Opinion ID: 2449451
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Unnecessary killing is cruel.

Text: Finally, the death penalty is absolutely unnecessary as a punishment and, therefore, is cruel. [4] Society would be adequately protected from the condemned murderer by his permanent imprisonment; killing him is not necessary. Our law recognizes only one instance in which a deliberate killing is justified, viz., one may kill another in his own or another's necessary self-defense. This being true, how can the whole body of individuals making up The State be justified in killing a person when it is unnecessary to do so for the protection of the people of the state? See Capital Punishment, 56 T. Sellin (1967 edition). By any modern concept of the term cruel, the deliberate and unnecessary killing of a human being is cruel, whether done by an individual or by the State. In society where the force of all is mobilized against one, what principle of justice authorizes it to impose death? ... A victor who would kill his captured enemies is called barbaric! A man who butchers a child whom he can disarm and punish seems like a monster! An accused condemned by society is like a conquered and powerless enemy; he is weaker before it than a child is before a man. Robespierre (quoted in Hornum, Two Debates: France, 1791; England, 1956, in Capital Punishment 65-66 [T. Sellin ed. 1967]). With respect to the question whether the death penalty is necessary, the Supreme Court of California, in holding that its death penalty statute violated the cruel or unusual punishments clause of its state constitution, said in People v. Anderson, supra : The People concede that capital punishment is cruel to the individual involved. They argue, however, that only `unnecessary' cruelty is constitutionally proscribed, and that if a cruel punishment can be justified it is not forbidden by article I, section 6, of the California Constitution. We need not decide here whether our Constitution permits the infliction of `necessary' cruelty as punishment for crime, because respondent has not demonstrated that the death penalty can be justified as necessary to any state interest. In seeking to justify continuance of capital punishment, the People argue that it furthers three of the four acknowledged purposes of punishment. Respondent concedes that death is in no way rehabilitative, but contends that capital punishment may be legitimately imposed in retribution for serious offenses, that it serves to isolate the offender, and that the existence of the death penalty acts as a deterrent to crime. None of these purposes is shown to justify so onerous a penalty as death. Although vengeance or retribution has been acknowledged as a permissible purpose of punishment under the Eighth Amendment ( Williams v. New York (1949) 337 U.S. 241, 248, 69 S.Ct. 1079 [1083], 93 L.Ed. 1337), we do not sanction punishment solely for retribution in California. ( In Re Estrada (1965) 63 Cal.2d 740, 745, 48 Cal. Rptr. 172, 408 P.2d 948.) We are fully aware that many condemned prisoners have committed crimes of the utmost cruelty and depravity and that such persons are not entitled to the slightest sympathy from society in the administration of justice or otherwise. Nevertheless, it is incompatible with the dignity of an enlightened society to attempt to justify the taking of life for purposes of vengeance. Admittedly, isolation of the offender from society is a proper and often necessary goal of punishment and death does effectively serve that purpose. Society can be protected from convicted criminals, however, by far less onerous means than execution. In no sense can capital punishment be justified as `necessary' to isolate the offender from society. 100 Cal. Rptr. at 167-68, 493 P.2d at 895-96. I find that I am in agreement with the views thus expressed by the California Supreme Court. Life imprisonment without parole is an alternative that serves the functions of severely punishing the criminal and permanently protecting the society from the possibility of a repeated offense. Some writers have attempted to justify the death penalty on the grounds that society needs to kill some criminals in order to deter others from potential crimes. After a century of debate, investigators and scholars are in disagreement, at best, about whether the death penalty in fact does deter crime; indeed, some argue that it has the opposite effect. To prove that the death penalty, in particular, is a deterrent would require more than proof that the possibility of punishment, in general, deters crime. The proof would have to show that there are potential crimes that are not committed because of the existence of the death penalty and that they would be committed otherwise. Such an inquiry, by its nature, would be highly speculative. In any event, my view is that, for the reasons discussed herein, the death penalty is a cruel and unusual punishment for the person upon whom it is inflicted and is, therefore, unconstitutional. Were it positively shown that the death penalty has a deterrent effect on others, it would still be unconstitutional because it is a cruel and unusual punishment for the person upon whom it is inflicted. In other words, deterrence, or the lack thereof, is irrelevant to the constitutional issue whether a particular punishment is cruel and unusual. Deterrent effect cannot save a cruel and unusual punishment.