Cruel Punishment: Proportionate Sentencing and the Delaware Constitution
Date
2012-05
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
This paper builds an argument for why the Delaware Supreme Court should
establish broader protections against disproportionate prison sentences under the
Delaware Constitution’s Cruel Punishment Clause than the United States Supreme
Court has interpreted to exist under the United States Constitution’s Cruel and
Unusual Punishment Clause. Beginning with Rummel v. Estelle in 1980, the United
States Supreme Court decided a line of six cases on the issue of excessive prison
terms. These cases failed to establish clear, consistent, or humane standards for
disproportionality claims. Unlike federal courts, state courts are not bound to follow
all of the Supreme Court’s precedents. Under the doctrine of “judicial federalism,”
state courts can interpret their state constitutions in ways that extend greater
protections to citizens of the state. To explore the issue of disproportionality claims at
the state level, the LEXIS KEY WORDS system was used to locate major state
supreme court decisions on sentencing disproportionality from 1980 to 2011. State
courts have essentially followed one of two paths. The first path is to apply the United
States Supreme Court’s jurisprudence to disproportionality claims. The second is to
establish broader protections against lengthy prison terms under the state constitution.
Although the Delaware Supreme Court has attempted to make sense of the United
States Supreme Court’s holdings, the results have been contradictory. This paper
concludes with the assertion that the Delaware Supreme Court should extend broader
protections against excessive sentences under the Cruel Punishment Clause of the
Delaware Constitution, using preponderance of the evidence as the threshold standard
for disproportionality claims.
Description
Keywords
proportionate sentencing, Delaware constitution, Delaware Supreme Court, cruel punishment clause, disproportionality claims