Court Opinion

ID: 9574442
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:05:00.216134+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:44:35.008430
License: Public Domain

MOSK, J.
I concur in the opinion of Justice Burke.
In my years as Attorney General of California (1959-1964), I frequently repeated a personal belief in the social invalidity of the death penalty, notably in testimony before California legislative committees in March 1959, July 1960, and April 1963.
Naturally, therefore, I am tempted by the invitation of petitioners to join in judicially terminating this anaehonistie *635penalty. However, to yield to my predilections would be to act wilfully “in the sense of enforcing individual views instead of speaking humbly as the voice of law by which society presumably consents to be ruled. ...” (Frankfurter, The Supreme Court in the Mirror of the Justices (1957) 105 U.Pa.L.Rev. 781, 794.)
As a judge, I am bound to the law as I find it to be and not as I might fervently wish it to be. I conclude that Justice Burke has properly stated the current law of California and of every other American jurisdiction that has considered the problem.