516
Stevens, J., dissenting
plete absence of standards to guide the judge's consideration of the jury's verdict renders the statute invalid under the Eighth Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
I
Our opinions have repeatedly emphasized that death is a fundamentally different kind of penalty from any other that society may impose.1 State legislatures' assignments of sentencing authority exemplify the distinction. In every State except Oklahoma, the trial judge rather than the jury is responsible for sentencing in noncapital cases. The opposite consensus, however, prevails in capital cases. In 33 of the 37 States that authorize capital punishment, the jury participates in the sentencing decision. In 29 of those States, the jury's decision is final; in the other 4—Alabama, Delaware, Florida, and Indiana—the judge has the power to override the jury's decision. Russell, The Constitutionality of Jury Override in Alabama Death Penalty Cases, 46 Ala. L. Rev. 5, 9-10 (1994). Thus, 33 of the 37 state legislatures that have enacted death penalty statutes have given the jury sentencing responsibilities that differ from the prevailing view of the jury's role in noncapital cases. The Federal Government also provides for jury sentencing in capital cases.2
These legislative decisions reflect the same judgment expressed in England in 1953 after a 4-year study by the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment:
"The question whether there are grounds for relieving the prisoner from the liability to be sentenced to death
1 See, e. g., Lankford v. Idaho, 500 U. S. 110, 125 (1991); Clemons v. Mississippi, 494 U. S. 738, 750, n. 4 (1990); Booth v. Maryland, 482 U. S. 496, 509, n. 12 (1987); Solem v. Helm, 463 U. S. 277, 289, 294 (1983); Enmund v. Florida, 458 U. S. 782, 797 (1982); Beck v. Alabama, 447 U. S. 625, 637- 638 (1980); Gardner v. Florida, 430 U. S. 349, 357-358 (1977) (plurality opinion).
2 See Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, 108 Stat. 1966-1967.
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