Wainwright v. Witt
| Wainwright v. Witt | |
|---|---|
|
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| Argued October 4, 1984 Decided March 5, 1985 |
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| Full case name | Johnny Paul Witt, et al. v. Louie L. Wainwright, Secretary, Florida Department of Corrections et al. |
| Citations | 470 U.S. 1039 (more)
93 S. Ct. 705; 35 L. Ed. 2d 147
|
| Prior history | Witherspoon v. Illinois; set for reargument, 391 U.S. 510 (1968) |
| Subsequent history | Rehearing denied |
| Holding | |
| Juror can be excused from jury due to beliefs on capital punishment during the voir dire. | |
| Court membership | |
| Case opinions | |
| Majority | Rehnquist, Burger, White, Blackmun, O'Connor |
| Concurrence | Stevens |
| Dissent | Brennan, joined by Marshall |
| Powell took no part in the consideration or decision of the case. | |
| Laws applied | |
| U.S. Const. amends. VI, XIV | |
Wainwright vs. Witt, 470 U.S. 1039 (1985), was a U.S. Supreme Court case concerning a criminal defendant, Johnny Paul Witt, who argued that his Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated when he was sentenced to death for first degree murder by the state of Florida. He argued that the trial court had unconstitutionally hand-picked a jury during the voir dire process. This was because certain people were excused from the jury because they admitted pre-trial, that their decision of guilty or not guilty toward capital punishment would be swayed due to personal or religious beliefs.
In 1974, the defendant, Johhny Paul Witt, was tried and convicted of first degree murder in the state of Florida. It was proven that the murder had taken place while the defendant and his accomplice Gary Tillman were bow and arrow hunting in the woods. The two friends admitted to talking about killing people frequently. They even occasionally stalked humans as prey in the woods for fun. While on their bow and arrow hunting trip, the two males eventually ended up stalking an 11-year-old boy named Johnathan Kushner riding his bike down a popular trail in the woods. From there, the accomplice hit the boy with a star bit from a drill stunning the child. Witt and his accomplice gagged the child and threw him in the back of his trunk where the child died from suffocation as a result of the gagging. After driving to a deserted grove, Witt and his accomplice removed the lifeless child in the trunk and slit his stomach to prevent bloating. After, Witt and Tillman performed violent acts on the body, and then buried it in a grave.
After being convicted of first degree murder on February 21, 1974, Witt was also sentenced to the death penalty. Witt appealed this sentence for five different issues which included the court not allowing evidence to prove insanity, the court's alleged use of non-record material in reviewing his sentence, the state forcing him to admit guilt before he was allowed the right to an attorney, and how the court relied on non-statutory aggravated circumstances however still sentenced him to capital punishment. All four of those mentioned claims were almost immediately thrown out. The only legitimate and significant appeal he made was his belief that the jury had been death qualified because three of the jurors were “improperly excluded for cause because of their opposition to capital punishment.” In a previous U.S. Supreme Court case, Witherspoon vs. Illinois (1968), the Court came to the conclusion that "prospective jurors could not be disqualified from jury service simply because they voiced general objections to the death penalty or expressed conscientious or religious scruples against it. However, a state may exclude those jurors who would automatically vote against the death penalty, or those jurors whose attitudes about the death penalty would affect their decision regarding the defendant’s guilt or innocence.” Therefore, the state of Florida could, in fact, force a juror to step down if it is unmistakably clear that he or she would automatically vote not guilty or guilty for personal or religious beliefs. Witt’s argument was that jurors, who wouldn’t automatically vote not guilty on the death penalty, still were forced to step down simply because they didn’t like the death penalty and were more likely to vote not guilty. This, he argued, was a violation of his Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
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