Boyer v. California

Issue: (1) Whether decades-long delays in executions—caused primarily by state action, and which result in only a small number of randomly-selected defendants actually being put to death—constitute a violation of due process under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well as cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment; and (2) whether the trial court is bound to hold an evidentiary hearing before the evidence is presented to the jury—assuming that undependable eyewitness identification is admissible at all, after a colorable showing that eyewitness identification evidence is both tainted and otherwise unreliable in a penalty phase trial—in order to establish sufficient reliability to comport with the due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments as well as the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments requiring greater reliability in capital cases.