The Administration's Emergency Anti-hijacking Regulations: Hearings, Ninety-third Congress, First Session on S. 39 ...

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Page 124 - Death is an unusually severe and degrading punishment ; there is a strong probability that it is inflicted arbitrarily; its rejection by contemporary society is virtually total ; and there is no reason to believe that it serves any penal purpose more effectively than the less severe punishment of imprisonment. The function of these principles is to enable a court to determine whether a punishment comports with human dignity. Death, quite simply, does not.
Page 126 - The Amendment must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.
Page 157 - Now, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the United States...
Page 116 - Any person who on board an aircraft in flight: (a) unlawfully, by force or threat thereof, or by any other form of intimidation, seizes, or exercises control of, that aircraft, or attempts to perform any such act...
Page 132 - These death sentences are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual. For, of all the people convicted of rapes and murders in 1967 and 1968, many just as reprehensible as these, the petitioners are among a capriciously selected random handful upon whom the sentence of death has in fact been imposed.
Page 129 - Yet the availability of this punishment through statutory authorization, as well as the polls and referenda, which amount simply to approval of that authorization, simply underscores the extent to which our society has in fact rejected this punishment. When an unusually severe punishment is authorized for widescale application but not, because of society's refusal, inflicted save in a few instances, the inference is compelling that there is a deep-seated reluctance to inflict it. Indeed, the likelihood...
Page 123 - At bottom, then, the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause prohibits the infliction of uncivilized and inhuman punishments. The State, even as it punishes, must treat its members with respect for their intrinsic worth as human beings. A punishment is "cruel and unusual," therefore, if it does not comport with human dignity.
Page 142 - It seems remarkable to me that with our basic trust in lay jurors as the keystone in our system of criminal justice, it should now be suggested that we take the most sensitive and important of all decisions away from them. I could more easily be persuaded that mandatory sentences of death, without the intervening and ameliorating impact of lay jurors, are so arbitrary and doctrinaire that they violate the Constitution. The very infrequency of death penalties imposed by jurors attests their cautious...
Page 115 - Since the two pivotal concurring opinions turn on the assumption that the punishment of death is now meted out in a random and unpredictable manner, legislative bodies may seek to bring their laws into compliance with the Court's ruling by providing standards for juries and judges to follow in determining the sentence in capital cases or by more narrowly defining the crimes for which the penalty is to be imposed.30 If such standards can be devised or the crimes more meticulously defined, the result...
Page 115 - ... Whoever commits or attempts to commit aircraft piracy, as herein defined, shall be punished — "(A) by death if the verdict of the jury shall so recommend, or. in the case of a plea of guilty, or a plea of not guilty where the defendant has waived a trial by jury, if the court in its discretion shall so order : or "(B) by imprisonment for not less than twenty years, if the death penalty is not imposed. "(2) As used in this subsection, the term 'aircraft piracy...

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