Opinion ID: 355911
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: deference to the legislature

Text: 66 The majority speaks pervasively of the great deference which must be given to the legislative election of penalties, ante at 409-410; 416, weighing this against the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment as though it somehow displaces the duty to apply the proportionality rule. I recognize fully, of course, the deference that must be paid to legislative determinations of sentence. 41 Such deference is not unlimited, however. Otherwise, the Eighth Amendment would be the deadest of letters. Mr. Justice Brennan has observed that (j)udicial enforcement of the (Cruel and Unusual Punishments) Clause . . . cannot be evaded by invoking the obvious truth that legislatures have the power to prescribe punishments for crimes. That is precisely the reason the Clause appears in the Bill of Rights. Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 269, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 2741, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972) (Brennan, J., concurring). 67 It is true that there must be room for legislative discretion, particularly in dealing with the serious drug problem in the State and the City of New York. See 436 F.Supp. at 1168. But the remedies which the legislature fashions must comply with the demands of the Constitution. Mr. Justice McKenna described the proper degree of deference owing the legislature:The function of the legislature is primary, its exercises fortified by presumptions of right and legality, and is not to be interfered with lightly, nor by any judicial conception of their wisdom or propriety. They have no limitation, we repeat, but constitutional ones, and what those are the judiciary must judge. 68 Weems v. United States, supra, 217 U.S. at 379, 30 S.Ct. at 554. Unconstitutional laws cannot be allowed to stand simply out of deference to the legislature. At some point a given penalty may by virtue of its inordinate length be cruel and unusual. Once one analyzes the sentences here imposed in the cool light of reason and considers the specific crimes involved, the relation of the sentences to those for other crimes in the state and to those for the same crimes in other states, life imprisonment is simply too much to withstand constitutional scrutiny.