Question

The Supreme Court opined that the "guided discretion" statutes would respect the defendant's basic human dignity, as required by the 8th Amendment, and prevent jury nullification-the practice of a jury's refusal to convict guilty defendants to avoid imposing unjust death sentences.

True or False

Answer 1

Answer: True

Explanation: The Supreme Court admitted that it is haphazard to treat similar things differently and that mandatory death penalty statutes eliminated this problem, but also reckless to treat two different things the same way. In essence, to impose the same penalty on all convicted murderers, even though all defendants

are different, is just as capricious as imposing a penalty randomly.

To relieve this problem, some sentencing guidelines became necessary. This gave rise to the guided discretion statutes that set standards for juries and judges to

use when deciding whether to impose the death penalty. The Court reasoned that, guided discretion statutes struck a reasonable balance between giving the jury some discretion and allowing it to consider the defendant's background and character and the circumstances surrounding the crime.