decision was implicitly overruled four years later in a case allowing victim impact testimony.
The 1987 decision in Booth v. Maryland had held the Eighth Amendment is violated by admission of testimony by a victim’s family members about their characterizations and opinions about the crime, the defendant and the appropriate sentence. The 1991 decision allowing victim impact testimony in Payne v. Tennessee was limited to testimony about the personal characteristics of the victim and the emotional impact of the crimes on the victim’s family, the Supreme Court said.
The state of Oklahoma had argued that even if the family’s sentencing recommendation should have been excluded, the testimony didn’t affect the jury’s sentencing recommendation. The Supreme Court said that contention can be addressed on remand, to the extent the court below deems appropriate.
