Opinion ID: 1260876
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Prior California Decisions

Text: Although we have often considered challenges to the constitutionality of capital punishment, we have heretofore approached the question in the Eighth Amendment context of cruel and unusual punishment, using that term interchangeably with the cruel or unusual language of article I, section 6, of the California Constitution, [21] and have never independently tested the death penalty against the disjunctive requirements of the latter. As a consequence of this emphasis on the Eighth Amendment approach the majority of our prior opinions have focused on justifications for continuation of the death penalty which were then believed to exempt it from the federal constitutional prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment without regard to whether it was cruel. This disregard of the cruelty question is understandable when it is realized that at the time article I, section 6, was drafted in 1849, [22] and when it was readopted in 1879, [23] capital punishment was not considered so cruel as to warrant proscription, and was a widely accepted, customary punishment in the fledgling state. Hanging had been a popular form of vigilante justice, [24] and even after the new state instituted a judicial and penal system, public executions continued. [25] Thus, at the time of our earliest decisions upholding capital punishment, a substantial proportion of California's residents had witnessed executions. It was not a remote or abstract concept, and the question as to whether capital punishment might violate standards of decency then accepted or shock the conscience of the people of that time did not often arise. When it did, the question could be summarily disposed of by a court which then understandably assumed that capital punishment was not so cruel as to be proscribed by the state or federal Constitutions. Since the cruelty of capital punishment was not then a substantial issue, any doubts as to the constitutionality of the death penalty were resolved by resorting to its continuing and usual acceptance. The emphasis of our prior opinions was thus placed on the common or usual rather than the cruel aspect of the punishment. One J.W. Finley appears to have been the first defendant to challenge the death penalty in California on grounds that it violated article I, section 6, of the California Constitution. A life prisoner at Folsom, he had committed a malicious assault on another prisoner, an offense punishable by death. While awaiting trial he challenged the then applicable Penal Code section (Pen. Code, § 246; now Pen. Code, § 4500) on constitutional grounds. The Court of Appeal rejected his challenge, answering its own question Is the punishment cruel or unusual, by justifying it as among the severe penalties ... necessary to deter men from defying law and daring the consequences. ( In re Finley (1905) 1 Cal. App. 198, 201 [81 P. 1041].) The Finley court adopted an excessive or disproportionate test by which to judge whether a punishment was unusual and concluded that only when the punishment is out of all proportion to the offense, and is beyond question an extraordinary penalty for a crime of ordinary gravity committed under ordinary circumstances, that courts may denounce it as unusual.  (1 Cal. App. 198, 202; italics in original.) The court, perhaps mindful of our decision in Ex Parte Mitchell, supra, 70 Cal. 1, in which we had used the disjunctive language of article I, section 6, did purport to separately consider whether the penalty was cruel, but instead of examining that question independently, assumed that the death penalty could not be cruel per se, for the whole current of law for centuries justifies the infliction. ( Ibid. ) Thus, California adopted the cruel and unusual punishment approach, which has been followed by the United States Supreme Court, of finding justification for capital punishment in its deterrent effect, and weighing only whether it was an excessive or unusual punishment, without independent consideration of whether it is cruel. When Finley appealed to this court after his conviction, he did not claim that the death penalty constituted cruel or unusual punishment. Instead, he challenged the imposition of the death penalty for malicious assault on equal protection grounds, claiming that there was no justification for imposing such a severe penalty on life prisoners when others who committed the same offense were treated more leniently. We rejected the equal protection claim on the dual ground that the distinction was reasonable because it was necessary to have a more severe punishment to deter life prisoners, and because since they were already serving life terms no greater punishment could be imposed except death. ( People v. Finley (1908) 153 Cal. 59 [94 P. 248].) Although Finley did not directly challenge the death penalty in this court on cruel and unusual punishment grounds, the approaches to its constitutionality taken by the Court of Appeal in the first Finley case and by this court in the second Finley case became firmly established in California law in 1909 when we rejected a second challenge to the infliction of the death penalty for aggravated assault by a life prisoner. Jacob Oppenheimer, a life prisoner at San Quentin, undeterred by the existence of the penalty, assaulted another prisoner in the prison dining room with a knife. He was convicted, the death penalty was imposed, and, on appeal to this court, he contended that then section 246 of the Penal Code was unconstitutional. Citing our prior Finley opinion, we noted that the validity of the section had been upheld against an equal protection challenge. But Oppenheimer had also claimed that the death penalty constituted cruel or unusual punishment. Although we recognized that `cruel' or `unusual' punishments were barred by section 6 of article I of the California Constitution, we did not examine the possibility that capital punishment might be cruel. Instead we declared: The infliction of the death penalty by any of the methods ordinarily adopted by civilized people, such as hanging, shooting, or electricity, is neither a cruel nor unusual punishment (see In re Kemmler, 136 U.S. 447 ...) unless perhaps it be so disproportionate to the offense for which it is inflicted as to meet the disapproval and condemnation of the conscience and reason of men generally, `as to shock the moral sense of the people.' [Citation.] In view of what is said in People v. Finley , as to the reasons for such provision ..., we are of the opinion that no such conclusion can be reached in regard to the statute under consideration. ( People v. Oppenheimer (1909) 156 Cal. 733, 737-738 [106 P. 74].) By adopting what had originally been the basis for rejecting an equal protection challenge to the death penalty, we established justification, proportionment to the offense, and common practice among civilized peoples, as the tests by which to measure capital punishment against constitutional challenge, notwithstanding the alternative criteria of cruel or unusual punishments established by section 6, article I, of the California Constitution. Since the death penalty furthered a permissible purpose of punishment, was commonly practiced among civilized people, and was not disproportionate to the offense, it did not offend the Constitution. The majority of challenges to the death penalty in this state since Oppenheimer have been rejected either without further exploration of the cruel or unusual punishment question, or by finding justification for continuance of capital punishment. (E.g., People v. Lazarus (1929) 207 Cal. 507, 514 [279 P. 145] [It is not necessary to cite authorities for the purpose of showing that this contention has uniformly been held to be unmeritorious]; In re Wells (1950) 35 Cal.2d 889, 895 [221 P.2d 947] [We are convinced that [ Oppenheimer ] was correctly decided. (See also In re Finley (1905) 1 Cal. App. 198, 203 ....)]; People v. Bashor (1957) 48 Cal.2d 763 [312 P.2d 255] [citing Lazarus and Wells ].) When justifications offered in support of continuance of the death penalty were more recently challenged, we continued to uphold it on the ground that it had long been practiced and its application upheld, without, however, independently reexamining the question of the cruelty of the punishment in the reality of present day conditions. ( In re Anderson, supra, 69 Cal.2d 613, 631.) Although our decision in Anderson turned largely upon the issue of lack of standards, and we did in that case comment upon the issue of cruel or unusual punishment, we examined the issue on the basis of the conjunctive cruel and unusual punishment. Thus our approach heretofore has paralleled that of the United States Supreme Court in rejecting challenges brought under the Eighth Amendment in finding justification for capital punishment and upholding it if it is not disproportionate to the offense. (See Goldberg and Dershowitz, Declaring the Death Penalty Unconstitutional (1970) 83 Harv.L.Rev. 1773, 1784-1798.) Now, however, as the California constitutional history demonstrates, we must probe the issue on the basis of the disjunctive cruel or unusual punishment.