Justice Stevens criticizes administration of the death penalty

Seizing the opportunity of the keynote address at the Thurgood Marshall Awards Dinner during the 2005 Annual Meeting, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens highlighted Justice Marshall’s opposition to the death penalty, and made his own arguments against the sentence.

He noted that the voir dire process in a capital case tends to be preoccupied with whether potential jurors have moral or religious scruples that would impair their ability to impose the death penalty, creating an atmosphere in which jurors might well assume that their primary task is to determine the penalty for a defendant who is presumed guilty. And because those who are opposed to the death penalty can be challenged by the prosecutor, he said, there is a risk that the community will not be fairly represented on the jury.

He noted also that most judges who preside over death penalty cases must stand for re-election, which can create a subtle bias in favor of death over other forms of punishment. And he deplored the use of victim impact evidence, which he said “sheds absolutely no light on either the issue of guilt or innocence, or the moral culpability of the defendant.” And finally, advances in recent technologies including DNA evidence have exposed serious flaws in our administration of criminal justice and add additional credence to the argument against capital punishment, he said.

During the dinner, Justice Stevens presented the Thurgood Marshall Award to Abner Mikva, former Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, saying that “Thurgood’s entire career provides us with compelling evidence concerning the values of diversity. These values are also reflected in Abner Mikva’s background and career.” Mikva — whose grandparents and parents emigrated from a small village on the border of Poland and the Ukraine — was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, served as the editor-in-chief of the University of Chicago Law Review and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg. In addition to serving in the judicial branch of government, Mikva was elected to the Illinois General Assembly and as a member of Congress, and served the executive branch as counsel to President Clinton. He also taught at such distinguished institutions as New York University, Georgetown, Northwestern, University of Chicago, Pennsylvania and Illinois.

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