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1 1 (July 16, 2003)

handle is hein.crs/crsaify0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Order Code RS21572 July 16, 2003 CRS Report for Congress Received through the CRS Web Capital Punishment: Summary of Supreme Court Decisions of the 2002-2003 Term Paul Starett Wallace, Jr. Specialist in American Public Law American Law Division Summary In its 2001-2002 term, for the first time since 1988, the Supreme Court placed substantial new restrictions on the powers to impose the death penalty. In Ring v. Arizona1, it overturned a death sentence imposed by a judge, holding that defendants have a Sixth Amendment right to have a jury-not a judge-determine whether aggravating factors warrant the imposition of the death penalty. In Atkins v. Virginia,2 it held that the execution of the mentally retarded is cruel and unusual punishment. In the 2002-2003 term, in Miller-El v. Cockrell the Court imposed an additional restriction when it decided that an African-American death row inmate should have been allowed to appeal the rejection of his contention that the jury that convicted him was screened by prosecutors in a racially biased way. In Wiggins v. Smith, it held that a capital defendant had been denied effective counsel. In Sattazahn v. Pennsylvania, the Court decided that there was no double-jeopardy bar to Pennsylvania's sentencing scheme providing for the death penalty on retrial. And in Stanford v. Kentucky, it denied a habeas corpus petition filed by Kevin Stanford which in effect upheld the execution of those who were 16 or 17 at the time of their crime (Kevin was 17 when he killed a gas station attendant). The capital punishment decisions which were decided during the October 2002 Term involved issues concerning: (1) the standards to be used to determine whether a capital defendant should be granted a certificate of appealability in order to contest the denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus, (2) whether double jeopardy barred the imposition of the death penalty on the basis of aggravating and mitigating factors which an earlier jury had been unable to agree were sufficient and as a consequence, a life sentence was imposed, and (3) whether the performance of the defense attorneys at sentencing violated the accused Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel. 1 536 U.S. 584 (2002). 2 536 U.S. 304 (2002). Congressional Research Service + The Library of Congress