Godfrey v. Georgia

Mr. Chief Justice Burger, dissenting. After murdering his wife and mother-in-law, petitioner informed the police that he had committed a “hideous” crime. The dictionary defines hideous as “morally offensive,” “shocking,” or “horrible.” Thus, the very curious feature of this case is that petitioner himself characterized his crime in terms equivalent to those employed in the Georgia statute. For — 443 — my part, I prefer petitioner’s characterization of his conduct to the plurality’s effort to excuse and rationalize that conduct as just another killing. Ante, at 433. The jurors in this case, who heard all relevant mitigating evidence, see Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U. S. 586 (1978), obviously shared that preference; they concluded that this “hideous” crime was “outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible and inhuman” within the meaning of § (b)(7). More troubling than the plurality’s characterization of petitioner’s crime is the new responsibility that it assumes with today’s decision — the task of determining on a case-by-case basis whether a defendant’s conduct is egregious enough to warrant a death sentence. In this new role, the plurality appears to require “evidence of serious physical abuse” before a death sentence can be imposed under § (b) (7). Ante, at 431. For me, this new requirement is arbitrary and unfounded and trivializes the Constitution. Consider, for example, the Georgia case of Harris v. State, 237 Ga. 718, 230 S. E. 2d 1 (1976), where the defendant killed a young woman for the thrill of it. As he later confessed, he “didn’t want nothing [she] got except [her] life.” Id., at 720, 230 S. E. 2d, at 4. Does the plurality opinion mean to suggest that anything in the Constitution precludes a state from imposing a death sentence on such a merciless, gratuitous killer? The plurality’s novel physical torture requirement may provide an “objective” criterion, but it hardly separates those for whom a state may prescribe the death sentence from those for whom it may not. In short, I am convinced that the course the plurality embarks on today is sadly mistaken — indeed confused. It is this Court’s function to insure that the rights of a defendant are scrupulously respected; and in capital cases we must see to it that the jury has rendered its decision with meticulous care. But it is emphatically not our province to second-guess the jury’s judgment or to tell the states which of their “hide — 444 — ous,” intentional murderers may be given the ultimate penalty. Because the plurality does both, I dissent.