# Proffitt v. Florida

> Supreme Court of the United States · July 22, 1976 · 428 U.S. 242

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9426561

## Case

- **Full name:** Proffitt v. Florida
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** July 22, 1976
- **Citations:** 428 U.S. 242; 96 S. Ct. 2960; 49 L. Ed. 2d 913; 1976 U.S. LEXIS 83
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by White
- **Judges:** Blackmun, Rehnquist, Stewart, White
- **Cited by:** 1,282 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- **Yellow flag:** Questioned by Douglas v. Wainwright, 714 F.2d 1532 (1983).
- Negative treatments: 1
- Distinguished by: 0
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9426561

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- holding that Fla. Stat. ง 921.141(6) (1981), which lists mitigating circumstances, does not restrict the sentencer's consideration of mitigating circumstances to those expressly listed in the statute
- stating that the Florida Supreme Court had imposed a constitutional construction on Florida’s “heinousness” aggravating factor by limiting it to the “ ‘conscienceless or pitiless crime which is unnecessarily torturous to the victim’ ” (quoting State v. Dixon, 283 So.2d 1, 9 (F…
- holding argument that “the prosecutor’s decision whether to charge a capital offense in the first place” rendered Florida’s death penalty unconstitutional represented “a fundamental misinterpretation” of Supreme Court precedent and rejecting such argument
- holding that a scheme which required the sentencer to determine whether mitigating circumstances were sufficient to outweigh aggravating circumstances adequately guided and channeled the sentencer's discretion

## Opinion text

Mr. Justice White,
with whom The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Rehnquist join,
concurring in the judgment.
There is no need to repeat the statement of the facts of this case and of the statutory procedure under which the death penalty was imposed, both of which are described in detail in the opinion of Mr. Justice Stewart, Mr. Justice Powell, and Mr. Justice Stevens. I agree with them, see Parts III-B (2) (a) and (b), ante, at 255-258, that although the statutory aggravating and mitigating circumstances are not susceptible of mechanical application, they are by no means so vague and over-broad as to leave the discretion of the sentencing authority unfettered. Under Florida law, the sentencing judge is required to impose the death penalty on all first-degree murderers as to whom the statutory aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating factors. There is good reason to anticipate, then, that as to certain categories of murderers, the penalty will not be imposed freakishly or rarely but will be imposed with regularity; and consequently it cannot be said that the death penalty in *261 Florida as to those categories has ceased “to be a credible deterrent or measurably to contribute to any other end of punishment in the criminal justice system.” Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S. 238, 311 (1972) (White, J., concurring) . Accordingly, the Florida statutory scheme for imposing the death penalty does Pot run afoul of this Court’s holding in Furman v. Georgia .
For the reasons set forth in my opinion concurring in the judgment in Gregg v. Georgia, ante, at 224-225, and my dissenting opinion in Roberts v. Louisiana, post, at 348-350, this conclusion is not undercut by the possibility that some murderers may escape the death penalty solely through exercise of prosecutorial discretion or executive clemency. For the reasons set forth in my dissenting opinion in Roberts v. Louisiana, post, at 350-356, I also reject petitioner’s argument that under the Eighth Amendment the death penalty may never be imposed under any circumstances.
I concur in the judgment of affirmance.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9426561. Public record. Not legal advice.