Opinion ID: 1260876
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: The Constitutional Meaning of Cruelty

Text: Respondent contends that a punishment is constitutionally proscribed only if it is both unnecessarily cruel and is unusual. We have already concluded, however, that the California Constitution prohibits either cruel or unusual punishments, and have indicated that we believe capital punishment to be cruel in the constitutional sense. We have not had occasion heretofore to consider whether a cruel punishment can avoid the proscription of article I, section 6, upon a showing that it is necessary. Before examining the validity of that proposition, we shall set forth our reasons for concluding that capital punishment is cruel in the constitutional sense. It merits emphasis that in assessing the cruelty of capital punishment under article I, section 6, we are not concerned only with the mere extinguishment of life, which the United States Supreme Court has suggested does not violate the Eighth Amendment ( In re Kemmler (1890) 136 U.S. 436, 447 [34 L.Ed. 519, 524, 10 S.Ct. 930]), or with a particular method of execution (cf. Francis v. Resweber (1947) 329 U.S. 459, 463-464 [91 L.Ed. 442, 426-427, 67 S.Ct. 374]; In re Kemmler, supra, 136 U.S. 436, 444-449 [34 L.Ed. 519, 523-525]; People v. Daugherty (1953) 40 Cal.2d 876, 894-896 [256 P.2d 911]), but with the total impact of capital punishment, from the pronouncement of the judgment of death through the execution itself, both on the individual and on the society which sanctions its use. Our concern is that the execution which ultimately follows pronouncement of the death sentence has in fact become the lingering death which the Kemmler court conceded would be cruel in the constitutional sense. ( In re Kemmler, supra, 136 U.S. 436, 447.) (9) We do not interpret the constitutional prohibition of cruel or unusual punishments either as a license for the indefinite continuance of all punishments known to the common law or practiced at the time California attained statehood, nor as a proscription of innovative types of punishment whose purpose is the rehabilitation or reformation of criminal offenders. Historical analysis suggests that the framers intended to outlaw both cruel punishments and punishments of excessive severity for ordinary offenses. They used the term cruel in its ordinary meaning  causing physical pain or mental anguish of an inhumane or torturous nature. The framers of the California Constitution sought to restrict their fellow Californians' zeal for devising novel and torturous punishments. [26] Our first opinion construing article I, section 6, equated cruel with barbarous. ( State v. McCauley, supra, 15 Cal. 429, 455.) It has been suggested that the English Bill of Rights of 1689, which contained language identical to that of the Eighth Amendment, [27] and was the apparent precursor of similar provisions in most state constitutions, did not prohibit cruel, barbarous, or torturous punishments, but only excessive or illegal punishments. [28] It is clear, however, that in this country the phrase was understood to encompass the former and to prohibit both new forms of physical cruelty and existing punishments which courts might later hold to be cruel. Delegates to the various state conventions called to ratify the federal Constitution expressed concern that it contained no provision to ban tortures, or cruel and barbarous punishments, [29] or cruel and unheard-of punishments. [30] At least one congressman, Samuel Livermore of New Hampshire, recognized that the proposed Bill of Rights might result in some existing punishments being outlawed. During the 1789 debates in the House of Representatives he questioned the cruel and unusual punishments clause on the ground that: villains often deserve whipping, and perhaps even having their ears cut off; but are we in the future to be prevented from inflicting these punishments because they are cruel? [31] (10) We are mindful, too, that article I, section 6, like the Eighth Amendment, is not a static document. Judgments of the nineteenth century as to what constitutes cruelty cannot bind us in considering this question any more than eighteenth century concepts limit application of the Eighth Amendment. The United States Supreme Court recognized that the Eighth Amendment might be interpreted progressively when it said in Weems v. United States, supra, 217 U.S. 349, 378 [54 L.Ed. 793, 803], that: The clause of the Constitution, in the opinion of the learned commentators, may be therefore progressive, and is not fastened to the obsolete, but may acquire meaning as public opinion becomes enlightened by a humane justice. And a plurality of the court implemented that suggestion in Trop v. Dulles, supra, 356 U.S. 86, 101 [2 L.Ed.2d 630, 642], when it adopted as the measure of acceptable punishment under the Eighth Amendment the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society. (See also, Robinson v. California (1962) 370 U.S. 660, 666 [8 L.Ed.2d 758, 762, 82 S.Ct. 1417].) Were the standards of another age the constitutional measure of cruelty today, whipping, branding, pillorying, severing or nailing ears, and boring of the tongue, all of which were once practiced as forms of punishment in this country, might escape constitutional proscription, but none today would argue that they are not cruel punishments. Thus, although respondent argues that the standard of cruelty today is no different from what it was when article I, section 6, was adopted, our responsibility demands that we must construe that provision in accordance with contemporary standards. We have recognized before that our Constitution is a progressive document ( People v. Western Air Lines, Inc., supra, 42 Cal.2d 621, 635) and, in the context of article I, section 6, have accepted the Trop formulation of evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society ( People v. Clark (1970) 3 Cal.3d 97, 99 [89 Cal. Rptr. 253, 473 P.2d 997]) as an appropriate expression of the applicable standard. In reality, however, we think the dispute as to the standard to be more apparent than real for the standard today is the standard of 1849 and 1879  whether the punishment affronts contemporary standards of decency. The framers of our Constitution, like those who drafted the Bill of Rights, anticipated that interpretation of the cruel or 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. [32] (11a) Respondent also contends, however, that capital punishment does not offend contemporary standards of decency. The People find evidence that it does not do so in public opinion polls, in the willingness of juries to impose the death penalty, and in the statutes of the 41 states which contain provisions for the punishment of death. [33] (12) Public acceptance of capital punishment is a relevant but not controlling factor in assessing whether it is consonant with contemporary standards of decency. But public acceptance cannot be measured by the existence of death penalty statutes or by the fact that some juries impose death on criminal defendants. Nor are public opinion polls about a process which is far removed from the experience of those responding helpful in determining whether capital punishment would be acceptable to an informed public were it evenhandedly applied to a substantial proportion of the persons potentially subject to execution. Although death penalty statutes do remain on the books of many jurisdictions, and public opinion polls show opinion to be divided as to capital punishment as an abstract proposition, the infrequency of its actual application suggests that among those persons called upon to actually impose or carry out the death penalty it is being repudiated with ever increasing frequency. This repudiation has become so apparent that the National Crime Commission reported to the President that: The most salient characteristic of capital punishment is that it is infrequently applied.... [A]ll available data indicate that judges, juries, and governors are becoming increasingly reluctant to impose, or authorize the carrying out of a death sentence.... In a few states in which the penalty exists on the statute books, there has not been an execution in decades. (President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, Report (1967) (The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society) p. 143.) What our society does in actuality belies what it says with regard to its acceptance of capital punishment. Between 1930 and 1968, a total of 3,859 persons were executed in the United States as punishment for crimes ranging from murder to burglary and aggravated assault. [34] The steady decrease in the number of executions from a high of 199 in 1935 to 2 in 1967, [35] in spite of a growing population and notwithstanding the statutory sanction of the death penalty, persuasively demonstrates that capital punishment is unacceptable to society today. The cruelty of capital punishment lies not only in the execution itself and the pain incident thereto, [36] but also in the dehumanizing effects of the lengthy imprisonment prior to execution during which the judicial and administrative procedures essential to due process of law are carried out. [37] Penologists and medical experts agree that the process of carrying out a verdict of death is often so degrading and brutalizing to the human spirit as to constitute psychological torture. [38] Respondent concedes the fact of lengthy delays between the pronouncement of the judgment of death and the actual execution, but suggests that these delays are acceptable because they often occur at the instance of the condemned prisoner. We reject this suggestion. An appellant's insistence on receiving the benefits of appellate review of the judgment condemning him to death does not render the lengthy period of impending execution any less torturous or exempt such cruelty from constitutional proscription. The brutalizing psychological effects of impending execution are a relevant consideration in our assessment of the cruelty of capital punishment. The United States Supreme Court recognized in Weems v. United States, supra, 217 U.S. 349 at page 372 [54 L.Ed. 793 at pp. 800-801], that it must have come to [the framers of the Eighth Amendment] that there could be exercises of cruelty by laws other than those which inflicted bodily pain or mutilation. In Trop v. Dulles, supra, 356 U.S. 86, in which the United States Supreme Court squarely held a criminal punishment to be violative of the Eighth Amendment, the psychological impact of the punishment was dispositive. The court there held that denationalization as punishment was barred by the Eighth Amendment, stating in the plurality opinion: There may be involved no physical mistreatment, no primitive torture. There is instead the total destruction of the individual's status in organized society. It is a form of punishment more primitive than torture, for it destroys for the individual the political existence that was centuries in the development. The punishment strips the citizen of his status in the national and international political community. His very existence is at the sufferance of the country in which he happens to find himself.... In short, the expatriate has lost the right to have rights. This punishment is offensive to the cardinal principles for which the Constitution stands. It subjects the individual to a fate of ever-increasing fear and distress.... It is no answer to suggest that all the disastrous consequences of this fate may not be brought to bear on a stateless person. The threat makes the punishment obnoxious. (356 U.S. at pp. 101-102 [2 L.Ed.2d at p. 643].) Although the court suggested in dictum that it believed the death penalty to be permissible then in certain circumstances, it also emphasized that: The basic concept underlying the Eighth Amendment is nothing less than the dignity of man. ( Id. at p. 100 [2 L.Ed.2d at p. 642].) The dignity of man, the individual and the society as a whole, is today demeaned by our continued practice of capital punishment. (11b) Judged by contemporary standards of decency, capital punishment is impermissibly cruel. It is being increasingly rejected by society and is now almost wholly repudiated by those most familiar with its processes. Measured by the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society, capital punishment is, therefore, cruel within the meaning of article I, section 6, of the California Constitution.