Jurek v. Texas

Jurek appealed his sentencing, claiming that the death penalty--under any circumstances--was cruel and unusual punishment and represented a violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. Jurek's attorney said that a certain amount of arbitrariness existed in Texas' criminal justice system and that it was also impossible to predict any individual's future behavior. The U.S. Supreme Court took up the task to determine whether or not this was so.

One of the most important elements considered by the Supreme Court was the revision of Texas' capital-sentencing procedure. This revision took place in the mid-1970s, a result of what many justices viewed as an uneven application of the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia (1972), Jackson v. Georgia (1972), and Branch v. Texas (1972). In each of these cases a black defendant received the death penalty for killing a white person. In attempting to pinpoint racial bias as to why these defendants were sentenced to death while others in similar circumstances were not, the Court discovered a certain randomness in the application of the death penalty. It was held that the death penalty in these cases was cruel and unusual punishment, and therefore violated the Constitution. This forced states and the national legislature to reevaluate their capital-sentencing structures to guarantee that the death penalty would be administered in a responsible manner.

Texas responded to this by narrowing the circumstances in which the state could seek the death penalty. Capital punishment could now be only applied in five situations: 1) the murder of a fireman or a peace officer; 2) murder committed in the course of burglary, forcible rape, arson, kidnapping, or robbery; 3) murder committed for pay; 4) murder of a prison employee by a prison inmate; and 5) murder committed during escape or attempted escape from a penal institution. Texas also adopted the new capital-sentencing procedure requiring the jury to answer three specific questions designed to maintain guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

When considering the claim that Texas' death penalty was cruel and unusual punishment, the Supreme Court also examined how the death penalty was applied by other states. Georgia and Florida each used a list of aggravating circumstances to justify the enforcement of the death penalty. Each of the five classes of murder stipulated in the Texas statute was represented in these lists by one or more statutory aggravating circumstances. It was found that the primary difference between Texas and the other two states was that the death penalty was available as a sentencing option for a smaller class of murders in Texas.