(DOWNLOAD) "Equipoise, Collective Rights and the Future of the Death Penalty: Kansas V. Marsh." by Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Equipoise, Collective Rights and the Future of the Death Penalty: Kansas V. Marsh.
- Author : Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy
- Release Date : January 22, 2006
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 273 KB
Description
The evaluation of evidence is an inherently subjective process, yet deliberating jurors are routinely expected to rummage for purportedly objective criteria such as "reasonable doubt." No less troublesome is the concept of equipoise. In the context of capital punishment, equipoise occurs when jurors determine that mitigating and aggravating factors presented to them at the sentencing phase are of equal weight. (1) These factors often can not be objectively balanced, as there is no limit to what evidence a defendant may present to dissuade the jury from sentencing him to death. (2) Nevertheless, in the event of equipoise, jurors in Kansas are required to impose the death penalty. (3) Last Term, in Kansas v. Marsh, (4) the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a Kansas statute mandating a sentence of death where mitigating and aggravating factors are in equipoise. The decision was a straightforward application of Supreme Court precedent. The case is fascinating, however, not for the merits of the majority opinion but for the heated dissents by Justices Stevens and Souter and the response to them in a concurrence by Justice Scalia. (5) Justice Souter's dissent, joined by the three other dissenting Justices, reveals that the Court is bitterly divided on the future of the death penalty. Justice Souter questioned the constitutionality of capital punishment in light of the increasing number of former death row inmates exonerated by DNA evidence. (6) This concern could foreshadow a broader attack on the death penalty by the Court's liberal wing that may culminate in an explicit move to overturn it. Moreover, both Justice Stevens and Justice Scalia use Marsh to delve into a debate concerning grants of certiorari. Justice Stevens argued that the Court should generally refrain from reviewing capital cases in which the state is the petitioner, as those cases do not implicate the Court's interest in preventing wrongful executions. (7) This claim, and Justice Scalia's response, (8) present the potentially far-reaching question of whether the Supreme Court should protect the freedom of a state and its citizens to enact criminal legislation as vigorously as it protects the rights of individual defendants.