explaining that the Eighth Amendment does not bar a jury from considering "the full extent of the harm caused by the crime, including its impact on the victim's family and community" or from seeing "a quick glimpse of the life petitioner chose to extinguish to remind the jury that the person whose life was taken was a unique human being," and further explaining that a defendant may still seek relief under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment "[i]f, in a particular case, a witness' testimony or a prosecutor's remark so infects the sentencing proceeding as to render it fundamentally unfair"
How later courts described this case
- explaining that the Eighth Amendment does not bar a jury from considering "the full extent of the harm caused by the crime, including its impact on the victim's family and community" or from seeing "a quick glimpse of the life petitioner chose to extinguish to remind the jury that the person whose life was taken was a unique human being," and further explaining that a defendant may still seek relief under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment "[i]f, in a particular case, a witness' testimony or a prosecutor's remark so infects the sentencing proceeding as to render it fundamentally unfair"
- recognizing the concern that “the admission of victim' impact evidence permits a jury to find that defendants whose victims were assets to their community are more deserving of punishment than those whose victims are perceived to be less worthy,” but stating that “[a] s a general matter, however, victim impact evidence is not offered to encourage comparative judgments of this kind ... ”
- reasoning that, just as the defendant is entitled to remind the sentencer he is a unique individual, so too the prosecution should be permitted (if a state statute allows it) to remind the jury that “the victim is an individual whose death represents a unique loss to society and in particular to his family” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)
- holding a state may permit evidence of the impact of a crime on the victims and their families when the jury is considering whether to impose the death penalty, and noting that this holding leaves undisturbed the Court’s prior holding that family members of victims may not give their opinions concerning what sentence would be appropriate
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by Humphries v. Ozmint, 397 F.3d 206 (2005)
Applying Payne, the South Carolina Supreme Court held that the Hall case was distinguishable from the Humphries case:
Distinguished by Joe Angel Cordova v. James A. Collins, Director Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Institutional Division, 953 F.2d 167 (1992)
We find that Payne is inapposite to this claim, and find no arguable merit to Cordova’s claim that his constitutional rights were implicated in any way by the admission of the photograph.
The opinion
Justice Scalia,
with whom Justice O’Connor and Justice Kennedy join as to Part II, concurring.
r — 1
The Court correctly observes the injustice of requiring the exclusion of relevant aggravating evidence during capital sentencing, while requiring the admission of all relevant mitigating evidence, see, e. g., Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U. S. 104 (1982); Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U. S. 586 (1978) (plurality opinion). I have previously expressed my belief that the latter requirement is both wrong and, when combined with the remainder of our capital sentencing jurisprudence, unworkable. See Walton v. Arizona, 497 U. S. 639, 671-673 (1990) (opinion concurring in part and concurring in judgment). Even if it were abandoned, however, I would still affirm the judgment here. True enough, the Eighth Amendment permits parity between mitigating and aggravating factors. But more broadly and fundamentally still, it permits the People to decide (within the limits of other constitutional guarantees) what is a crime and what constitutes aggravation and mitigation of a crime.
I — I HH
The response to Justice Marshall’s strenuous defense of the virtues of stare decisis can be found in the writings of Justice Marshall himself. That doctrine, he has re *834 minded us, “is not ‘an imprisonment of reason.’ ” Guardians Assn. v. Civil Service Comm’n of New York City, 463 U. S. 582, 618 (1983) (dissenting opinion) (quoting United States v. International Boxing Club of N. Y., Inc., 348 U. S. 236, 249 (1955) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)). If there was ever a case that defied reason, it was Booth v. Maryland, 482 U. S. 496 (1987), imposing a constitutional rule that had absolutely no basis in constitutional text, in historical practice, or in logic. Justice Marshall has also explained that “ ‘[t]he jurist concerned with public confidence in, and acceptance of the judicial system might well consider that, however admirable its resolute adherence to the law as it was, a decision contrary to the public sense of justice as it is, operates, so far as it is known, to diminish respect for the courts and for law itself.’” Flood v. Kuhn, 407 U. S. 258, 293, n. 4 (1972) (dissenting opinion) (quoting Szanton, Stare Decisis; A Dissenting View, 10 Hastings L. J. 394, 397 (1959)) (internal quotation marks omitted). Booth’s stunning ipse dixit, that a crime’s unanticipated consequences must be deemed “irrelevant” to the sentence, 482 U. S., at 503 , conflicts with a public sense of justice keen enough that it has found voice in a nationwide “victims’ rights” movement.
Today, however, Justice Marshall demands of us some “special justification” — beyond the mere conviction that the rule of Booth significantly harms our criminal justice system and is egregiously wrong — before we can be absolved of exercising “[p]ower, not reason.” Post, at 844. I do not think that is fair. In fact, quite to the contrary, what would enshrine power as the governing principle of this Court is the notion that an important constitutional decision with plainly inadequate rational support must be left in place for the sole reason that it once attracted five votes.
It seems to me difficult for those who were in the majority in Booth to hold themselves forth as ardent apostles of stare decisis. That doctrine, to the extent it rests upon anything more than administrative convenience, is merely the applica *835 tion to judicial precedents of a more general principle that the settled practices and expectations of a democratic society-should generally not be disturbed by the courts. It is hard to have a genuine regard for stare decisis without honoring that more general principle as well. A decision of this Court which, while not overruling a prior holding, nonetheless announces a novel rule, contrary to long and unchallenged practice, and pronounces it to be the Law of the Land — such a decision, no less than an explicit overruling, should be approached with great caution. It was, I suggest, Booth , and not today’s decision, that compromised the fundamental values underlying the doctrine of stare decisis.