Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/14-7955_aplc.pdf
Page Number: 77.0

Cite as:  576 U. S. ____ (2015) 

27 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

have grown far older.   Feelings of outrage may have sub­
sided.  The  offender  may  have  found  himself  a  changed
human  being.  And  sometimes  repentance  and  even  for­
giveness can restore meaning to lives once ruined.  At the 
same time, the community and victims’ families will know 
that, even without a further death, the offender will serve 
decades in prison under a sentence of life without parole. 

I  recognize,  of  course,  that  this  may  not  always  be  the
case, and that sometimes the community believes that an 
execution could provide closure.  Nevertheless, the delays
and  low  probability  of  execution  must  play  some  role  in
any calculation that leads a community to insist on death
as retribution.  As I have already suggested, they may well 
attenuate  the  community’s  interest  in  retribution  to  the 
point  where  it  cannot  by  itself  amount  to  a  significant 
justification for the death penalty.  Id., at ___ (slip op., at 
3).  In any event, I believe that whatever interest in retri­
bution might be served by the death penalty as currently 
administered,  that  interest  can  be  served  almost  as  well 
by  a  sentence  of  life  in  prison  without  parole  (a  sentence 
that every State now permits, see ACLU, A Living Death:
Life Without Parole for Nonviolent Offenses 11, and n. 10 
(2013)).

Finally, the fact of lengthy delays undermines any effort 
to  justify  the  death  penalty  in  terms  of  its  prevalence
when the Founders wrote the Eighth Amendment.  When 
the Founders wrote the Constitution, there were no 20- or 
30-year  delays.  Execution  took  place  soon  after  sentenc­
ing.  See  P.  Mackey,  Hanging  in  the  Balance:  The  Anti-
Capital Punishment Movement in New York State, 1776–
1861,  p.  17  (1982);  T.  Jefferson,  A  Bill  for  Proportioning 
Crimes  and  Punishments  (1779),  reprinted  in  The  Com­
plete  Jefferson  90,  95  (S.  Padover  ed.  1943);  2  Papers  of 
John  Marshall  207–209  (C.  Cullen  &  H.  Johnson  eds.
1977)  (describing  petition  for  commutation  based  in  part
on  5-month  delay);  Pratt  v.  Attorney  Gen.  of  Jamaica,