Supreme Court to See Several Death Penalty Cases

Protesters at an anti-death penalty rally. Photo: Robert J. Daveant | Shutterstock.

The Supreme Court is set to receive several death-penalty-related cases in the next few months. The cases in question fall under the jurisdictions of Florida, Georgia, Kansas, and Pennsylvania.

The U.S. has an interesting relationship with the death penalty, according to Kendall Coffey: “We have a love-hate relationship with the death penalty. We see these despicable crimes; we want the maximum punishment applied to people who brutally kill children or to terrorists. At the same time we’re very concerned about mistakes being made, both mistakes with respect to selecting who is worthy of dying, if anyone, and mistakes with respect to the actual administration of execution.”

Coffey added, “And these kinds of cases, where horrible pains or mistreatment occurs in the course of an execution, are very troubling to Americans and obviously of great concern to the United States Supreme Court.”

Here are some of the cases that the Supreme Court will consider:

• Kansas is first up on the docket, as the court will consider two trials. The first case involves a December 2000 crime spree that left 5 dead; another is case where a double murder death sentence was vacated by the state high court.

• One of the death penalty cases coming up in Florida questions whether judges, rather than juries, can impose a death sentence, especially when the jury is not unanimous in recommending death.

• In November, a Georgia court will consider whether prosecutors in Floyd County violated the rule against racial selection of juries by striking all four black prospective jurors in a 1986 murder case.

• Finally, the court will consider whether an elected chief justice of Pennsylvania should have recused himself from hearing an appeal of a capital conviction. The conviction was obtained when he was the Philadelphia DA, and he personally approved pursuit of the death penalty against the defendant. 

However, don’t expect significant change from this round of death penalty cases. Instead, decisions made in these cases are likely to only tweak how we respond to capital punishment. In fact, Evan Mandery, professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, went so far as to claim the whole situation “feels to me like business as usual.”