Position of Powell’s and Stevens’s Arguments, Research Paper Example

Summary paper on the position of Powell’s and Stevens’s arguments concerning limited principle for solving the case. Justice Powell ruling opinion on the case of McCleskey v. Kemp had a lot of implication on the judicial concepts. Warren McCleskey as a petitioner in the case was convicted of murder in the Superior Court of Fulton County in Georgia and armed robbery. Being an African American and aggravation was on armed ventures and a police on duty as the victim is what contributed to the Justice ruling for the death penalty imposed importantly due to lack of mitigation.

When he appealed to the federal courts through a habeas petition, he argues of racial biases against the fourth amendment discriminatory laws affirmed by the jurists Baldus, David C.Charles Pulaski, and statistician George Woodworth. The results depicted more racial parity in murder sentences. However, this did not hamper the rulings’ by Justice Lewis Powell, that held that such argument was limited and thus reversed the petition to convictions by lower court affirming that it applied the Georgia law correctly. The more critical part of his perspective is the apparent value acceptance that lacks consciousness to justify deliberation of the baseness raised as such he attributes to the part role playing in the Criminal justice system and culpabilities.

The dissenting opinions by a team of judges lead by Stevens affirms that death penalty is inhuman and unacceptable according to Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments especially on biased cases against a particular race. Specifically Steven posits that each case ought to have been affirmed after an assessment of the circumstance unique to the case. He is against the notion of assessment based on racial parity and advocates for the concurrences o the Men’s Reus, Actus Reus and the causation of the harm on an illegal murder happening.

Therefore, this built a ground for justice based on the analysis of equality for all and the universal principles applications to racial minorities and against the discriminatory purposes. However the aspect of respect to justice process desires for the proof of responsibility should not be barred by the racial biases and public scrutiny on the disparities and forms discrimination that is unchecked by legal engagements.