Oregon v. Guzek
| Oregon v. Guzek | |
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| Argued December 7, 2005 Decided February 22, 2006 |
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| Full case name | Oregon, Petitioner v. Randy Lee Guzek |
| Docket nos. | 04-928 |
| Citations | 546 U.S. 517 (more)
126 S. Ct. 1226; 163 L. Ed. 2d 1112; 2006 U.S. LEXIS 1818; 74 U.S.L.W. 4142; 19 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 100
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| Prior history | Defendant convicted, Circuit Court of Deschutes County, 1988; conviction affirmed, sentence vacated, remanded, 797 P.2d 1031 (Ore. 1990); defendant resentence, Circuit Court of Deschutes County; sentence vacated, remanded, 906 P.2d 272 (Ore. 1995); defendant resentenced, Circuit Court of Deschutes County; sentence vacated, remanded, 86 P.3d 1106 (Ore. 2004); cert. granted, 125 S. Ct. 1929 (2005) |
| Holding | |
| States may constitutionally limit the evidence of innocence a defendant convicted of a capital offense may present at his sentencing hearing to the evidence already presented at his trial. Oregon Supreme Court vacated and remanded. | |
| Court membership | |
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| Case opinions | |
| Majority | Breyer, joined by Roberts, Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg |
| Concurrence | Scalia, joined by Thomas |
| Alito took no part in the consideration or decision of the case. | |
| Laws applied | |
| U.S. Const. amend. VIII | |
Oregon v. Guzek, 546 U.S. 517 (2006), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled that the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution does not grant criminal defendants facing the death penalty the right to introduce new evidence of their innocence during sentencing that was not introduced during trial. Accordingly, states could constitutionally exclude such evidence from the sentencing phase of a capital trial.
Randy Lee Guzek was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Chief Deputy DA Ron Brown prosecuted the case. On appeal, the Oregon Supreme Court affirmed his conviction but vacated the sentence. The court ruled that the death sentence violated the Eighth Amendment because the jury was not presented with a "general mitigation question," which would ensure that it had the opportunity to give effect to any relevant mitigating evidence outside of the statutory factors that were submitted to it. The court remanded the case back to the trial court for a new sentencing trial.
On remand, Guzek was sentenced to death again. Chief Deputy DA Joshua Marquis prosecuted the re-trial. Guzek appealed, and the Oregon Supreme Court again vacated the sentence, ruling that "victim impact" evidence that the State had presented during sentencing was not relevant, and so unconstitutionally secured the death sentence. The case was remanded for a third sentencing trial.
During the third sentencing trial, prosecuted by special prosecutor Joshua Marquis, the trial judge failed to instruct the jury about a "true-life" sentencing option—life in prison without the possibility of parole—as an alternative to the death penalty. Guzek was once again sentenced to death. Based on this error, the Oregon Supreme Court once again vacated Guzek's sentence and remanded for a new sentencing trial.
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