Cite as: 513 U. S. 504 (1995)
Stevens, J., dissenting
that the jury rejected. The defendant's life is twice put in jeopardy, once before the jury and again in the repeat performance before a different, and likely less sympathetic, decisionmaker. A scheme that we assumed would "provid[e] capital defendants with more, rather than less, judicial protection," Dobbert v. Florida, 432 U. S. 282, 295 (1977),6 has perversely devolved into a procedure that requires the defendant to stave off a death sentence at each of two de novo sentencing hearings.
Not surprisingly, given the political pressures they face, judges are far more likely than juries to impose the death penalty. This has long been the case,7 and the recent experience of judicial overrides confirms it. Alabama judges have vetoed only five jury recommendations of death, but they have condemned 47 defendants whom juries would have spared.8 The Court acknowledges this "ostensibly surpris-6 I have always believed the legislative decision to authorize an override was intended to protect the defendant from the risk of an erroneous jury decision to impose the death penalty. See Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U. S. 242, 252-253 (1976) (joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.). States have in the past argued that the override would serve to protect defendants. See, e. g., Brief for Respondent in Dobbert v. Florida, O. T. 1976, No. 76-5306, p. 17 ("It cannot be said that Florida's new [override] procedure reduces the possibility of mercy. In fact, it is enhanced").
7 See H. Zeisel, Some Data on Juror Attitudes Towards Capital Punishment 37-50 (1968).
8 Statistics from Florida and Indiana confirm that judges tend to override juries' life recommendations far more often than their death recommendations. Between 1972 and early 1992, Florida trial judges imposed death sentences over 134 juries' recommendations of life imprisonment. See Radelet and Mello, Death-to-Life Overrides: Saving the Resources of the Florida Supreme Court, 20 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 195, 196 (1992). During the same period, Florida judges overrode only about 51 death recommendations. Id., at 210-211. In Indiana, between 1980 and early 1994, judges had used overrides to impose eight death sentences and only four life sentences. Memorandum from Paula Sites, Legal Director, Indiana Public Defender Council, to Supreme Court Library (Feb. 8, 1994) (lodged with the Clerk of this Court). The even more extreme disparity in Alabama may well be attributable to Alabama's unique failure to adopt the
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