Repudiating the Narrow Rule in Capital Sentencing

Authors

Scott W. Howe

Abstract

This Article proposes a modest reform of Eighth Amendment law governing capital sentencing to spur major reform in the understanding of the function of the doctrine. The Article urges the Supreme Court to renounce a largely empty mandate known as the “narrowing” rule and the rhetoric of equality that has accompanied it. By doing so, the Court could speak more truthfully about the important but more limited function that its capital-sentencing doctrine actually pursues, which is to ensure that no person receives the death penalty who does not deserve it. The Court could also speak more candidly than it has since Furman v. Georgia about the problem of inequality that has continued to pervade capital selection. If the Court remains unwilling to strike down unequal death-penalty systems, it should acknowledge the inequality and explain that the problem addressed by the Eighth Amendment is not inconsistency but retributive excess.

Rights

© 2012 J. Reuben Clark Law School

Recommended Citation

Scott W. Howe, Repudiating the Narrow Rule in Capital Sentencing, 2012 BYU L. Rev. 1477 (2012).
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/lawreview/vol2012/iss5/2