Landmark Death Penalty Cases in the United States

Modern constitutional timeline

– 1972 — Furman v. Georgia (408 U.S. 238 (1972)) — Death sentences imposed under then-existing schemes were unconstitutional because their application was arbitrary and capricious. – 1976 — Gregg v. Georgia (428 U.S. 153 (1976)) — Georgia’s guided-discretion capital sentencing system was constitutional, allowing executions to resume under revised statutes. – 1976 — Woodson v. North Carolina (428 U.S. 280 (1976)) — Mandatory death sentences for first-degree murder were unconstitutional because capital sentencing requires individualized consideration. – 1976 — Roberts v. Louisiana (428 U.S. 325 (1976)) — Louisiana’s mandatory death penalty scheme for specified murders was unconstitutional. – 1977 — Coker v. Georgia (433 U.S. 584 (1977)) — The death penalty was grossly disproportionate for the rape of an adult woman where the victim was not killed. – 1978 — Lockett v. Ohio (438 U.S. 586 (1978)) — Capital sentencers generally must be allowed to consider any aspect of a defendant’s character, record, or offense offered as mitigation. – 1982 — Enmund v. Florida (458 U.S. 782 (1982)) — The death penalty was disproportionate for a felony-murder participant who neither killed, attempted to kill, nor intended a killing. – 1986 — Ford v. Wainwright (477 U.S. 399 (1986)) — The Eighth Amendment bars execution of a prisoner who is insane, and prisoners must have a meaningful process to litigate competency. – 1987 — McCleskey v. Kemp (481 U.S. 279 (1987)) — Statistical evidence of racial disparities in Georgia capital sentencing did not, without proof of discriminatory purpose in the individual case, establish a constitutional violation. – 1989 — Penry v. Lynaugh (492 U.S. 302 (1989)) — The Court required meaningful consideration of mitigating evidence involving intellectual disability, while at that time declining a categorical execution ban later adopted in Atkins. – 2002 — Ring v. Arizona (536 U.S. 584 (2002)) — A jury, not a judge, must find the aggravating fact necessary to make a defendant eligible for the death penalty. – 2002 — Atkins v. Virginia (536 U.S. 304 (2002)) — Executing people with intellectual disability violates the Eighth Amendment. – 2005 — Roper v. Simmons (543 U.S. 551 (2005)) — The Eighth Amendment forbids execution for crimes committed by people under 18. – 2007 — Panetti v. Quarterman (551 U.S. 930 (2007)) — A prisoner must have a rational understanding of the reason for the execution; procedural rules cannot foreclose a substantial competency claim. – 2008 — Baze v. Rees (553 U.S. 35 (2008)) — Kentucky’s lethal-injection protocol did not violate the Eighth Amendment on the record before the Court; the plurality articulated a substantial-risk framework. – 2008 — Kennedy v. Louisiana (554 U.S. 407 (2008)) — The death penalty is unconstitutional for rape of a child where the crime did not result, and was not intended to result, in the victim’s death. – 2014 — Hall v. Florida (572 U.S. 701 (2014)) — Florida could not use a rigid IQ score cutoff to bar further consideration of intellectual disability in capital cases. – 2015 — Glossip v. Gross (576 U.S. 863 (2015)) — Prisoners challenging an execution method generally must identify a known and available alternative that significantly reduces a substantial risk of severe pain. – 2016 — Hurst v. Florida (577 U.S. 92 (2016)) — Florida’s capital sentencing scheme violated the Sixth Amendment because a judge, rather than the jury, made the critical findings necessary for death eligibility. – 2019 — Bucklew v. Precythe (587 U.S. 119 (2019)) — An as-applied method-of-execution challenge remained subject to the requirement to identify a feasible and readily implemented alternative method that would significantly reduce severe pain.

How the cases connect

The early modern cases move from Furman v. Georgia, which invalidated arbitrary death-sentencing systems, to Gregg v. Georgia, which approved guided-discretion statutes. Woodson, Roberts and Lockett established the importance of individualized sentencing and mitigation. Later cases narrowed who may be executed, including Atkins, Roper, Ford and Panetti.

Sources

– Oyez — Death penalty case index – U.S. Supreme Court opinions for each individual case, linked on the canonical case pages