Witherspoon v. Illinois

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Witherspoon v. Illinois
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 24, 1968 Decided June 3, 1968
Full case name: Witherspoon v. Illinois Citations: 391 U.S. 510
Holding
Court membership
Chief Justice: Earl Warren Associate Justices: Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, John Marshall Harlan II, William J. Brennan, Potter Stewart, Byron White, Abe Fortas, Thurgood Marshall
Case opinions
Majority by: per curiam
Laws applied
Ill. Rev. Stat., c. 38 s. 743, U.S. Const. amends. VIII, XIV
Overruled by
Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976)

Witherspoon v. Illinois 391 U.S. 510 (1968) was a U.S. Supreme Court case where the court was asked to decide if a state statute that gave the state unlimited challenge for cause of jurors who might have any objection to the death penalty. The court decided that the statute, in effect, gave too much bias in favor of the prosecution.

The Court said,

“

Whatever else might be said of capital punishment, it is at least clear that its imposition by a hanging jury cannot be squared with the Constitution. The State of Illinois has stacked the deck against the petitioner. To execute this death sentence would deprive him of his life without due process of law.

”

The decision in this case would cause the Supreme Court of California to order a retrial on the penalty phase in the 1972 case of California v. Anderson, and when the case was heard for the third time, would find the imposition of the Death Penalty was unconstitional on the grounds of the penalty being Cruel and Unusual in violation of the State Constitution. The decision would become national in scale when the U.S. Supreme Court also in 1972 ruled in Furman v. Georgia that all death penalty cases were in violation of the 8th Amendment's prohibition on Cruel and Unusual punishment.