Johnson v. Mississippi (486 U.S. 578)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 13, 1988 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 486 U.S. 578 · 108 S. Ct. 1981
- Decided
- June 13, 1988
- Term
- October Term 1987
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Stevens
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Stevens delivered the opinion of the Court. In 1982, petitioner was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. The sentence was predicated, in part, on the fact that petitioner had been convicted of a felony in New York in 1963. After the Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed petitioner’s death sentence, the New York Court of Appeals reversed the 1963 conviction. Petitioner thereafter unsuccessfully sought postconviction relief from the Mississippi Supreme Court. The question presented to us is whether the state court was correct in concluding that the reversal of the New York conviction did not affect the validity of a death sentence based on that conviction. i — ( On December 31, 1981, petitioner and three companions were stopped for speeding by a Mississippi highway patrolman. While the officer was searching the car, petitioner stabbed him and, in the ensuing struggle, one of his companions obtained the officer’s gun and used it to kill him. Petitioner was apprehended, tried and convicted of murder, and sentenced to death. At the conclusion of the sentencing hearing, the jury found three aggravating circumstances, any one of which, as a matter of Mississippi law, would have been sufficient to support a capital sentence. After weighing mitigating circumstances and aggravating circumstances “one against the other,” the jury found “that the aggravating circumstances do…
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