stating that "a law fails to meet the requirements of the Due Process Clause if it is so vague and standardless that it leaves ... judges and jurors free to decide, without any legally fixed standards, what is prohibited and what is not in each particular case"
How later courts described this case
- stating that "a law fails to meet the requirements of the Due Process Clause if it is so vague and standardless that it leaves ... judges and jurors free to decide, without any legally fixed standards, what is prohibited and what is not in each particular case"
- finding unconstitutionally vague a Pennsylvania statute requiring an acquitted criminal defendant to pay the costs of his prosecution if the jury determined he was guilty of “some misconduct” less than that necessary for a conviction for the offense charged
- holding that a jury instruction using the term "some misconduct” could not save a wholly standardless statute permitting the assessment of court costs against an acquitted criminal defendant
- holding that a law that let a jury award costs against an acquitted defendant “without imposing a single condition, limitation, or contingency” on the jury was unconstitutionally vague
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by United States v. Johnson, 503 F.2d 339 (1974)
Third, Giaccio v. Pennsylvania, supra, is inapposite on its facts and does not point to the result reached by the majority nor afford it an iota of support.
Distinguished by Commonwealth v. Matthews, 446 Pa. 65 (1971)
Giaccio is inapposite.
The opinion
Mr. Justice Stewart,
concurring.
I concur in the Court’s determination that the Pennsylvania statute here in question cannot be squared with the standards of the Fourteenth Amendment, but for reasons somewhat different from those upon which the Court relies. It seems to me that, despite the Court’s disclaimer, * much of the reasoning in its opinion serves to cast grave constitutional doubt upon the settled practice of many States to leave to the unguided discretion of a jury the nature and degree of punishment to be imposed upon a person convicted of a criminal offense. Though I have serious questions about the wisdom of that practice, its constitutionality is quite a different matter. In the present case it is enough for me that Pennsylvania allows a jury to punish a defendant after finding him not guilty. That, I think, violates the most rudimentary concept of due process of law.
See n. 8, ante.