United States Supreme Court

Overview

The Supreme Court is the final arbiter of whether the con­sti­tu­tion is being fol­lowed. States may be more pro­tec­tive of indi­vid­ual rights than required under the fed­er­al con­sti­tu­tion, but they can­not be less pro­tec­tive. In par­tic­u­lar, the Supreme Court is respon­si­ble for ensur­ing that state use of the death penal­ty adheres to our fun­da­men­tal rights. Court rul­ings can involve the meth­ods of exe­cu­tion used, the com­pe­ten­cy of defense coun­sel, the selec­tion of juries, the behav­ior of the pros­e­cu­tion, and many oth­er mat­ters pro­tect­ed by the right to due process.

In the ear­li­er his­to­ry of the coun­try, the Supreme Court left much of the prac­tice of the death penal­ty and oth­er pun­ish­ments to the states’ dis­cre­tion, rarely rul­ing on whether any prac­tice should be con­sid­ered cru­el and unusu­al. In recent decades, the Court has reg­u­lar­ly con­sid­ered mul­ti­ple cap­i­tal cas­es each term. Some of these cas­es arise from appeals of state rul­ings involv­ing the U.S. con­sti­tu­tion, oth­ers are result of fed­er­al deci­sions on both state and fed­er­al death penal­ty matters.

At Issue

The key ques­tion for the Supreme Court is whether the death penal­ty itself con­tin­ues to be con­sti­tu­tion­al in light of its rare use and its rejec­tion by large seg­ments of soci­ety. Recent rev­e­la­tions about the risks of exe­cut­ing inno­cent defen­dants, racial bias in its appli­ca­tion, and the lengthy time inmates spend on death row, has led soci­ety to rethink its sup­port of the death penal­ty. Some Justices have called for a com­pre­hen­sive review of the prac­tice. The make-up of the Court is like­ly to deter­mine when such a case might be con­sid­ered and how the Court will rule.

What DPIC Offers

DPIC has sum­maries of the impor­tant death penal­ty cas­es decid­ed by the Supreme Court in the mod­ern era. The opin­ions of indi­vid­ual Justices on the prac­tice of the death penal­ty in the U.S. are high­light­ed. Cases that the Court has decid­ed to hear but have not yet been argued are pre­viewed on the website.