John Paul Penry v. Gary L. Johnson, Director, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Institutional Division (532 U.S. 782)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 4, 2001 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 532 U.S. 782 · 121 S. Ct. 1910
- Decided
- June 4, 2001
- Term
- October Term 2000
- Vote
- 6–3
- Majority author
- Justice O'Connor
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Affirmed and reversed (or vacated) in part and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice O’Connor delivered the opinion of the Court. In 1989, we held that Johnny Paul Penry had been sentenced to death in violation of the Eighth Amendment because his jury had not been adequately instructed with respect to mitigating evidence. See Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302 (1989) (Penry I). The State of Texas retried Penry in 1990, and that jury also found him guilty of capital murder and sentenced him to death. We now consider whether the jury instructions at Penry’s resentencing complied with our mandate in Penry I. We also consider whether the admission into evidence of statements from a psychiatric report based on an uncounseled interview with Penry ran afoul of the Fifth Amendment. I Johnny Paul Penry brutally raped and murdered Pamela Carpenter on October 25,1979. In 1980, a Texas jury found him guilty of capital murder. At the close of the penalty hearing, the jury was instructed to answer three statutorily mandated “special issues”: “ ‘(1) whether the conduct of the defendant that caused the death of the deceased was committed deliberately and with the reasonable expectation that the death of the deceased or another would result; “*(2) whether there is a probability that the defendant would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society; and “‘(3) if raised by the evidence, whether the conduct of the defendant in killing…
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