Cite as: 506 U. S. 461 (1993)
Stevens, J., dissenting
years before the Court first held that capital punishment may violate the Eighth Amendment, when racial discrimination infected the administration of the death penalty "particularly in Southern States, and most particularly in rape cases." Ante, at 479 (concurring opinion). And Justice Thomas is surely correct that concern about racial discrimination played a significant role in the development of our modern capital sentencing jurisprudence. Ante, at 479- 484. Where I cannot agree with Justice Thomas is in the remarkable suggestion that the Court's decision in Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U. S. 302 (1989), somehow threatens what progress we have made in eliminating racial discrimination and other arbitrary considerations from the capital sentencing determination.
In recent years, the Court's capital punishment cases have erected four important safeguards against arbitrary imposition of the death penalty. First, notwithstanding a minority view that proportionality should play no part in our analysis,1 we have concluded that death is an impermissible punishment for certain offenses. Specifically, neither the crime of rape nor the kind of unintentional homicide referred to by Justice Thomas, ante, at 485, may now support a death sentence. See Enmund v. Florida, 458 U. S. 782 (1982); Coker v. Georgia, 433 U. S. 584 (1977).
Second, as a corollary to the proportionality requirement, the Court has demanded that the States narrow the class of individuals eligible for the death penalty, either through statutory definitions of capital murder, or through statutory specification of aggravating circumstances. This narrowing requirement, like the categorical exclusion of the offense of rape, has significantly minimized the risk of racial bias in the sentencing process.2 Indeed, as I pointed out in my dissent
1 See Harmelin v. Michigan, 501 U. S. 957 (1991).
2 As an indication of the difference such narrowing can make, it is worthwhile to note that at the time we decided Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S. 238 (1972), in addition to defendants convicted of first-degree murder, al-
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