Griffin v. Texas

Background

These entries involve separate appeals and state cases challenging death sentences from many state and federal courts, including courts in Texas, Idaho, Louisiana, Arkansas, Florida, Alabama, Arizona, Wyoming, and the federal 5th and 11th Circuits. The parties asked the Supreme Court to consider those cases, but the Court declined to hear them, so the lower-court rulings and the death sentences remain in effect for these matters.

Reasoning

Because the Court refused to take up these cases, this document does not include a majority opinion explaining the Court’s reasons. Two Justices, Brennan and Marshall, filed a dissent. They said they would have granted review and thrown out the death sentences because they view capital punishment as always cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment and applied to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment, and they cited Gregg v. Georgia to explain their position. Their view reflects a long-held opposition to the death penalty.

Real world impact

The immediate effect is that the listed death sentences stay in place and the lower-court outcomes control these specific cases. This order does not create a new national rule on the death penalty, so the larger legal debate continues in state courts and lower federal courts and could return to the Supreme Court later.

Dissents or concurrances

The dissent is notable: two Justices formally objected and said they would have used Supreme Court review to remove those sentences, reaffirming their position against capital punishment in all circumstances.