Hopper, Corrections Commissioner, et al. v. Evans (456 U.S. 605)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided May 24, 1982 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 456 U.S. 605 · 102 S. Ct. 2049
- Decided
- May 24, 1982
- Term
- October Term 1981
- Vote
- 7–2
- Majority author
- Justice Burger
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Reversed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Chief Justice Burger delivered the opinion of the Court. We granted certiorari to determine whether, after invalidation of a state law which precluded instructions on lesser included offenses in capital cases, a new trial is required in a capital case in which the defendant’s own evidence negates the possibility that such an instruction might have been warranted. I A Shortly after respondent was released on parole from an Indiana prison in 1976, he and Wayne Ritter, who had been a fellow inmate, embarked on what respondent himself described as a cross-country crime “spree.” App. 9. According to respondent’s testimony, they committed about 30 armed robberies, 9 kidnapings, and 2 extortion schemes in seven different States during a 2-month period. Respondent testified that on January 5, 1977, he and Ritter entered a pawnshop in Mobile, Ala., intending to rob it. Ritter asked the pawnshop owner, Edward Nassar, to show him a gun. When Nassar handed the gun to Ritter, respondent pulled his own gun and announced that he intended to rob him. Nassar dropped to his hands and knees and crawled toward his office. Respondent then shot him in the back, killing him. Nassar’s two daughters, aged seven and nine, were in the pawnshop at the time of the murder. Respondent and Ritter were captured by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Little Rock, Ark., on March 7, 1977. A gun, which was…
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