After class on Tuesday (Common Law Legal System class), a student asked how a California state court could have ruled that the death penalty in California violates the United States Constitution. This is a good question, although the facts aren't quite accurate. In fact, it was a United States District Court Judge who ruled California's system of lethal injections to be unconstitutional. Clearly, a federal court judge can rule on whether something violates the federal constitution. But the student's question remains a good one. How can a state court find that something violates the FEDERAL constitution? Simple. Remember when we discussed the state and federal court systems in the United States I noted that a case will often raise both state and federal law claims. When this is the case, as it often is in criminal appeals, a state court can rule on the federal law claims as well as the state law claims. So, it is conceivable that the a California state court could find that the death penalty in California violated the FEDERAL constitution.The student also wondered whether this court was ignoring binding precedent that says the death penalty does not violate the U.S. Constitution. The quick answer is probably not. Past U.S. Supreme Court cases have set forth tests to be used to determine whether the process used to carry out the death penalty in a given state violates the Constitution. Of course the government would try to draw analogies to cases upholding procedures used for the death penalty, while the defense (petitioner) would try to draw analogies to those cases that found death penalty procedures to violate the U.S. Constitution. Capital punishment in the United States is not automatically constitutional, and if someone challenging a procedure can find enough flaws with the way it is carried out, which appears to be the case in California, they can get a court to say e the procedures violate the U.S. Constitution and still be in accord with Supreme Court precedent.
