Opinion ID: 1831239
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: f-2 whether wilcher's fifth, eighth and/or fourteenth amendment rights have been violated by the length of

Text: TIME ON MISSISSIPPI'S DEATH ROW AND THE MANY EXECUTION DATES THAT HAVE BEEN SET. ¶ 206. Wilcher asserts that he has been subjected to cruel and inhuman treatment because he has been kept in maximum confinement on Mississippi's Death Row under conditions including lock-down and isolation for at least 23 hours out of the day, and because he has been subjected to numerous execution dates during those 19-20 years. To support this argument, Wilcher relies on dissenting opinions in Elledge v. Florida, 525 U.S. 944, 119 S.Ct. 366, 142 L.Ed.2d 303 (1998) (Breyer, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) and Lackey v. Texas, 514 U.S. 1045, 1045-47, 115 S.Ct. 1421, 131 L.Ed.2d 304 (1995) (opinion of Stevens, J., respecting denial of certiorari). ¶ 207. This Court has spoken to this very issue before: Jordan argues that he has been incarcerated on death row from the time the crime was committed in this case, in 1976, until 1991, and then again in 1998, when the life sentence was vacated, until now. He claims that he has suffered psychological trauma waiting for his execution and that there is nothing gained by the State from 22 years of needless infliction of pain and suffering. He indicates that the United States Supreme Court has held that the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment when it makes no measurable contribution to acceptable goals of punishment, i.e., retribution and deterrence, and is nothing more than needless imposition of pain and suffering. Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 335, 109 S.Ct. 2934, 2956, 106 L.Ed.2d 256, 289 (1989).