Executions on hold

last updated 8 January 2015

Washington, D.C.

The Supreme Court ruled this week that only juries, not judges, can send criminals to the death chamber. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the court’s 7-2 majority, said that letting a judge decide whether a crime was cruel or heinous enough to warrant death “senselessly diminished” a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. The decision called into question the sentences of more than 150 death-row inmates in Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, and Nebraska, who were convicted by juries but sentenced by judges. Four other states—Florida, Alabama, Delaware, and Indiana—may have to change their capital-punishment laws, because they give judges final say after jurors deliver an advisory verdict on whether a killer should live or die.