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Principals and Accessories in Capital Felony-Murder: The Proportionality Principle Reigns Supreme

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Norman J. Finkel  and
Stefanie F. Smith
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Abstract

In its 5–4 decision in Tison v. Arizona (1987), the Supreme Court put forth disputable empirical assertions about where community sentiment stood on the death penalty for felony-murder accessories. The Tison majority claimed that the community would support the death sentence for an accessory where (1) major participation and (2) reckless indifference to human life were shown. Two experiments were run to test these empirical assertions, and the results indicate quite the opposite. By a wide majority, community sentiment rejects the death penalty for such an accessory and rejects equal treatment of principal and accessory. Even beyond the death penalty question, to the issue of conviction under the felony-murder rule per se, attributions of causal and moral responsibility showed the principle of proportionality reigning supreme. Implications for how the Supreme Court goes about doing social science are discussed.

Type
Symposium: Research on the Death Penalty
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , 1993 , pp. 129 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 by The Law and Society Association

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Footnotes

The authors wish to thank Sam Gross and Kevin Duff for their thoughtful suggestions.

References

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