Opinion ID: 1912613
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 24

Heading: Dignity of Man

Text: A penalty also must accord with the dignity of man,' which is the basic concept underlying the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. [161] Regarding executions, the four-justice dissent in Resweber stated: Taking human life by unnecessarily cruel means shocks the most fundamental instincts of civilized man. It should not be possible under the constitutional procedure of a self-governing people. [162] The U.S. Supreme Court has implicitly condemned some punishments as barbaric, such as beheading and drawing and quartering, that inflict unnecessary physical violence. [163] As Justice Brennan stated: [B]asic notions of human dignity command that the State minimize `mutilation' and `distortion' of the condemned prisoner's body, irrespective of the pain that such violence might inflict. [164] Another jurist has observed: [W]hile beheading results in a quick, relatively painless death, it entails frank violence ... and mutilation ... and disgrace... and thus is facially cruel. Post-execution disfigurement ... and displaying of the mutilated corpse similarly would be forbidden even though this practice involves no conscious pain. [165] The Georgia Supreme Court has similarly concluded that conscious suffering cannot be the only consideration in constitutional challenges to a method of execution: Such a limited focus would lead to the abhorrent situation where a condemned prisoner could be burned at the stake or crucified as long as he or she were rendered incapable by medication of consciously experiencing the pain, even though such punishments have long been recognized as manifestly cruel and unusual. [166] We agree that barbarous punishments include those that mutilate the prisoner's body even if they do not cause conscious pain. We conclude that such punishments do not comport with the Eighth Amendment's dignity of man standard.