Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/136/436
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 08:24:10+00:00

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From this judgment of the supreme court an appeal was prosecuted to the court of appeals, and the order appealed from was affirmed. It is said in the opinion by O'BRIEN, J.: 'The only question involved in this appeal is whether this enactment is in conflict with the provision of the state constitution which forbids the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment. * * * If it cannot be made to appear that a law is in conflict with the constitution, by argument deduced from the language of the law itself, or from matters of which a court can take judicial notice, then the act must stand. The testimony of expert or other witnesses is not admissible to show that in carrying out a law enacted by the legislature some provision of the constitution may possibly be violated.' The determination of the legislature that the use of electricity as an agency for producing death constituted a more humane method of executing the judgment of the court in capital cases was held conclusive. The opinion concludes as follows: 'We have examined this testimony and can find but little in it to warrant the belief that this new mode of execution is cruel, within the meaning of the constitution, though it is certainly unusual. On the contrary, we agree with the court below that it removes every reasonable doubt that the application of electricity to the vital parts of the human body, under such conditions and in the manner contemplated by the statute, must result in instantaneous, and consequently in painless, death.' 24 N. E. Rep. 6. At the same term of the court of appeals the appeal of the relator from the judgment on the indictment against him was heard, and that judgment affirmed. Id. 9. Among other points made upon that appeal was this: that the sentence imposed was illegal and unconstitutional, as being a cruel and unusual punishment; but the court decided, as in the case of the appeal from the order under consideration here, that the position was untenable, and that the act was not unconstitutional because of the new mode adopted to bring about death.
Kemmler was indicted for and convicted of a murder committed on the 29th day of March, 1889, and therefore came within the statute. The inhibition of the federal constitution upon the passage of ex post facto laws has no application. Section 5, art. 1, of the constitution of the state of New York provides that 'excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor shall cruel and unusual punishments be inflicted, nor shall witnesses be unreasonably detained.' The eighth amendment to the federal constitution reads thus: 'Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.' By the fourteenth amendment it is provided that 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.' It is not cone nded, as it could not be, that the eighth amendment was intended to apply to the states, but it is urged that the provision of the fourteenth amendment, which forbids a state to make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, is a prohibition on the state from the imposition of cruel and unusual punishments, and that such punishments are also prohibited by inclusion in the term 'due process of law.' The provision in reference to cruel and unusual punishments was taken from the well-known act of parliament of 1688, entitled 'An act for declaring the rights and liberties of the subject, and settling the succession of the crown, 'in which, after rehearsing various grounds of grievance, and among others that 'excessive bail hath been required of persons committed in criminal cases, to elude the benefit of the laws made for the liberty of the subjects, and excessive fines have been imposed, and illegal and cruel punishments inflicted,' it is declared that 'excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.' 1 St. Wm. & Mary, c. 2. This declaration of rights had reference to the acts of the executive and judicial departments of the goverment of England; but the language in question, as used in the constitution of the state of New York, was intended particularly to operate upon the legislature of the state, to whose control the punishment of crime was almost wholly confided. So that, if the punishment prescribed for an offense against the laws of the state were manifestly cruel and unusual as burning at the stake, crucifixion. breaking on the wheel, or the like, it would be the duty of the courts to adjudge such penalties to be within the constitutional prohibition. And we think this equally true of the eight amendment, in its application to congress. 1 In Wilkerson v. Utah, 99 U. S. 130, 135 Mr. Justice CLIFFORD, in delivering the opinion of the court, referring to Blackstone, said: 'Difficulty would attend the effort to define with exactness the extent of the constitutional provision which provides that cruel and unusual punishments shall not be inflicted; but it is safe to affirm that punishments of torture, such as those mentioned by the commentator referred to, and all others in the same line of unnecessary cruelty, are forbidden by that amendment to the constitution.' Punishments are cruel when they involve torture or a lingering death; but the punishment of death is not cruel within the meaning of that word as used in the constitution. It implies there something inhuman and barbarous, something more than the mere extinguishment of life. The courts of New York held that the mode adopted in this instance might be said to be unusual because it was new, but that it could not be assumed to be cruel in the light of that common knowledge which has stamped certain punishments as such; that it was for the legislature to say in what manner sentence of death should be executed; that this act was passed in the effort to devise a more humane method of reaching the result; that the courts were bound to presume that the legislature was possessed of the facts upon which it took action; and that by evidence taken aliunde the statute that presumption could not be overthrown. They went further, and expressed the opinion that upon the evidence the legislature had attained by the act the object had in view in its passage. The decision of the state courts sustaining the validity of the act under the state constitution is not re-examinable here, nor was that decision against any title, right, privilege, or immunity specially set up or claimed by the petitioner under the constitution of the United States.
Treating it as involving an adjudication that the statute was not repugnant to the federal constitution, that conclusion was so plainly right that we should not be justified in allowing the writ upon the ground that error might have supervene therein. The fourteenth amendment did not radically change the whole theory of the relations of the state and federal governments to each other, and of both governments to the people. The same person may be at the same time a citizen of the United States and a citizen of a state. Protection to life, liberty, and property rests, primarily, with the states, and the amendment furnishes an additional guaranty against any encroachment by the states upon those fundamental rights which belong to citizenship, and which the state governments were created to secure. The privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, as distinguished from the privileges and immunities of citizens of the states, are indeed protected by it; but those are privileges and immunities arising out of the nature and essential character of the national government, and granted or secured by the constitution of the United States. U. S. v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542; Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36. In Hurtado v. California, 110 U. S. 516, 534, 4 Sup. Ct. Rep. 111, it is pointed out by Mr. Justice MATTHEWS, speaking for the court, that the words 'due process of law,' as used in the fifth amendment, cannot be regarded as superfluous, and held to include the matters specifically enumerated in that article; and that, when the same phrase was employed in the fourteenth amendment, it was used in the same sense, and with no greater extent. As due process of law in the fifth amendment referred to that law of the land which derives its authority from the legislative powers conferred on congress by the constitution of the United States, exercised within the limits therein prescribed, and interpreted according to the principles of the common law, so, in the fourteenth amendment, the same words refer to that law of the land in each state which derives its authority from the inherent and reserved powers of the state, exerted within the limits of those fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of all our civil and political institutions. Undoubtedly the amendment forbids any arbitrary deprivation of life, liberty, or property, and secures equal protection to all under like circumstances in the enjoyment of their rights; and, in the administration of criminal justice, requires that no different or higher punishment shall be imposed upon one than is imposed upon all for like offenses. But it was not designed to interfere with the power of the state to protect the lives, liberties, and property of its citizens, and to promote their health, peace, morals, education, and good order. Barbier v. Connolly, 113 U. S. 27, 31, 5 Sup. Ct. Rep. 357. The enactment of this statute was, in itself, within the legitimate sphere of the legislative power of the state, and in the observance of those general rules prescribed by our systems of jurisprudence; and the legislature of the state of New York determined that it did not inflict cruel and unusual punishment, and its courts have sustained that determination. We cannot perceive that the state has thereby abridged the privileges or immunities of the petitioner, or deprived him of due process of law.
In the body of the liberties of the Massachusetts Colony in New England, of 1641, this language is used: 'For bodilie punishments we allow amongst us none that are inhumane, barbarous, or cruel.' Col. Laws Mass. 1889, p. 43.
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