618
Breyer, J., concurring in judgment
They point to the inadequacy of representation in capital cases, a fact that aggravates the other failings. See, e. g., Bright, Counsel for the Poor: The Death Sentence Not for the Worst Crime but for the Worst Lawyer, 103 Yale L. J. 1835 (1994) (describing many studies discussing deficient capital representation).
And they note that other nations have increasingly abandoned capital punishment. See, e. g., San Martin, U. S. Taken to Task Over Death Penalty, Miami Herald, May 31, 2001, p. 1 (United States is only Western industrialized Nation that authorizes the death penalty); Amnesty International Website Against the Death Penalty, Facts and Figures on the Death Penalty (2002), http://www.web.amnesty.org/ rmp/dplibrary.nsf (since Gregg, 111 countries have either abandoned the penalty altogether, reserved it only for exceptional crimes like wartime crimes, or not carried out executions for at least the past 10 years); DeYoung, Group Criticizes U. S. on Detainee Policy; Amnesty Warns of Human Rights Fallout, Washington Post, May 28, 2002, p. A4 (the United States rates fourth in number of executions, after China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia).
Many communities may have accepted some or all of these claims, for they do not impose capital sentences. See A Broken System, App. B, Table 11A (more than two-thirds of American counties have never imposed the death penalty since Gregg (2,064 out of 3,066), and only 3% of the Nation's counties account for 50% of the Nation's death sentences (92 out of 3,066)). Leaving questions of arbitrariness aside, this diversity argues strongly for procedures that will help assure that, in a particular case, the community indeed believes application of the death penalty is appropriate, not "cruel," "unusual," or otherwise unwarranted.
For these reasons, the danger of unwarranted imposition of the penalty cannot be avoided unless "the decision to impose the death penalty is made by a jury rather than by a single governmental official." Spaziano, 468 U. S., at 469
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