Opinion ID: 564808
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: the electrocution claims

Text: 27 The second, third and fourth claims raised by Jones relate to the constitutionality of electrocution as a method of carrying out his death penalty. He asserts that he will remain conscious during the execution and will be unnecessarily tortured; that execution in Louisiana's electric chair, which is alleged to be currently malfunctioning, constitutes cruel and unusual punishment; and that Louisiana, by its recent legislative decision to adopt lethal injection rather than electrocution, has declared death by electrocution indecent and inhumane under the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society. Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86, 101, 78 S.Ct. 590, 598, 2 L.Ed.2d 630 (1958). These claims are clearly barred by the McCleskey cause and prejudice test, for the facts on which they rely have, with the exception of the information about alleged malfunctions in the electric chair and the new Louisiana law, been readily ascertainable for years. Jones raised the same general issue in his first federal habeas petition, and it was rejected. His complaints about the malfunctioning of Louisiana's electric chair do not show that it is inoperable or any more inhumane than it ever was when previous constitutional challenges were rejected. Further, the Louisiana legislative determination carries no independent weight in an eighth amendment analysis, because even if it represented an effort toward a perceived humanitarianism in the infliction of the death penalty, the states remain widely divided over the preferred means of execution. Numerous states still use the electric chair. NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Death Row U.S.A. (Jan.1991). 28