Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/14-7955_aplc.pdf
Page Number: 35.0

2 

GLOSSIP v. GROSS 

SCALIA, J., concurring 

they have discovered the lost folios of Shakespeare, insist
that now, at long last, the death penalty must be abolished 
for good.  Mind you, not once in the history of the Ameri-
can  Republic  has  this  Court  ever  suggested  the  death
penalty  is  categorically  impermissible.    The  reason  is 
obvious:  It  is  impossible  to  hold  unconstitutional  that 
which the Constitution explicitly contemplates.  The Fifth 
Amendment  provides  that  “[n]o  person  shall  be  held  to
answer for a capital . . . crime, unless on a presentment or 
indictment  of  a  Grand  Jury,”  and  that  no  person  shall  be
“deprived  of  life  . . .  without  due  process  of  law.”    Never-
theless,  today  JUSTICE  BREYER  takes  on  the  role  of  the 
abolitionists in this long-running drama, arguing that the
text of the Constitution and two centuries of history must
yield  to  his  “20  years  of  experience  on  this  Court,”  and
inviting  full  briefing  on  the  continued  permissibility  of 
capital punishment, post, at 2 (dissenting opinion).

Historically,  the  Eighth  Amendment  was  understood  to
bar  only  those  punishments  that  added  “ ‘terror,  pain,  or
disgrace’ ”  to  an  otherwise  permissible  capital  sentence. 
Baze v. Rees, 553 U. S. 35, 96 (2008) (THOMAS, J., concur-
ring in judgment).  Rather than bother with this troubling 
detail, JUSTICE BREYER elects to contort the constitutional 
text.  Redefining “cruel” to mean “unreliable,” “arbitrary,”
or  causing  “excessive  delays,”  and  “unusual”  to  include  a 
“decline  in  use,”  he  proceeds  to  offer  up  a  white  paper 
devoid of any meaningful legal argument.

Even  accepting  JUSTICE  BREYER’s  rewriting  of  the
Eighth  Amendment,  his  argument  is  full  of  internal  con-
tradictions  and  (it  must  be  said)  gobbledy-gook.    He  says
that the death penalty is cruel because it is unreliable; but 
it  is  convictions,  not  punishments,  that  are  unreliable. 
Moreover, the “pressure on police, prosecutors, and jurors 
to secure a conviction,” which he claims increases the risk 
of  wrongful  convictions  in  capital  cases,  flows  from  the
nature  of  the  crime,  not  the  punishment  that  follows  its