Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U.S. 808 (1991), was a United States Supreme Court case authored by Chief Justice William Rehnquist which held that testimony in the form of a victim impact statement is admissible during the sentencing phase of a trial and, in death penalty cases, does not violate the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eighth Amendment.

According to his criminal conviction, on Saturday, June 27, 1987, he attempted to rape an acquaintance of his, Charisse Christopher, and murdered her and her two-year-old daughter, Lacie Jo.

The defendant, in contrast, said that he was in the building on a visit to his girlfriend and hearing screams from the room of the murder victims he went in to help.

The physical evidence implicating the defendant was: his fingerprints on cans of malt liquor, the victims' blood soaked into his clothes, and his property left at the scene of the crime.

The district attorney stressed, in his closing arguments, the senselessness of the killings, the violence displayed by the defendant, and the innocence of the victims.

[5] The Court held that testimony in the form of a victim impact statement was admissible and constitutional in death penalty cases, overturning Booth v. Maryland (1987) and South Carolina v. Gathers (1989).

[7] Payne has had a significant, ongoing impact in victim's rights, criminology, stare decisis, and the lives of the parties involved.

[27] On November 18, 2021, the Shelby County District Attorney General announced that Payne was no longer on death row and would instead serve two consecutive life sentences.

Since 2002, executions of people with intellectual disabilities have been ruled unconstitutional in the United States, and a law passed by the Tennessee General Assembly in April 2021 allowed for death row inmates to appeal their sentences on intellectual disability grounds.