Opinion ID: 2203429
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Heading: the death penalty is offensive to contemporary standards of decency.

Text: The particular standard we examine today is that established by art. 26 in its prohibition of cruel or unusual punishment. While the word unusual may suggest the need for an ongoing comparison of punishments meted out for comparable crimes in similar cultures, we focus instead on the constitutional prohibition of cruel punishments. All punishments might be said to be cruel, but what we examine here is the question of punishment which is too cruel under constitutional standards. Also, we focus on the absolute and irreversible punishment of death, as distinguished from all lesser penalties. The constitutional prerogratives and duties of this court permit, indeed require, a reexamination of the death penalty to determine whether it is unconstitutionally cruel in light of contemporary circumstances. Certainly at the time of its adoption, art. 26 was not intended to prohibit capital punishment. Capital punishment was common both before and after its adoption. However, art. 26, like the Eighth Amendment, `must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.' Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86, 101 (1958). Commonwealth v. O'Neal, 367 Mass. 440, 451 (1975) ( O'Neal I ) (Wilkins, J., concurring). A constitutional provision `is enacted, it is true, from an experience of evils, but its general language should not, therefore, be necessarily confined to the form that evil had theretofore taken. Time works changes, brings into existence new conditions and purposes. Therefore a principle to be vital must be capable of wider application than the mischief which gave it birth.' Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 263-264 (1972) (Brennan, J., concurring), quoting from Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349, 373 (1910). Clearly, [t]he framers of our Constitution, like those who drafted the Bill of Rights, anticipated that interpretation of the cruel or unusual punishments clause would not be static but that the clause would be applied consistently with the standards of the age in which the questioned punishment was sought to be inflicted. People v. Anderson, 6 Cal.3d 628, 648, cert. denied, 406 U.S. 958 (1972). Therefore, if the death penalty is indeed unacceptable under contemporary moral standards, it is tantamount to those punishments barred since the adoption of art. 26, and it is our responsibility to declare it invalid. It is true that there is no unanimity of public opinion either favoring or opposing the death penalty. But public opinion, while relevant, is not conclusive in assessing whether the death penalty is consonant with contemporary standards of decency. If the judicial conclusion that a punishment is `cruel and unusual' `depend[ed] upon virtually unanimous condemnation of the penalty at issue,' then, `[l]ike no other constitutional provision, [the Clause's] only function would be to legitimize advances already made by the other departments and opinions already the conventional wisdom.' We know that the Framers did not envision `so narrow a role for this basic guaranty of human rights.' Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 268 (1972) (Brennan, J., concurring), quoting from Goldberg & Dershowitz, Declaring the Death Penalty Unconstitutional, 83 Harv. L. Rev. 1773, 1782 (1970). Moreover, we think that what our society does in actuality is a much more compelling indicator of the acceptability of the death penalty than the responses citizens may give upon questioning. See Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 279 (1972) (Brennan, J., concurring). From the beginning of 1948 until the end of 1972 (the Furman case was decided in 1972) no person was executed in this Commonwealth. The death sentences of forty-three persons were commuted or reduced by executive action. See Opinions of the Justices, supra at 919, and sources cited. The complete absence of executions in the Commonwealth through these many years indicates that in the opinion of those several Governors and others who bore the responsibility for administering the death penalty provisions and who had the most immediate appreciation of the death sentence, it was unacceptable. In its finality, the death penalty may cruelly frustrate justice. Death is the one punishment from which there can be no relief in light of later developments in the law or the evidence. This court has recognized the anomalous results which may be wrought in criminal cases by changes in the law and has adjusted standards of appellate review accordingly. For example, in Commonwealth v. Stokes, 374 Mass. 583, 587-591 (1978), this court applied retroactively the constitutional requirement that the Commonwealth bear the burden of disproving self-defense, [8] and declined to apply the rule that challenged jury instructions are unreviewable absent contemporaneous objection or exception. We reasoned that defendants should not be penalized for failure to anticipate changes in the law. The irreversible finality of the execution of a criminal defendant, O'Neal II, supra at 276 n. 1 (Wilkins, J., concurring), could frustrate such efforts to see that justice is applied equally when changes in the law occur or when new evidence is discovered. While this court has the power to correct constitutional or other errors retroactively by ordering new trials for capital defendants whose appeals are pending or who have been fortunate enough to obtain stays of execution or commutations, it cannot, of course, raise the dead. The cruelty of the death penalty similarly inheres in its unparalleled effect on all the rights of the person condemned. There is little doubt that life is a fundamental right `explicitly or implicitly guaranteed by the Constitution.' San Antonio Independent Sch. Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1, 33-34 (1973).... [T]he `... right to live ... is the natural right of every man' (quoting from Camus, Reflections on the Guillotine, in Resistance, Rebellion and Death 131, 221 [1969]), encompassing as it does `the right to have rights.' Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86, 102 (1958). See Comment, The Death Penalty Cases, 56 Cal. L. Rev. 1268, 1354 (1968). O'Neal II, supra at 245-246 (Tauro, C.J., concurring). The calculated killing of a human being by the state involves, by its very nature, a denial of the executed person's humanity. The contrast with the plight of a person punished by imprisonment is evident. An individual in prison does not lose `the right to have rights.' A prisoner retains, for example, the constitutional rights to the free exercise of religion, to be free of cruel and unusual punishments, and to treatment as a `person' for purposes of due process of law and the equal protection of the laws. Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 290 (1972) (Brennan, J., concurring). Finally, and perhaps most conclusive, the death penalty is unacceptable under contemporary standards of decency in its unique and inherent capacity to inflict pain. The mental agony is, simply and beyond question, a horror. Since the discontinuance of flogging as a constitutionally permissible punishment, Jackson v. Bishop, 404 F.2d 571 (CA 8 1968), death remains as the only punishment that may involve the conscious infliction of physical pain. In addition, we know that mental pain is an inseparable part of our practice of punishing criminals by death, for the prospect of pending execution exacts a frightful toll during the inevitable long wait between the imposition of sentence and the actual infliction of death. Furman v. Georgia, supra at 287-288 (Brennan, J., concurring). [T]he process of carrying out a verdict of death is often so degrading and brutalizing to the human spirit as to constitute psychological torture, People v. Anderson, 6 Cal. 3d 628, 649, cert. denied, 406 U.S. 958 (1972), and the onset of insanity while awaiting execution of a death sentence is not a rare phenomenon. Solesbee v. Balkcom, 339 U.S. 9, 14 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting). The fact that the delay may be due to the defendant's insistence on exercising his appellate rights does not mitigate the severity of the impact on the condemned individual, and the right to pursue due process of law must not be set off against the right to be free from inhuman treatment. Moreover, it is often the very reluctance of society to impose the irrevocable sanction of death which mandates, even against the wishes of the criminal, that all legal avenues be explored before the execution is finally carried out. Furman v. Georgia, supra at 289 n. 37 (Brennan, J., concurring). We conclude, therefore, from our examination of the actual operation of capital punishment provisions in Massachusetts, that the death penalty, with its full panoply of concomitant physical and mental tortures, is impermissibly cruel under art. 26 when judged by contemporary standards of decency.