Payne v. Tennessee

Payne contended that the victim impact statement of Charisse Christopher's mother violated his Eighth Amendment rights and emotionally influenced the jury against him. In reviewing the trial, the Tennessee Supreme Court rejected the claim, affirming both conviction and sentence.

[w]hen a person deliberately picks up a butcher knife . . . and proceeds to stab to death a 28-year-old mother, her two and one half-year-old daughter and her three and one half-year-old son, in the same room, the physical and mental condition of the boy he left or dead is surely relevant in determining his blameworthiness . . . [The grandmother's testimony] did not create a constitutionally unacceptable risk of an arbitrary imposition of the death penalty and was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.

The U.S. Supreme Court was careful to point out in its 5-4 decision, however, that the ruling should be narrowly defined. It emphasized that it did not preclude the possibility of an Eighth Amendment violation, but that "such evidence was per se inadmissible in the sentencing phase of a capital case except to the extent that it related directly to the circumstances of the crime."

Discussions of the implications of this case touch on other parts of a defendant's constitutional rights, as well. The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees all persons a right to due process under the law. Justice O'Connor noted that "If, in a particular case, a witness's testimony or a prosecutor's remark so infects the sentencing proceeding as to render it fundamentally unfair, the defendant may seek appropriate relief under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment . . . "

The Sixth Amendment right to confront a witness can also be at issue when victim impact evidence is offered by the prosecution. When a video or taped statement of a dead victim is offered to show the impact of society's loss, the defendant cannot confront a witness to prove the veracity of the statements. When the defendant has been found guilty of a capital crime, the opportunity to confront a witness can become, literally, a matter of life and death. And because the penalty phase of a capital case is considered an extension of the guilt phase, the same protections for the defendant need apply.

The last problem created byPay ne v. Tennessee deals with the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. This prohibits comparative judgments of the worth of victims. In doing so, it does the same for defendants. The murderer of a hardworking parent does not deserve a death penalty sentence any more than the murderer of an unemployed itinerant; the killer of a pedophile deserves a death sentence no less than the killer of a wealthy philanthropist. Victim impact evidence can cloud this issue. For example, African American defendants are four times more likely to receive the death penalty than are white defendants, so the matter of equal protection under the law is far more than a legal nicety.