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45 Vand. L. Rev. 1621 (1992)
Payne of Allowing Victim Impact Statements at Capital Sentencing Hearings, The

handle is hein.journals/vanlr45 and id is 1635 raw text is: The Payne of Allowing Victim Impact Statements at Capital Sentencing Hearings I. INTRODUCTION ...................................... 1621 II. THE VICTIMS' RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND THE LEGISLATIVE R ESPONSE .......................................... 1623 A. The Rise of the Victims' Rights Movement ...... 1624 B. The Victim Impact Statement .................. 1627 III. SUPREME COURT JURISPRUDENCE AND THE ADMISSIBILITY OF VICTIM IMPACT EVIDENCE ......................... 1629 A. Background of Supreme Court Eighth Amendment Jurisprudence ................................ 1630 B. Booth v. Maryland: The Court's First Look at Vic- tim Impact Evidence in a Capital Case ......... 1633 C. South Carolina v. Gathers: The Extension of Booth to Encompass Victim Characteristics ............ 1637 D. Payne v. Tennessee: The Court's Turn-Around... 1639 IV. How COURTS HAVE INTERPRETED PAYN ................ 1644 A. The Supreme Court After Payne ................ 1644 B. State Courts After Payne ...................... 1647 V. A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF PAYNE WHY THE COURT SHOULD NOT HAVE ALLOWED THE ADMISSION OF VICTIM IMPACT E VIDENCE .......................................... 1649 A. Victim Participation Does Not Further the Goals of Sentencing ................................. 1650 B. The Payne Court Left Open the Possibility that Victims' Opinions as to Appropriate Punishment May Be Admitted During Capital Sentencing .... 1656 C. Victim Impact Statements Will Lead to Disparate Treatment of Similarly Situated Defendants ..... 1658 VI. CONCLUSION ........................................ 1660 I. INTRODUCTION A teenage boy returns from a night out with his friends to find his home in disarray; furniture is strewn about and valuable belongings are missing. He ventures towards his parents' bedroom, unaware of the hor- rific scene that he soon will witness. As he enters his parents' bedroom a sudden sense of reality washes over him as he views the scene in the room: his parents are dead on their bed, in inhuman, violently con- 1621