Tison v. Arizona

1987-04-21

Headline: Court narrows when accomplices can be executed, vacating Arizona death sentences and ruling only major participation plus reckless indifference can justify death, remanding for further factfinding.

Holding: The Arizona Supreme Court applied the wrong test; the death penalty is permissible only when an accomplice’s major participation combines with reckless indifference to human life, so the sentences are vacated and remanded.

Real World Impact:

Vacates two Arizona death sentences and orders new factfinding on mental state.
Limits executions of accomplices who did not kill unless reckless indifference is proven.
Requires state courts to reassess capital sentences under the new culpability standard.

Topics: death penalty, accomplice liability, felony murder, capital sentencing

Summary

Background

Two young men, Ricky and Raymond Tison, helped their father and others break a prisoner out of an Arizona prison, supplied guns, and took part in the escape and later flight. During the flight, their father and another man shot and killed four people who had stopped to help. The brothers did not fire the fatal shots and did not claim they intended the killings. Arizona courts convicted them under a felony-murder rule and imposed death sentences after finding their participation was substantial.

Reasoning

The Supreme Court examined whether the Arizona courts followed Enmund v. Florida, which bars execution of an accomplice who neither killed, attempted to kill, nor intended to kill. The Arizona Supreme Court had equated intent to kill with merely foreseeing that lethal force might be used. The Court rejected that foreseeability test as too broad. It held that execution may be constitutional only when an accomplice’s major participation in the felony is combined with a mental state of reckless indifference to human life. The Court found Arizona used the wrong standard, vacated the death judgments, and remanded to allow the state courts to determine whether the brothers had the required reckless indifference.

Real world impact

The decision does not automatically free accomplices, but it narrows when states may impose death for killings by co-felons. States and trial courts must now make an individualized finding that an accomplice both played a major role and acted with reckless indifference before a death sentence is allowed. The ruling sends these two cases back to Arizona for more factfinding.

Dissents or concurrances

A dissent argued the Court should have barred the death sentences outright, saying the record does not support reckless indifference and that the Court failed to perform the broader proportionality review required by precedent.