In the United States and other nations that use

jury trials A jury trial, or trial by jury, is a legal proceeding in which a jury makes a decision or findings of fact. It is distinguished from a bench trial in which a judge or panel of judges makes all decisions. Jury trials are used in a significant ...

(such as

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

), a judicial override is when a

judge A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a panel of judges. A judge hears all the witnesses and any other evidence presented by the barristers or solicitors of the case, assesses the credibility an ...

overrules a jury's sentencing determination.

Use in capital cases

Only four U.S. states have allowed judicial overrides:

Alabama (We dare defend our rights) , anthem = "Alabama (state song), Alabama" , image_map = Alabama in United States.svg , seat = Montgomery, Alabama, Montgomery , LargestCity = Huntsville, Alabama, Huntsville , LargestCounty = Baldwin County, Al ...

Delaware Delaware ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state takes its name from the adjacent Del ...

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

, and

Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...

. Indiana abolished it in 2002, Florida in 2016, and Alabama in 2017. In 2016, the Delaware Supreme Court declared the state's death penalty law unconstitutional due to the override. Researchers who analyzed survey data from thousands of capital jurors found that "residual doubt" about the person's guilt was the most significant reason jurors voted for a life sentence instead of the death penalty. This could suggest that life-to-death overrides have a higher likelihood of resulting in a wrongful conviction.

Florida

Florida was the first state to adopt an override statute in the 1970s, after the

Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...

case ''

Furman v. Georgia ''Furman v. Georgia'', 408 U.S. 238 (1972), was a landmark criminal case in which the United States Supreme Court invalidated all then existing legal constructions for the death penalty in the United States. It was 5–4 decision, with each mem ...

'' had effectively invalidated all death penalty statutes in the country. The purpose of the override was to prevent juries from over-sentencing the death penalty. In ''Tedder v. State'' (1975), the Supreme Court of Florida stated that for a judge to override a jury's recommendation of a life sentence, "the facts suggesting a sentence of death should be so clear and convincing that virtually no reasonable person could differ." The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Florida's statute in 1984. The last death sentence imposed by override in the state was in 1999. In January 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a part of Florida's capital sentencing scheme in ''

Hurst v. Florida ''Hurst v. Florida'', 577 U.S. 92 (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court, in an 8–1 ruling, applied the rule of ''Ring v. Arizona''. to the Florida capital sentencing scheme, holding that the Sixth Amendment requires ...

''. The Court held that "The Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death. A jury’s mere recommendation is not enough." In March 2016, the state legislature abolished the judicial override.

Indiana

Indiana followed Florida in 1977 and enacted a similar death penalty scheme in which the jury's sentence recommendation was not binding. There were no directions on when the judge could override the jury's life sentence until 1989, when the

Indiana Supreme Court The Indiana Supreme Court, established by Article 7 of the Indiana Constitution, is the highest judicial authority in the state of Indiana. Located in Indianapolis, Indiana, Indianapolis, the Court's chambers are in the north wing of the Indiana ...

held that the override was permitted only when "virtually no reasonable person could disagree that death was appropriate." All ten death sentences imposed by override in Indiana were later vacated in appellate courts. In 2002, the override was abolished, and the courts were left with an option to determine the sentence only when the jury's recommendation was not unanimous.

Alabama

In Alabama, judges had no restrictions on when they could override a jury's recommendation of a life sentence. Judicial overrides amounted to more than 20 percent of all death sentences between 1981 and 2015 (101 out of 413), and half of exonerations due to innocence (3 out of 6). In 1995, the

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 involve a point o ...

held in an 8–1 decision that the Eighth Amendment "does not require the State to define the weight the sentencing judge must give to an advisory jury verdict." The Court had been asked to impose Florida's "great weight" standard on Alabama, but

Associate Justice Associate justice or associate judge (or simply associate) is a judicial panel member who is not the chief justice in some jurisdictions. The title "Associate Justice" is used for members of the Supreme Court of the United States and some state ...

Sandra Day O'Connor Sandra Day O'Connor (born March 26, 1930) is an American retired attorney and politician who served as the first female associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006. She was both the first woman nominated and th ...

said that doing so would amount to micromanagement. The Supreme Court declined to take up a case reviewing Alabama's use of judicial overrides in 2013 and again in 2015. Justices

Stephen Breyer Stephen Gerald Breyer ( ; born August 15, 1938) is a retired American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1994 until his retirement in 2022. He was nominated by President Bill Clinton, and repl ...

and

Sonia Sotomayor Sonia Maria Sotomayor (, ; born June 25, 1954) is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was nominated by President Barack Obama on May 26, 2009, and has served since ...

dissented the 2013 decision to decline to rehear the issue. Justice Sotomayor suggested that the elected nature of Alabama's judges is the underlying issue, with a study showing that death sentences are imposed more in election years. In April 2017, the Alabama legislature passed a bill that abolished judicial override prospectively.

Delaware

Delaware enacted an override statute in November 1991 after a jury had given four perpetrators life sentences for murdering two guards during an armed robbery. The life-to-death override was used on only one defendant, whose sentence was appealed and ultimately changed to a life verdict. Instead, the override was used multiple times to override a death sentence recommended by the jury. In August 2016, the

Delaware Supreme Court The Delaware Supreme Court is the sole appellate court in the United States state of Delaware. Because Delaware is a popular haven for corporations, the Court has developed a worldwide reputation as a respected source of corporate law decisions, ...

held that the judicial override made the state's death penalty statute violate the Sixth Amendment of the

US Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven articles, it delineates the nation ...

References