Opinion ID: 1202924
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: the penalties inflicted in this case constitute punishments which are cruel or unusual

Text: Consider the precise acts for which this court is affirming the death penalty. Defendant seized and bound the hands of C.F. She told him where her money was but he took none. He helped her onto a bed 4 or 5 feet away and forced her to perform sex acts. He was clearly guilty of rape and perversion. The penalty for rape is not less than three years in the state prison. For perversion it is not more than 15 years in the state prison or less than one year in the county jail. These were brutal and revolting acts. But for moving C.F. 4 or 5 feet, helping her to the bed, he is to be executed. But for this movement he would not have received the death penalty! The case involving U.H. is similar except that he did not rape her. Defendant committed the same atrocities on A.H. as he did on C.F. and in fact did more harm to her than to U.H. But in attacking A.H. he merely threw her to the floor and raped her and committed perversion. But his penalty for this was not death, but two prison terms! Why? Because he did not move her the necessary one inch nor incidentally ask for her money! Of the condemned movements one must ask: What difference did they make? The answer: None. The above comparisons reflect the absurd position into which this court has backed by following the Tanner, Knowles and Chessman cases to the consistent but irrational ultimate. Holmes' epigrammatic A page of history is worth a volume of logic has found its supreme justification. In each of the other three situations involving the death penalty, if the victim had not been moved a few feet there would be no death penalty possible. Under the rule of this case a robber who shoves his victim against a wall is eligible for the gas chamber if a prosecutor arbitrarily chooses to ask for that penalty. Essentially section 209 may be used by a zealous prosecutor to kill one who has committed other more socially condemned crimes which carry less severe penalties. The instant case is the archetype. The deputy district attorney prosecuting Wein did this overtly. In his summation he demanded the death penalty not for defendant's moving his victims but for the sexual assaults he made upon them. He cited the military law which inflicts the death penalty for rape. He belabored the lecherous acts allegedly done to L.S., then said: If this is not treatment which earns this defendant the extreme penalty of death, I never saw any. There is not a red blooded man on this jury, there isn't a respectable woman on this jury who in my opinion would say otherwise. His only reference to the movement of L.S. was: He moves her; that is kidnapping for the purpose of robbery, as I explained it to you here.... He also said: I have only one regret in arguing this case to you, and that is that under the law of this state, for the reason that the defendant did not announce as his purpose robbery at any time to K.S., that I cannot charge him with kidnapping for the purpose of robbery with bodily harm and ask you to return a sixth verdict of death. I conclude that the defendant is in effect, being condemned to death for de minimis acts. Were the case before me, I should also say imprisonment for life or a long term of years would also fall within the scope of cruel or unusual punishment. This court properly refuses to draw lines delineating what distance is sufficient to constitute kidnaping. It is the task of the Legislature. The Legislature attempted by its 1951 amendment to do this and failed to communicate its intent to this court. The court has chosen to label all short-haul asportations kidnaping. The holding in this case that an asportation of four feet is sufficient to send a man to the gas chamber illustrates in unshaded tones that all short-haul asportations must be declared without sections 207 and 209 or not punished by the courts. This does not mean that no violation of section 207 or section 209 should be punished in the degree determined by the Legislature. It means that the penalties assessed in this particular case are too severe because the statute, as construed by the majority, is overly broad. While precise lines must be drawn by the Legislature, the penalties assessed for the alleged offenses in this case are blatantly on the forbidden side of it. The judiciary may not abdicate its responsibility to condemn a violation of constitutional powers with a question-begging cliche about separation of powers. Mr. Justice McKenna, writing for the Supreme Court in Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349, at 378 [30 S.Ct. 544, 54 L.Ed. 793], faced this problem squarely: We disclaim the right to assert a judgment against that of the Legislature of the expediency of the laws or the right to oppose the judicial power to the legislative power to define crimes and fix their punishment, unless that power encounters in its exercise a constitutional prohibition. In such case not our discretion but our legal duty, strictly defined and imperative in its direction, is involved. Then the legislative power is brought to the judgment of a power superior to it for the instant.... They have no limitation, we repeat, but constitutional ones, and what those are the judiciary must judge. Mr. Chief Justice Warren described clearly the problem of definition: This Court has had little occasion to give precise content to the Eighth Amendment, and in an enlightened democracy such as ours, this is not surprising. ( Trop v. Dulles, 26 Law Week 4219 at 4223.) The cases facing this problem of definition may be divided into four groups: (1) Those in which the penalty was found not excessive in relation to the offense; (2) Those in which the court held the Legislature free to prescribe even outrageous penalties; (3) Those holding the phrase cruel and unusual punishment refers only to uncivilized forms of punishment such as quartering; (4) Those holding punishment clearly disproportionate to the offense to be unconstitutionally cruel, unusual, or both. The problem in California is simpler than that faced by the federal courts, since our guarantee is stated disjunctively: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed; nor shall cruel or unusual punishments be inflicted. (Cal. Const., art. I, § 6.) I believe the most persuasive authority supports my judgment that clearly excessive punishments are unconstitutional. The defendant in Weems v. United States, supra, 217 U.S. 349, received a statutorily mandatory sentence of 12 years at hard labor in irons plus the permanent loss of many civil rights for falsifying two entries in an official cash book. Mr. Justice McKenna says of this sentence at page 377: It is cruel in its excess of imprisonment and that which accompanies and follows imprisonment. It is unusual in its character. Its punishments come under the condemnation of the bills of rights, both on account of their degree and kind. Chief Justice Warren continued in Trop v. Dulles, supra, 26 Law Week 4219 at 4223, concerning the Weems decision: The Court recognized in that case that the words of the Amendment are not precise, and that their scope is not static. The amendment must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society. In O'Neil v. Vermont, 144 U.S. 323 [12 S.Ct. 693, 36 L.Ed. 450], the court held the Eighth Amendment does not inhibit state action. The defendant was sentenced to 54 years in prison for sales of liquor during a single day. Justices Field, Harlan and Brewer dissented on the ground that the Fourteenth Amendment gave the Eighth Amendment protection against the states. They agreed that the inhumane sentence in this case contravened the Eighth Amendment. Two compelling reasons for condemning excessive sentences are stated in Cox v. State, 203 Ind. 544 [177 N.E. 898, 181 N.E. 469, at 471]. The court quotes United States v. Borromeo, 23 Philippine 279 at 289: A contrary view leads to the astounding result that it is impossible to impose a cruel and unusual punishment so long as none of the old and discarded modes of punishment are used; and that there is no restriction upon the power of the legislative department, for example, to prescribe the death penalty by hanging for a misdemeanor, and that the courts would be compelled to impose the penalty. Yet such a punishment for such a crime would be considered extremely cruel and unusual by all right-minded people. At page 472 the Indiana court in Cox v. State, 203 Ind. 544 [177 N.E. 898, 181 N.E. 469], suggests that the reason the issue of a punishment's cruelty and unusualness is not often before the appellate courts is that juries are so constituted as to find persons innocent when the punishment for an alleged offense offends their sense of justice. Obviously this element could not sway the jury so to favor a defendant whose sex crimes cried for vengeance. The finest exposition of the doctrine of unconstitutional excessiveness is State v. Ross, 55 Ore. 450 [104 P. 596, 42 L.R.A.N.S. 601]. Defendant was sentenced to five years in the state prison and fined $576,853.74 for embezzling $288,426.87 in state funds. He was to be imprisoned in the county jail until the fine was paid, but not longer than 288,426 days or approximately 790 years. The court reversed the sentence of imprisonment for nonpayment of the fine on the ground that it was cruel and unusual punishment. There is language in California cases upholding this position. Ex parte Karlson, 160 Cal. 378, at 383 [117 P. 447, Ann. Cas. 1912D 1334], said the danger that persons imprisoned for contempt were protected against excessive restraint by the constitutional rule against cruel or unusual punishments. In In re Finley, 1 Cal. App. 198 [81 P. 1041], the court rejected arguments that excessive sentences were not unconstitutional, but held the death penalty for an assault by a life convict was justified. The court said at pages 201-202: It is 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. Contra this position is In re O'Shea, 11 Cal. App. 568 [105 P. 776], which contains a dictum, at page 575, that only punishments of a barbarous character, like quartering, are cruel and unusual. (The court used the conjunctive.) There is language in People v. Tanner, supra, 3 Cal.2d 279, at 298, which may be read to mean that the death penalty for kidnaping is not excessive. But it is insufficient to paste a label to an act and justify enormities by it. This illustrates the profundity of the insight: What's in a name? It is tantamount to playing categories with human life. Moving a person four feet does not justify taking life no matter what words describe the act. Other cases which uphold the proposition that excessiveness is fatal to a sentence are: Application of Cannon, 203 Ore. 629 [281 P.2d 233] (life imprisonment for assault to commit rape held cruel and unusual); State v. Devore, 225 Iowa 815 [281 N.W. 740, 118 A.L.R. 1104] (imprisonment until fine paid held cruel and unusual); Williams v. State, 125 Ark. 269 [188 S.W. 826] (sentence to solitary confinement for a misdemeanor held cruel and unusual); State v. Whitaker, 48 La. Ann. 527 [19 So. 457, 35 L.R.A. 561] (sentence of six years for destroying plants held cruel and unusual); State v. Driver, 78 Kenan's N.C. Repts. 366 (N.C.) (imprisonment in county jail for five years and recognizance of $500 to keep the peace for five years thereafter for assault and battery held cruel and unusual); Sinclair v. State, 161 Miss. 142 [132 So. 581 at 582, 74 A.L.R. 241] (two justices' concurring opinion said sentencing an insane person to life imprisonment is cruel and unusual); State v. Moilen, 140 Minn. 112 [167 N.W. 345, 347, 1 A.L.R. 331] (a prison term flagrantly excessive would be cruel and unusual); McDonald v. Commonwealth, 173 Mass. 322 [53 N.E. 874, 875, 73 Am.St.Rep. 293] (imprisonment may be so long as to be cruel and unusual). I conclude that the death penalties inflicted on this defendant for moving five victims from four to 75 feet cannot stand in the face of the constitutional mandate that cruel or unusual punishment may not be inflicted. The judgments must therefore be reversed. The acts of moving K.S. 10 feet and A.C. 13 feet are serious enough to warrant punishment. The minimum punishment prescribed for these acts, one year in the state prison, may not be excessive for them. Appellant's petition for a rehearing was denied June 25, 1958. Carter, J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted.