# Dobbert v. Florida

> Supreme Court of the United States · June 17, 1977 · 432 U.S. 282

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9426891

## Case

- **Full name:** Dobbert v. Florida
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** June 17, 1977
- **Citations:** 432 U.S. 282; 97 S. Ct. 2290; 53 L. Ed. 2d 344; 1977 U.S. LEXIS 122
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by Marshall
- **Judges:** BlacKMUN, Burger, Marshall, RehNQtjist, Rehnquist, Stevens, Stewart, White
- **Cited by:** 1,389 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: 3
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9426891

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- concluding that post-crime procedural changes in death penalty sentencing — including one allowing the judge to overrule a jury’s recommendation of life imprisonment — were not ex post facto violations because they “merely altered the methods employed in determining whether th…
- holding that there was no ex post facto violation where the death penalty was invalidated after the defendant acted, because the subsequently invalidated statute’s “existence on the statute books provided fair warning as to the degree of culpability which the State ascribed to…
- holding that when law violating the Illinois single subject rule was void ab initio, it was not an "operative fact" under Dobbert.
- holding that no Ex Post Facto violation occurs where a “statute simply alter[s] the methods employed in determining whether the death penalty [i]s to be imposed” and there is “no change in the quantum of punishment attached to the crime”
- finding no ex post facto violation because the new law, which changed the role of the judge and jury in imposing the death sentence in Florida, afforded the defendant additional protections that the old law did not contain

## Opinion text

Mr. Justice Brennan and Mr. Justice Marshall,
dissenting.
Adhering to our views that the death penalty is in all circumstances cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153, 227, 231 (1976), we would vacate the death sentence in this case.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9426891. Public record. Not legal advice.