Although 14 American states—and most Western nations—have
substantially abolished the death penalty, the Supreme Court has thus far
declined to rule on its constitutionality. Last fall the court agreed to review
the conviction of William Maxwell, 30, an Arkansas Negro sentenced to death
in 1962 for the rape of a white woman. But the case covered only the procedures
by which capital punishment is imposed; it excluded the key puzzle of
whether capital punishment violates the Eighth Amendment guarantee
against “cruel and unusual punishment.” Last week the court avoided
even the questions it had earlier agreed to answer.Those questions challenged jury practices in capital cases all over the
country. The jury found Maxwell guilty, and sentenced him to death in a
single proceeding. This gave Maxwell no chance to take the stand and
plead for mercy. Had he done so during the trial, he would have been
cross-examined and risked self-incrimination on the issue of his guilt
or innocence. The jury also fixed the penalty without any guidance from
the judge as to the circumstances under which a man should be sentenced
to death.Easy Out. An odd snarl forced the court to ignore those issues. The
decision had been postponed for more than a year because there were
only eight Justices sitting, and their opinions were split. Ironically,
Justice-designate Harry Blackmun, who will be sworn in this week, would
have disqualified himself because he had ruled against Maxwell while
serving on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.As a result, the court took an easy out and invoked a two-year-old
precedent. Finding that Maxwell's jurors had apparently been screened
in a way that barred veniremen even vaguely opposed to the death
penalty, the Justices reversed his conviction and remanded his case to
the lower federal court.Even so, the high court simultaneously agreed to review two more capital
cases next fall, when Blackmun can participate. Both cases raise the
same issues as Maxwell. Pending those decisions, the nation's 510
condemned prisoners are likely to be kept alive. Because of state
abolition, appeals, pardons and commutations, the U.S. has not staged a
single execution in three years.
