Opinion ID: 2449451
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Cruel and unusual the standard.

Text: It must be conceded, of course, that at the time Article I, Section 16, of our state constitution was adopted in 1870 it was not considered to prohibit capital punishment. Capital punishment was employed before its adoption and has been employed since its adoption. But, as noted by the Supreme Court in Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349, 373, 30 S.Ct. 544, 551, 54 L.Ed. 793 (1910), 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 applications than the mischief which gave it birth. As noted by the Supreme Court of California in People v. Anderson, 6 Cal.3d 628, 100 Cal. Rptr. 152, 493 P.2d 880 (1972), cert. denied 406 U.S. 958, 92 S.Ct. 2060, 32 L.Ed.2d 344 (1972): The framers of our Constitution like those who drafted the Bill of Rights, anticipated that interpretation of the cruel and 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. 493 P.2d at 893. See also Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86, 101, 78 S.Ct. 590, 598, 2 L.Ed.2d 630 (1958), in which the Supreme Court observed that the Eighth Amendment must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society. Therefore, when the validity of the death penalty is drawn in question, judges cannot avoid the task of determining whether the death penalty continues to conform to the standards of the age. [2] If it falls below that standard, it is the duty of the court to declare it to be invalid. Ever since Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 2 L.Ed. 60 (1803) that has been the way such questions have been decided in this country. The courts have no more authority to defer to the judgment of the legislature in determining what is a cruel and unusual punishment than to defer to that branch of government for a determination of what is due process of law or what is an unreasonable search and seizure. In each of these instances, the determination is a judicial one which, in our jurisprudence, resides with the courts and cannot be avoided. What considerations enter into a determination whether the death penalty does or does not comply with contemporary moral standards? Clearly, there is not unanimity of public opinion either favoring or opposing the death penalty. However, public opinion, although relevant, is not conclusive of the issue. 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, supra, 408 U.S. at 268, 92 S.Ct. at 2741 (1972) (Brennan, J., concurring), quoting from Goldberg & Dershowitz, Declaring the Death Penalty Unconstitutional, 83 Harv.L.Rev. 1773, 1782 (1970). The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has correctly pointed out ... 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. Watson, supra, 411 N.E.2d at 1282. The last person executed in Tennessee was William Tines, on November 7, 1960. There was one execution in 1959 (Thomas Rutledge). There were none in 1958, two in 1957, and none in 1956. There were four in 1955. There were none in 1954, 1953, 1952, or 1951. No executions were carried out in the four recent administrations of Governor Frank Clement, Governor Buford Ellington, Governor Winfield Dunn and Governor Ray Blanton. Reciting a lack of executions in Massachusetts since 1948, Chief Justice Hennessey of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in District Attorney for the Suffolk District v. Watson, supra, made this statement: 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. Id. 411 N.E.2d at 1282. The above recited experience in Tennessee leads me to a similar conclusion. I now point out certain aspects of the death penalty which, in my view, render it cruel and unusual.