Opinion ID: 1805723
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Analysis Used by Lower Federal Courts

Text: Unlike the United States Supreme Court, the lower federal courts have ruled on the constitutionality of several methods of execution in recent years. The analytical model that emerges from these rulings has two steps. The court first determines whether a method of execution is limited to the mere extinguishment of life. If the method is not so limited and entails adverse effects beyond that point, the court then must determine if these effects are undue. To assist in this second step, the court may apply the evolving standards of decency criterion. Two federal circuit court cases are instructive. [28] The Ninth Circuit in Campbell v. Wood, 18 F.3d 662 (9th Cir.1994), upheld the State of Washington's alternative method of execution, [29] hanging, against a challenge under the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause. [30] After conducting an evidentiary hearing on the issue, the trial court noted two points: (1) Hanging in Washington is conducted pursuant to Field Instruction WSP 410.500, an exhaustively detailed execution protocol adopted from the military; and (2) after adoption of the protocol, the only hanging conducted in the state had been performed flawlessly several years earlier. [31] Campbell, 18 F.3d at 683, 685. The trial court then concluded that hanging according to the protocol does not involve lingering death, mutilation, or the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain. Id. at 687. The circuit court deferred to the trial court's findings and declined to conduct an evolving standards of decency analysis. Id. at 682. There was no point in looking at other states; execution by hanging as carried out in Washington clearly entailed no undue pain or mutilation. [32] Two years later, the Ninth Circuit in Fierro v. Gomez, 77 F.3d 301 (9th Cir. 1996), held California's alternative method of execution, [33] lethal gas, unconstitutional. The trial court had conducted an eight-day bench trial on the issue and concluded that lethal gas as applied in California resulted in extreme physical pain. The circuit court again deferred to the trial court's findings and declined to conduct an evolving standards of decency analysis. Id. at 308. There was no point in looking at other states; execution by lethal gas as carried out in California clearly entailed undue pain. Although the Ninth Circuit in both Campbell and Fiero declined to apply the evolving standards of decency criterion, this was due to the particular facts of those cases. In the eyes of the court, the proper result in each case was clear-cut and was dictated by circumstances in the home state. The court did not hold that the evolving standards of decency criterion could never be used in a method of execution casefor logic suggests that the criterion would be helpful in a case where the constitutionality vel non of the method is not clear-cut (which is the situation in the present case). IV. THREE RECENT EXECUTIONS The administration of electrocution in Florida demonstrates the cruelty inherent in this method of execution. Not only was every execution in Florida accompanied by the inevitable convulsing and burning that characterizes electrocution, [34] but further, three executions in particular were marred by extraordinary violence and mutilation. In two of these executions, smoke and flames spurted from the headpiece and burned the heads and faces of the inmates. In the third execution, the inmate bled from the nostrils and was at least partially asphyxiated by the restraining devices; and he too was burned.