Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/558bv.pdf
Page Number: 918

ORDERS 

1071 

1067 

Thomas, J., concurring 

a robbery.  He spent  the next 29 years  challenging his conviction 
and  sentence  in  state  and  federal  judicial  proceedings  and  in  a 
petition  for  executive  clemency.  His  challenges  were  unsuccess­
ful.  He  now  contends  that  the  very  proceedings  he  used  to  con­
test  his  sentence  should  prohibit  the  State  from  carrying  it  out, 
because  executing  him  after  the  “lengthy  and  inhumane  delay” 
occasioned  by  his  appeals  would  violate  the  Eighth  Amendment’s 
prohibition on “cruel and unusual” punishment.  See ante, at 1067 
(Stevens,  J.,  statement  respecting  denial  of  certiorari)  (citing 
Lackey  v.  Texas,  514  U. S.  1045,  1045–1046  (1995)). 

It  has  been  14  years  since  Justice  Stevens  proposed  this 
“novel”  Eighth  Amendment  argument.  Id.,  at  1045.  I  was  un­
aware  of  any  constitutional  support  for  the  argument  then.  See 
Knight v.  Florida,  528  U. S. 990  (1999)  (Thomas,  J.,  concurring  in 
denial  of  certiorari).  And  I  am  unaware  of  any  support  for  it 
now.  There  is  simply  no  authority  “in  the  American  constitu­
tional  tradition  or  in  this  Court’s  precedent  for  the  proposition 
that  a  defendant  can  avail  himself  of  the  panoply  of  appellate  and 
collateral  procedures  and  then  complain  when  his  execution  is 
delayed.”  Thompson  v.  McNeil, 556  U. S.  1114,  1116–1117  (2009) 
(same)  (internal  quotation  marks  omitted).  Petitioner  cites  no 
evidence otherwise and, for all his current complaints about delay, 
did  not  raise  a  Lackey  objection  to  the  speed  of  his  proceedings 
in  the  1999  habeas  petition  he  ﬁled  18  years  into  his  tenure  on 
death  row.  See  ante,  at  1070,  n.  3. 

Undeterred,  Justice  Stevens  insists  that  petitioner’s  Eighth 
Amendment claim warrants relief.  It does not, and Justice Ste­
vens’  arguments  to  the  contrary  stand  in  stark  contrast  not  only 
to  history  and  precedent,  but  also  to  his  own  recent  statement  in 
Muhammad  v.  Kelly,  ante,  at  1019  (statement  respecting  denial 
of  certiorari),  decrying  the  “perversity  of  executing  inmates  be­
fore  their appeals  process has  been fully  concluded.”  In Justice 
Stevens’  view,  it  seems  the  State  can  never  get  the  timing  just 
right.  The  reason,  he  has  said,  is  that  the  death  penalty  itself  is 
wrong.  McNeil,  supra,  at  1116  (statement  respecting  denial  of 
certiorari)  (citing  Baze  v.  Rees,  553  U. S.  35,  78,  86  (2008)  (Ste­
vens, J., concurring in judgment)).  But that is where he deviates 
from  the  Constitution  and  where  proponents  of  his  view  are 
forced  to  ﬁnd  their  support  in  precedent  from  the  “European 
Court  of  Human  Rights,  the  Supreme  Court  of  Zimbabwe,  the