| Description |
In April of 1994, Justice Harry Blackmun announced his retirement from the Supreme Court of the United States, stepping down after twenty-four years on the Bench. Blackmun came to the High Court with a documented history of support for capital punishment legislation from the Bench, while at the same time having declared his personal "distaste, antipathy, and, indeed, abhorrence," for the penalty. He assured the Senate Judiciary committee during his confirmation hearing, however, that he would divorce his personal feeling from his judicial actions as a justice on the Supreme Court. As a judge on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, he had approached the death penalty from a position of judicial restraint, deferring ultimate responsibility for the punishment to both the Supreme Court and the legislative branch. Throughout his tenure, however, his position slowly evolved to one of activism. His exposure on the High Court to the inadequacies of capital punishment legislation, as well as to the inability of the federal court system to correct constitutional error, led him ultimately to strike the penalty in all instances. The penalty, he concluded, was inherently unconstitutional, and, without the adequate access of the federal courts to closely monitor its implementation, he could no longer justify his support. During his more than two decades on the Bench, the focus of Justice Blackmun's attention slowly shifted from the sanctity of institutions, such as the criminal justice system and the legislative process, to the individuals mistreated by them. No longer feeling capable of protecting them, he saw intrusion into the legislative process as a means of ensuring the fair treatment of individuals. He could no longer support capital punishment as a legislative policy issue. He retired from the Court questioning the legitimacy of the death penalty itself and hoping that his colleagues, too, would discover that the penalty is "doomed to failure" and must, therefore, be abandoned altogether. |
