No Death Penalty Ruling

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32313, 3 June 1970, Page 17

No Death Penalty Ruling

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) WASHINGTON, June 2. The United States Supreme Court yesterday declined to decide ’ two constitutional challenges that might have < effectively abolished the J death penalty in the United States. More than 500 prisoners in some 30 states that still retain capital punishment had been waiting on the Court’s decision in the case involving William Maxwell, an Arkansas Negro sentenced to death in 1962 for raping a white woman. They will now have to wait another year—until the Court’s next session, begin-, ning in October, when it will hear two other major capital l punishment cases. ] Maxwell’s lawyers had ar-, gued that the jury which ' found him guilty should not ' —at the same trial—also have 1 the right to decide for the 1 death penalty. They also questioned whether it was permissible for a jury to decide on the , death penalty without proper , guide-lines and direction from ‘ the Court. Instead, the Supreme Court directed a lower Fed- ■ eral Court to decide whether the Maxwell trial jury was unconstitutionally selected be- , cause it excluded anyone op- j posed to the death penalty. , In a 6-1 ruling, the Court ,

said that it was expressing no view whatever on the points made by Maxwell’s lawyers. Justice Hugo Black was the lone dissenter—he gave no reason—and Justice Thurgood Marshall did not participate in the decision. The Court, which has had only eight members for the last 15 months, is believed to

have been deadlocked 4-4 on the question of capital punishment. It will be back to full strength at the next session after Judge Harry Blackmun, of Minnesota, is sworn in next week as its ninth member. Judge Blackmun, who has said he is not personally convinced of the rightness or de-

i terrent effect of capital pun- • ishment, would have been ineligible to have heard the Maxwell case because he was involved in it in a lower Court There have been no executions in the United States since 1967, pending the Supreme Court decision in the Maxwell case.