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45 Stetson L. Rev. 153 (2015-2016)
Newly Informed Decency of Death: Hall v. Florida Endorses the Marshall Hypothesis in Eighth Amendment Review of the Death Penalty, The

handle is hein.journals/stet45 and id is 167 raw text is: THE NEWLY INFORMED DECENCY OF DEATH: HALL V FLORIDA ENDORSES THE MARSHALL HYPOTHESIS IN EIGHTH AMENDMENT REVIEW OF THE DEATH PENALTY Chance Meyer* . INTRODUCTION The farm animals overthrow Farmer Jones to secure their equality. Afterwards, the pigs, which led the revolt, form a new regime to rule the farm. They proclaim all animals to be equal. And, for a time, things are better. But the ideal of equality proves difficult to maintain in practice. The pigs become corrupt. They transmogrify into humanlike rulers of the very sort they had replaced. They begin walking upright, wearing clothes, dining with farmers, and reigning over the farm like dictators. Ultimately, as corrupt humans sometimes will, they rethink their proclamation of equality. While they still hold all animals to be equal, they now declare, some animals are more equal than others. Nearly thirty years after the 1945 publication of George Orwell's Animal Farm ,2 the American death penalty underwent a regime change of its own. In Furman v. Georgia,' the United States Supreme Court found that the manner in which states were imposing the death penalty was cruel and unusual, in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Each justice in the majority had different reasons, and each wrote separately. Among the five of them, they described the practice of the day as wanton, * V 2016, Chance Meyer. All Rights Reserved. Assistant Counsel, Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, Southern Region of Florida; Adjunct Professor, Shepard Broad Law Center, Nova Southeastern University; J.D., Tulane University Law School, 2007. 1. GEORGE ORWELL, ANIMAL FARM 134 (1945). 2. Id. 3. 408 U.S. 238 (1972). 4. See id. at 239-40 (finding it unconstitutional to impose the death penalty under certain state statutes representative of the practice across the nation). 5. In fact, the Court had not been so visibly fragmented since its earliest days, agreeing only on a terse per curiam statement announcing the result reached, and issuing nine separate opinions, four in dissent. Robert A. Burt, Disorder in the Court: The Death Penalty and the Constitution, 85 MICH. L. REV. 1741, 1758 (1987).

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