Godfrey V. Georgia
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''Godfrey v. Georgia'', 446 U.S. 420 (1980), was a
United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on question ...
case in which the Court held that a
death sentence Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in s ...
could not be granted for a
murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse committed with the necessary Intention (criminal law), intention as defined by the law in a specific jurisd ...
when the only aggravating factor was that the murder was found to be "outrageously or wantonly vile." The Court reversed and remanded the Georgia death penalty sentence because, under ''
Furman v. Georgia ''Furman v. Georgia'', 408 U.S. 238 (1972), was a landmark criminal case in which the United States Supreme Court decided that arbitrary and inconsistent imposition of the death penalty violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, and const ...
'', such a factor did not help sentencing judges or juries avoid arbitrary and capricious infliction of the death penalty.


Background

Robert Franklin Godfrey was a Georgia death row inmate. He was sentenced to death for the murders of his estranged wife Mildred and her mother, Chessie Wilkerson, which he committed on September 20, 1977. After threatening his estranged wife of 28 years, Mildred Godfrey, with a knife and tearing her clothes during a drunken argument on September 5, Mildred left their house, secured a warrant against Godfrey charging him with aggravated assault, and officially filed for divorce, after which she moved into her mother's home. Godfrey and Mildred were scheduled to attend a court hearing regarding the divorce petition on September 22. Two days prior, September 20, Mildred confirmed in a phone call with Godfrey that she would never reconcile with him. Godfrey, believing his mother-in-law was responsible for his estranged wife's rejection of his offers to reconcile, went to the home where they were staying alongside the 11-year-old daughter Godfrey and Mildred shared. Godfrey shot Mildred through a window with a shotgun, killing her instantly, and then entered the home, beat his and Mildred's daughter with the barrel of his shotgun when she attempted to run for help, and instantly killed his mother-in-law, Chessie Wilkerson, by shooting her as well. Subsequently, Polk County courts charged Godfrey with two counts of
first-degree murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse committed with the necessary intention as defined by the law in a specific jurisdiction. ("The killing of another person without justification or excuse ...
and one count of
aggravated assault In the terminology of law, an assault is the act of causing physical harm or unwanted physical contact to another person, or, in some legal definitions, the threat or attempt to do so. It is both a crime and a tort and, therefore, may result ...
. Despite pleading not guilty by reason of temporary insanity, Godfrey's jury convicted him of all three counts on March 9, 1978. During the sentencing phase of his trial (which took place before the same jurors), the prosecutor stated that Godfrey's case did not contain allegations of "torture" or of an "aggravated battery," after which the trial judge provided the jury with instructions regarding the standards they were to use in imposing a sentence for Godfrey. The jury imposed death sentences for both murder counts, finding that the sole aggravating circumstance for each murder was "that the offense of murder was outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible and inhuman". The trial judge, in filling out a required post-conviction report, confirmed neither murder victim was "physically harmed or tortured ... excluding the actual murdering of the two victims" during the commission of the crime.


Procedural history

In 1979, the Supreme Court of Georgia upheld Godfrey's death sentences and affirmed his convictions, rejecting Godfrey's argument that the state's death penalty legislation and requirements for imposing a death sentence were "unconstitutionally vague" and also noting that the U.S. Supreme Court had previously upheld Georgia's death penalty legislation in the 1976 ruling ''
Gregg v. Georgia ''Gregg v. Georgia'', ''Proffitt v. Florida'', ''Jurek v. Texas'', ''Woodson v. North Carolina'', and ''Roberts v. Louisiana'', 428 U.S. 153 (1976), is a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. It reaffirmed the Court's acceptance of the ...
''. The Supreme Court of Georgia also found that the jury did not impose Godfrey's death sentence "under the influence of passion, prejudice, or any other arbitrary factor," and concluded that the sentence was "neither excessive nor disproportionate to the penalty imposed in similar cases." Two Georgia Supreme Court members dissented.


Opinion of the Court

In a 6–3 plurality, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in favor of Godfrey. Justice
Potter Stewart Potter Stewart (January 23, 1915 – December 7, 1985) was an American lawyer and judge who was an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1958 to 1981. During his tenure, he made major contributions to criminal justice reform ...
delivered the opinion, deciding that Georgia's death penalty legislation was unconstitutionally vague and did not properly distinguish between cases that would be eligible for the death penalty and cases that would be ineligible. Additionally, the Court decided Godfrey's crimes did not meet Georgia's preexisting criteria regardless of whether or not Georgia's death penalty legislation was constitutional. Justice
Thurgood Marshall Thoroughgood "Thurgood" Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme C ...
and Justice William J. Brennan Jr. concurred with Stewart's opinion and added that, while death penalty sentencing should require stricter sentencing guidelines, the death penalty was inherently unconstitutional and in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the
United States Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the Supremacy Clause, supreme law of the United States, United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, on March 4, 1789. Originally includi ...
. Chief Justice
Warren E. Burger Warren Earl Burger (September 17, 1907 – June 25, 1995) was an American attorney who served as the 15th chief justice of the United States from 1969 to 1986. Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Burger graduated from the William Mitchell College o ...
dissented, arguing that the plurality's decision would lead to more arbitrary enforcement of the death penalty due to the law being imposed on a case-by-case basis. Justice
Byron White Byron Raymond "Whizzer" White (June 8, 1917 – April 15, 2002) was an American lawyer, jurist, and professional American football, football player who served as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, associate justice of the Supreme ...
filed a second dissenting opinion arguing that Georgia law was sufficiently strict in ensuring juries would not disproportionately impose the death penalty for crimes that did not warrant it, and White also argued that the U.S. Supreme Court should not interfere with Georgia Supreme Court decisions when the latter was "responsibly and consistently interpreting state law"; Justice
William Rehnquist William Hubbs Rehnquist (October 1, 1924 – September 3, 2005) was an American attorney who served as the 16th chief justice of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2005, having previously been an associate justice from 1972 to 1986. ...
joined in White's dissent.


Subsequent developments

The U.S. Supreme Court granted
certiorari In law, ''certiorari'' is a court process to seek judicial review of a decision of a lower court or government agency. ''Certiorari'' comes from the name of a prerogative writ in England, issued by a superior court to direct that the recor ...
and vacated Godfrey's death sentence. In addition to Godfrey's death sentence being overturned, the U.S. Supreme Court's decision resulted in the immediate overturning of five other Georgia death row inmates' sentences—James Richard Patrick, Kenneth Hardy, Joseph Holcombe Mulligan, Keith Fair, and Kenneth Dampier—all of whom had the "outrageously or wantonly vile" aggravating circumstance to justify their death sentences. By October 1980, the Georgia Supreme Court reinstated all six inmates' death sentences, although Godfrey would still receive a re-sentencing hearing the next year. In 1981, a second jury re-sentenced Godfrey to death for the two murders. Godfrey filed a petition for a writ of
habeas corpus ''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a legal procedure invoking the jurisdiction of a court to review the unlawful detention or imprisonment of an individual, and request the individual's custodian (usually a prison official) to ...
in 1985, and the
United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia The United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia (in case citations, N.D. Ga.) is a United States district court which serves the residents of forty-six counties. These are divided up into four divisions. Appeals from case ...
granted Godfrey's request for habeas relief, vacating Godfrey's conviction and sentence and further deciding that to attempt to obtain a third death sentence against him would violate Godfrey's right against
double jeopardy In jurisprudence, double jeopardy is a procedural defence (primarily in common law jurisdictions) that prevents an accused person from being tried again on the same (or similar) charges following an acquittal or conviction and in rare cases ...
. In 1988, the
United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit (in case citations, 11th Cir.) is a federal appellate court over the following U.S. district courts: * Middle District of Alabama * Northern District of Alabama * Southern District ...
affirmed the federal district court's decision. Subsequently, Godfrey's death sentence was commuted to a sentence of life imprisonment. Godfrey died on May 31, 2005."United States, Social Security Numerical Identification Files (NUMIDENT), 1936-2007", database, ''FamilySearch'' (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6KS2-DJJ4 : 10 February 2023), Robert Franklin Godfrey.


External links

* United States Supreme Court cases Capital punishment in Georgia (U.S. state) 1980 in Georgia (U.S. state) 1980 in United States case law United States Supreme Court cases of the Burger Court United States death penalty case law


References

{{Reflist