Are there higher U.S. court decisions that set precedent for this research?
In Furman v. Georgia (1972), the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty could be reserved only for a narrowed class of defendants, and that narrowed class could not be arbitrarily defined. In response to the Court’s ruling in Furman, states created laws that distinguished potential mitigating and aggravating factors (including the already-in-use “heinous,” “atrocious,” and “cruel” distinctions) in cases being considered for capital sentences. In Gregg v. Georgia (1976), the Court upheld the use of the “heinous, atrocious and cruel” aggravator as constitutional. The same decision, however, acknowledged the jury’s burden to weigh factors despite a lack of expertise – noting this quandary could be alleviated with guidance regarding the factors about the crime and the defendant that “society deems relevant.” Additionally, in Walton v. Arizona (1990), the Court clarified that aggravating factors need to be identified through objective circumstances. The Depravity Standard research objec
