U.S. Supreme Court Hears California Death Penalty Case

In its first death penal­ty case this term, the U.S. Supreme Court heard argu­ments in Brown v. Sanders, a California case in which the Justices con­sid­ered whether Ronald Sanders was wrong­ly sen­tenced to die by jurors who relied on invalid aggra­vat­ing fac­tors. Sanders was sen­tenced to death in 1982. The jury found four of the ​“spe­cial cir­cum­stances” required in California and some oth­er states for a defen­dant to be eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty. Two of those aggra­vat­ing fac­tors were lat­er deemed invalid by the California Supreme Court and, in a lat­er appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9^th Circuit threw out Sanders’ death sen­tence because jurors may have been unfair­ly swayed by the invalid spe­cial cir­cum­stances. The Justices must now deter­mine whether the absence of the two invalid aggra­vat­ing fac­tors would like­ly have changed Sanders’ orig­i­nal sen­tence. Justice Stephen Breyer sug­gest­ed that the Supreme Court might also want to clear up the dif­fer­ences that exist from one state to anoth­er in how aggra­vat­ing fac­tors are used in death penal­ty sen­tenc­ing. ​“We would not have this cross­word puz­zle that only five peo­ple in the United States under­stand,” he said. (Associated Press, October 11, 2005). The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear five death penal­ty-relat­ed cas­es this term. See U.S. Supreme Court.