Coleman v. Thompson (1991)
Decision: In a controversial ruling, the Court ruled that a federal court could not review a death sentence issued by state courts when the defendant’s lawyer in his habeas corpus appeal missed the appeal deadline by one day. The case is controversial because some believe the inmate in question, Roger Coleman, was innocent of the convicted crime.
Payne v. Tennessee (1991)
Decision: The Court ruled that a death-penalty jury can hear evidence from the victim’s family during the sentencing phase. This case effectively overruled Booth v. Maryland (1987).
Herrera v. California (1993)
Decision: The Court ruled that “actual innocence” is not a constitutional claim in and of itself in a federal habeas corpus claim. This means that a defendant is not entitled to federal court review of his death sentence unless he or she can show an independent constitutional violation that occurred during the original state court trial proceedings.
Romano v. Oklahoma (1994)
Decision: The Court ruled that it was not a constitutional violation for a capital jury to hear evidence that the defendant had received a prior death sentence for another murder.
Buchanan v. Angellone (1998)
Decision: The Court ruled that a capital defendant was not entitled to jury instructions on specific mitigating factors.
Atkins v. Virginia (2002)
Decision: The Court ruled that a state cannot execute a mentally retarded inmate. This decision overruled the Court’s 1989 decision in Penry v. Lynaugh.
Ring v. Arizona (2002)
Decision: The Court ruled that a jury, not a trial judge, should make the factual determinations necessary of the presence of aggravating factors in determining whether a defendant should receive a life in prison or death sentence. This decision overruled the Court’s 1990 decision in Walton v. Arizona.
Wiggins v. Smith (2003)
Decision: The Court ruled that a capital defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel was violated when his attorney failed to put forth any evidence of mitigating factors during his sentencing phase.
Roper v. Simmons (2005)
Decision: The Court ruled that a state cannot execute an inmate who committed his capital crime when he was a juvenile. The Court overruled its 1989 decision in Stanford v. Kentucky.
Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008)
Decision: The Court struck down a Louisiana statute that provided that child rapists could be executed.
What did the Court decide with respect to criminal three-strikes laws?
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld California’s Career Criminal Punishment Act (also known as the “three strikes” law) sentencing law in Ewing v. California (2003) and Lockyer v. Andrade (2003). Under the California law, if a criminal defendant is convicted of at least three felonies, he is subject to the three-strikes law which carries a penalty of 25 years to life.
The cases involved Gary Ewing who stole three golf clubs and Leandro Andrade, who stole $150 worth of videotapes. However, both defendants had multiple criminal convictions in their past, including burglaries, that made them eligible as recidivist offenders under the state law. They challenged their sentences and the three-strikes law as a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s cruel and unusual punishment clause.
In Roper v. Simmons the Supreme Court ruled that inmates who committed their crimes while they were legally juveniles cannot be executed for said crimes (iStock).
The Court rejected the argument that the defendants’ sentences violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. “The gross disproportionality principle reserves a constitutional violation for only the extraordinary case,” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote for the Court in Andrade. In her Ewing opinion, Justice O’Connor explained that states have the right to pass laws protecting the public from career criminals: “When the California Legislature enacted the three strikes law, it made a judgment that protecting the public safety requires incapacitating criminals who have already been convicted of at least one serious or violent crime. Nothing in the Eighth Amendment prohibits California from making that choice.” She also cited statistics showing that a disturbing number of inmates committed repeat offenses upon release from incarceration.
LegalSpeak: Griswold v. Connecticut (1965)
Justice Arthur Goldberg (concurring): “The Ninth Amendment reads, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” The Amendment is almost entirely the work of James Madison. It was introduced in Congress by him and passed the House and Senate with little or no debate and virtually no change in language. It was proffered to quiet expressed fears that a bill of specifically enumerated rights could not be sufficiently broad to cover all essential rights and that the specific mention of certain rights would be interpreted as a denial that others were protected…. The Ninth Amendment to the Constitution may be regarded by some as a recent discovery and may be forgotten by others, but since 1791 it has been a basic part of the Constitution which we are sworn to uphold. To hold that a right so basic and fundamental and so deep-rooted in our society as the right of privacy in marriage may be infringed because that right is not guaranteed in so many words by the first eight amendments to the Constitution is to ignore the Ninth Amendment and to give it no effect whatsoever.”
NINTH AND TENTH AMENDMENTS
What rights does the Ninth Amendment protect?
The Ninth Amendment provides: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” It means that there are other rights retained by the people even though they are not specifically listed, or enumerated, in the Bill of Rights.
One common objection to the Bill of Rights was that listing, or enumerating, certain rights in the Bill of Rights would mean that those were the only rights the people possessed. To answer this concern, James Madison adopted the Ninth Amendment which implies that people retain other rights not specifically listed in the Bill of Rights. For 175 years, the Ninth Amendment was, in the words of one Supreme Court Justice, a “constitutional curiosity.” However, in the 1965 case involving marital privacy, Griswold v. Connecticut (see LegalSpeak, p. 82), Justice Arthur Goldberg revived the amendment and said that it protected a right to privacy.
What is the Tenth Amendment?
The Tenth Amendment provides: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States,