The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit overturned the death sentence of an Ohio man convicted in a 1995 contract killing, stating that the death sentence was arbitrary because other equally culpable defendants received lesser sentences. While three other defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment, only nineteen-year-old Jason Getsy was sentenced to death.
Prosecutors said John Santine offered Getsy and two other defendants $5000 to kill business rival Charles Serafino because of a dispute over Serafino’s landscaping business. Charles Serafino was injured in the subsequent attack, but his mother, Ann Serafino, was fatally shot.
The 6th Circuit ruled (2 – 1):
We hold that the “arbitrariness” principle firmly established in Furman and its progeny would be offended if the irreconcilable, arbitrary jury verdicts in this case were allowed to stand. We, therefore, conclude that Getsy’s death sentence must be vacated.
…
[W]e simply adhere to the clearly established principle of Enmund that, in a capital case with respect to the very same crime stemming from the very same facts, the Eighth Amendment does not permit codefendants with plainly similar culpability to receive different sentences — especially when the defendant with arguably less culpability receives the harshest of all sentences,the death penalty.… [S]entencing Getsy to death, while the arguably more culpable Santine received a life sentence for the very same crime, violates the Eighth Amendment and its prohibition of arbitrary and disproportionate death sentences.
(Getsy v. Mitchell, No.03 – 3200, (6th Cir. Aug. 2, 2006) (emphasis in original); Associated Press, August 3, 2006). See also Arbitrariness.
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