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This is important to US  history, because it prohibits a jury from considering a VIS during the sentencing phase of a victim.

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Justice Powell argued that in a capital case, the jury's sentencing task is based on the defendant as a unique individual and not on the character or impact of the crime on the victim's family. Allowing the content of a victim impact statement to influence the jury could lead it to choose the death penalty for reasons which were irrelevant to the [defendant's] decision to kill thus diverting attention from the facts of the crime

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The Court found that the victim impact statement created "a constitutionally unacceptable risk" and violated the Eighth Amendment

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Does the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which protects a defendant from cruel and unusual punishment, prohibit a jury from considering a victim impact statement during the sentencing phase of a capital murder trial?

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Chicago-Kent College of Law at Illinois Tech. "Booth v. Maryland." Oyez. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1986/86-5020 (accessed January 3, 2017).

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Book

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Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

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The Supreme Court said the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment when given by a jury who has been persuaded by the VIS. Because the Jury received such influence in Booth's case, the death sentence had to be reversed

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Justice Lewis Powell said "The Jury's job in a death penalty case is to decide whether the criminal deserves to die based on his character and background and the circumstances of the murder. The Jury is supposed to focus on the criminal's personal responsibility and moral guilt. VIS make the Jury focus on the victim instead of the criminal."

Powell said, "Murderers usually have no idea how their crimes will affect their victim's families. That means those effects have nothing to do with a criminal's blameworthiness. Victim impact evidence makes juries evaluate how much a victim is worth. That implies that people deserve to die more when they kill a valuable person who has a big family than when they kill a bad person who is alone."

That did not feel right to the Supreme Court.

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The supreme court reversed Booth's death sentence, with a 5-4 decision.

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Maryland required  the prosecutor  To prepare a VIS, to describe how the crime affected the family. The prosecutor prepared a VIS based on interviews with the Bornstein family. As found out from the interview there were massive impacts on the family. The prosecutor read the VIS at the death penalty hearing. Booth objected saying this was a violation of the 8th amendment. The court rejected his objection, and sentenced him to death. He appealed to the Maryland court of appeals and they disagreed that this was in violation of the 8th amendment.

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Booth and Reid had separate trials in Maryland. Booth was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of robbery with conspiracy to commit robbery.

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Irvin and Rose Bornstein lived in West Baltimore, Maryland. In 1983, John Booth and Willie Reid entered the Bornstein's home, to steal money for heroin. During the crime they bound the Bornstiens and stabbed them to death. The bornstien's son found his dead parents two days later.

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1983

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The supreme Court reversed Booth's sentence

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June 15, 1987

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State of Maryland

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John Booth