Opinion ID: 1805723
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Undue Violence, Mutilation, and Disgrace

Text: Although pain is an important indicator of cruelty, it is not the only indicatorfor a method of execution can involve minimal pain and yet still be extraordinarily cruel. To meet the requirement that a punishment not be impermissibly cruel, a method of execution also must entail no undue violence, mutilation, or disgrace: The Eighth Amendment's protection of the dignity of man extends beyond prohibiting the unnecessary infliction of pain when extinguishing life. Civilized standards, for example, require a minimization of physical violence during execution irrespective of the pain that such violence might inflict on the condemned. Similarly, basic notions of human dignity command that the State minimize mutilation and distortion of the condemned prisoner's body. Glass, 471 U.S. at 1085, 105 S.Ct. 2159 (Brennan, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari). [20] As conceded by the State in the present proceeding, the guillotine as used in the French Revolution is a prime example of a method that would fail in this regard, for while beheading results in a quick, relatively painless death, [21] it entails frank violence (i.e., gross laceration and blood-letting) and mutilation (i.e., decapitation) and disgrace (i.e., public spectacle) and thus is facially cruel. Post-execution disfiguremente.g., dismemberment, disembowelment, decapitation, flaying, or dragging of the bodyand displaying of the mutilated corpse similarly would be forbidden even though this practice involves no conscious pain. Forced public disrobing prior to execution also would be forbidden. In the present case, the State in oral argument before this Court conceded that use of the guillotine as a method of execution would fail constitutional muster in all states under the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause. By this concession, the Stateof necessityagrees that there are other indicators of cruelty besides pain. I suggest that these additional indicators inhere in the method of execution. Thus far in Florida, we have suppressed any reasoned consideration of these additional factors by limiting the scope of the inquiry at the evidentiary hearings, wherein the courts have focused only on pain.