Court Opinion

ID: 9736252
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:48:47.267119+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:27:05.324597
License: Public Domain

*675Liacos, J.
(concurring). Mr. Justice Brennan, concurring in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 257 (1972), reviewed the four principles recognized in earlier cases and inherent in the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment found in the Eighth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. The first principle “is that a punishment must not be so severe as to be degrading to the dignity of human beings.” Id. at 271. The second principle is that “the State must not arbitrarily inflict a severe punishment.” Id. at 274. A “third principle inherent in the [Eighth Amendment] is that a severe punishment must not be unacceptable to contemporary society.” Id. at 277. Finally, inherent in the Eighth Amendment prohibition is the principle that “a severe punishment must not be excessive.” Id. at 279. Mr. Justice Brennan recognized, as do I, that these principles are interrelated and cumulative. “The function of these principles, after all, is simply to provide means by which a court can determine whether a challenged punishment comports with human dignity.” Id. at 282.
While the language of the Eighth Amendment (“nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted”) and art. 26 (“[n]o magistrate or court of law, shall. . . inflict cruel or unusual punishments”) is not identical, our decisions have utilized Federal precedent in interpreting our own constitutional provisions. Commonwealth v. O’Neal, 369 Mass. 242, 244 n.1 (1975) (O’Neal IT) (Tauro, C.J., concurring). The discussion in O’Neal II, supra, the Opinions of the Justices, 372 Mass. 912 (1977), and the opinion of the majority in this case proceeds in essence within the framework of the principles summarized by Mr. Justice Brennan in Furman.1 While I do not disagree with this approach, it is also likely that the Constitution of this Commonwealth may have a separate and distinct meaning which is to be interpreted *676and enforced by this court. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Soares, 377 Mass. 461, cert, denied, 444 U.S. 881 (1979). Article 26, with its disjunctive phrasing, has been so interpreted by the Attorney General of this Commonwealth. See Note, The Death Penalty in Massachusetts, 8 Suffolk U.L. Rev. 632, 646 (1974). The California Supreme Court has similarly interpreted its constitutional provision containing essentially the same language as art. 26. People v. Anderson, 6 Cal. 3d 628, cert, denied, 406 U.S. 958 (1972). This court has not decided whether the phrase “cruel and unusual” and the phrase “cruel or unusual” have the same or a distinct meaning. But cf. O’Neal II, supra at 247 n.4 (Tauro, C.J., concurring). The majority opinion does not reach this issue. While I concur in the reasoning and result of the majority, I would go further and state that art. 26 stands on its own footing, for reasons similar to those expressed in Anderson, supra. I would further hold that a punishment may not be inflicted if it be either “cruel” or '“unusual.” Last, in my view, the imposition of death by the State as a penalty for crime “is in itself so brutal to the object and so dehumanizing of others that it constitutes ‘cruel’ or ‘unusual’ punishment within art. 26.” Opinions of the Justices, supra at 921.
I write to amplify my reasons for joining in the conclusion of the court that “the death penalty, with its full panoply of concomitant physical and mental tortures, is impermissibly cruel under art. 26 when judged by contemporary standards of decency.” See supra at 665.
The imposition of the death penalty is disguised by the language and technique of abstraction. “Indeed, no one dares speak directly of the ceremony. Officials and journalists who have to talk about it, as if they were aware of both its provocative and its shameful aspects, have made up a sort of ritual language, reduced to stereotyped phrases. Hence we read at breakfast time in a corner of the newspaper that the condemned ‘has paid his debt to society’ or that he has ‘atoned’ or that ‘at five a.m. justice was done.’” A. Camus, Reflections on the Guillotine, in Resistance, *677Rebellion, and Death 132 (1960). Consistent with the views of Camus, of authorities cited elsewhere in this opinion, and of the majority, are the experiences described by Henry Arsenault, a convicted murderer sentenced to death in this Commonwealth. See Arsenault v. Commonwealth, 353 Mass. 575, rev’d 393 U.S. 5 (1968). See also Commonwealth v. Devlin, 335 Mass. 555 (1957). Arsenault is presently an inmate at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Norfolk and has submitted a brief pro se as amicus curiae. His brief tells his story.
For over two years, Henry Arsenault “lived on death row feeling as if the Court’s sentence were slowly being carried out.” Arsenault could not stop thinking about death. Despite several stays, he never believed he could escape execution. “There was a day to day choking, tremulous fear that quickly became suffocating.” If he slept at all, fear of death snapped him awake sweating. His throat was clenched so tight he often could not eat. His belly cramped, and he could not move his bowels. He urinated uncontrollably. He could not keep still. And all the while a guard watched him, so he would not commit suicide. The guard was there when he had his nightmares and there when he wet his pants. Arsenault retained neither privacy nor dignity. Apart from the guards he was alone much of the time as the day of his execution neared.
And on the day of the execution, after three sleepless weeks and five days’ inability to eat, after a night’s pacing the cell, he heard the warden explain the policy of the Commonwealth — no visitors,2 no special last meal, and no medication. Arsenault asked the warden to let him walk to the execution on his own. The time came. He walked to the death chamber and turned toward the chair. Stopping him, the warden explained that the execution would not be for over an hour. Arsenault sat on the other side of the room as the witnesses filed in behind a one-way mirror. *678When the executioner tested the chair, the lights dimmed. Arsenault heard other prisoners scream. After the chaplain gave him last rites, Arsenault heard the door slam shut and the noise echoing, the clock ticking. He wet his pants. Less than half an hour before the execution, the Lieutenant Governor commuted his sentence. Arsenault’s legs would not hold him up. Guards carried him back to his cell. He was trembling uncontrollably. A doctor sedated him. And he was moved off death row.
“That capital punishment is horrible and cruel is the reason for its existence.” C. Darrow, A Comment on Capital Punishment, quoted in Attorneys for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, A Cruel and Unusual Punishment, in Voices Against Death, 264, 283 (P. Mackey ed. 1976). The raw terror and unabating stress that Henry Arsenault experienced was torture; torture in the guise of civilized business in an advanced and humane polity. This torture was not unique, but merely one degrading instance in a legacy of degradation.3 The ordeals of the condemned are inherent and inevitable in any system that informs the condemned person of his sentence4 and provides for a gap between sentence and execution.5 Whatever one believes *679about the cruelty of the death penalty itself, this violence done the prisoner’s mind must afflict the conscience of enlightened government and give the civilized heart no rest.6
Death is the “king of terrors.” Job 18:14. Aristotle called death “the most terrible of all things; for it is the end, and nothing is thought to be any longer either good or bad for the dead.” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book III, c. 6, 64 (D. Ross trans. 1969). Fear of death is natural7 and *680universal in human experience.8 It resides in our inability to imagine our own nonexistence.9 We imagine the manner of death and the corpse10 or, perhaps in hopes of finding consolation, we envision the continuing life of the soul.* 11 So deep is the fear of death and the corresponding desire for transcendence that Christian thought attributes death to the fall of Adam,12 and the New Testament proclaims Christ’s victory over death. 1 Corinthians 15:20, 26.
Psychiatrists have observed that terror of death is at the root of much mental disease. “The anxiety neuroses, the various phobic states, even a considerable number of depressive suicidal states and many schizophrenias amply demonstrate the ever-present fear of death which becomes woven into the major conflicts of the given psychopathological conditions.” Zilboorg, Fear of Death, 12 Psychoanalytic Q. 465, 465-467 (1943), quoted in E. Becker, The Denial of Death 16 (1973). See also Lifton, The Sense of Immor*681tality: On Death and the Continuity of Life, in New Meanings of Death 274 (H. Feifel ed. 1977). We instinctively hold to life.
The condemned must confront this primal terror directly, and in the most demeaning circumstances. A condemned man knows, subject to the possibility of successful appeal or commutation, the time and manner of his death. His thoughts about death must necessarily be focused more precisely than other people’s. He must wait for a specific death, not merely expect death in the abstract.14 Apart from cases of suicide or terminal illness, this certainty is unique to those who are sentenced to death. The State puts the question of death to the condemned person, and he must grapple with it without the consolation that he will die naturally15 or with his humanity intact.16 A condemned person experiences an extreme form of debasement.
*682A sociologist has identified the ideal characteristics of the modern “humane” practice of capital punishment. The treatment of the condemned and the execution itself can be described as “stark, impersonal, solemn, unemotional, privatized,”17 unlike the raucous spectacles of earlier times.18 Not all recent executions accomplish these objectives. Indeed, grotesque descriptions of electrocutions, both bungled and successful,19 indicate that the method presently used falls far short of its goal. Cf. Furman v. Georgia, supra at 287 (Brennan, J., concurring) (“[I]t appears that there is no method available that guarantees an immediate and painless death”). Shortcomings aside, how*683ever, the result of this attempt at “humane” execution is to go far toward concealing the fact and significance of the event: that a human being has been put to death. Thus, writers have remarked on the anomaly of hiding from the public a practice ostensibly designed to deter crime.20
Less frequently observed is the effect of these policies upon the condemned. The death sentence itself is a declaration that society deems the prisoner a nullity, less than human and unworthy to live. But that negation of his personality carries through the entire period between sentence and execution. “[I]n Death Row, organized and controlled in grim caricature of a laboratory, the condemned prisoner’s personality is subjected to incredible stress for prolonged periods of time.”21 The condemned person is generally isolated, allowed few visitors, limited in permissible activities, and kept under close guard.22 The execution occurs within prison walls in a small room before witnesses whom the prisoner may not be able to see. The prisoner wears prison clothes. He is allowed to say little, if anything, and is often blindfolded. An anonymous executioner puts him to death at an odd hour. The mode of execution ideally causes little commotion to inform the witnesses that a person has died. And the body is not displayed. In this context, the prisoner has only the most meager opportunities to assert his shattered dignity, and few persons ever see any gesture he chooses to make.23 *684Under the circumstances it is virtually impossible to die a noble or courageous or self-respecting death.24
“[W]hat man experiences at such times,” Camus wrote, “is beyond all morality .... Having to face an inevitable death, any man, whatever his convictions, is torn asunder from head to toe. The feeling of powerlessness and solitude of the condemned man, bound up and against the public coalition that demands his death, is in itself an unimaginable punishment .... [I]t would be better for the execution to be public. The actor in every man could then come to the aid of the terrified animal and help him cut a figure, even in his own eyes. But darkness and secrecy offer no recourse. In such a disaster, courage, strength of soul, even faith may be disadvantages. As a general rule, a man is undone by waiting for capital punishment well before he dies. Two deaths are inflicted on him, the first being worst than the second, whereas he killed but once. Compared to such torture, the penalty of retaliation seems like a civilized law” (footnote omitted). A. Camus, supra at 155-156.25
*685The condemned suffer a “fate of ever-increasing fear and distress,” Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86,102 (1958), quoted in Furman v. Georgia, supra at 289 (Brennan, J., concurring), which result in “behavioral aberrations ranging from malingering to acute psychotic breaks.”26 Thus, “the onset of insanity while awaiting execution of a death sentence is not a rare phenomenon.”27 Solesbee v. Balkcom, 339 U.S. 9, 14 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting).
The purpose of the cruel or unusual punishment prohibition is to guarantee a measure of human dignity even to the wrongdoers of our society. The Massachusetts Constitution recognizes that there are some punishments so abhorrent, so offensive to evolved standards of decency, that no justification can support their employment. Inflicting upon a person the terror of death in a definite manner is such a punishment. My views would not change if stays on death row were made more pleasant, killing techniques less painful, or removal from death row more swift. This is a punishment antithetical to the spiritual freedom that underlies the democratic mind. What dignity can remain for the government that countenances its use?
Fyodor Dostoyevsky was sentenced to die for discussing Utopian Socialist ideas. Arrayed with his coprisoners, he saw three men bound to stakes and blindfolded before the firing squad. Just as the commanding officer was about to shout “Fire!” an official waved his white handkerchief to stop the execution and inform them that the Czar had commuted the men’s sentences. “Standing before the firing squad he was so certain of the imminence of death that he felt more dead than alive at the abrupt proclamation of the Czar’s clemency; when he finally recovered his senses it was *686to find himself in irons and on his way to Siberia. There he . . . had to submit to treatment so inhuman that only glimpses of it can be caught in his later work . . . .”28 Thus, Dostoyevsky wrote from experience when he discussed the fate of the condemned. In The Idiot, Prince Myshkin hears the suggestion that the guillotine is painless. He contends that a painless execution may be harder for the condemned than torture. “ [T]he chief and the worst pain is perhaps not inflicted by wounds, but by your certain knowledge that in an hour, in ten minutes, in half a minute, now, this moment your soul will fly out of your body, and that you will be a human being no longer, and that that’s certain — the main thing is that it is certain. Just when you lay your head under the knife and you hear the swish of the knife as it slides down over your head — it is just that fraction of a second that is the most awful of all... . To kill for murder is an immeasurably greater evil than the crime itself .... [H]ere all . . . last hope, which makes it ten times easier to die, is taken away for certain-, here you have been sentenced to death, and the whole terrible agony lies in the fact that you will most certainly not escape, and there is no agony greater than that. Take a soldier and put him in front of a cannon in battle and fire at him and he will still hope, but read the same soldier his death sentence for certain, and he will go mad or burst out crying. Who says that human nature is capable of bearing this without madness? Why this cruel, hideous, unnecessary, and useless mockery? ... It was of agony like this and of such horror that Christ spoke. No, you can’t treat a man like that!”29

 Chief Justice Tauro also based his views in O’Neal II on due process considerations. Even this approach is not without precedent in the earlier Federal decisions. See, e.g., Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber, 329 U.S. 459 (1947).

 Only members of the prisoner’s immediate family were allowed to visit before the execution. Arsenault had no immediate family.

 Many commentators have recognized the debilitating effects of imprisonment under sentence of death. See, e.g., Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 288-289 n.36 (1972) (Brennan, J., concurring). See also Commonwealth v. O’Neal, 369 Mass. 242, 249-250 (1975) (O’Neal II) (Tauro, C.J., concurring); People v. Anderson, 6 Cal. 3d 628, 649, cert, denied, 406 U.S. 958 (1972).

 am assuming that the condemned prisoner has sufficient mental competence between the time of sentence and execution to understand what the State is doing to him.

 At the end of the 1960’s, the average time spent on death row was 32.6 months. H. Bedau, The Courts, the Constitution, and Capital Punishment 60 (1977). “[HJuman reaction to the threat of death is a function of the duration, as well as the nature of the threat.” Note, Mental Suffering Under Sentence of Death: A Cruel and Unusual Punishment, 57 Iowa L. Rev. 814, 830 (1972). Lengthy delays, especially if punctuated by a series of last minute reprieves, intensify the prisoner’s suffering. West, Psychiatric Reflections on the Death Penalty, in Voices Against Death 290, 291 (P. Mackey ed. 1976). Nonetheless, one psychiatric study of a limited sample found that, for two to three months, the typical con*679demned prisoner felt he was going to break down; within six to eighteen months, according to the researchers, most inmates had adjusted somewhat to their lot. Gallenore & Parton, Inmate Responses to Lengthy Death Row Confinement, 129 Am. J. of Psychiatry 167 (1972). My argument that the ordeal imposed on the condemned is cruel and unusual punishment does not depend on the existence of lengthy delays between sentence and execution. Two months — or for that matter one day — of torture offends the Constitution. As C. Duffy, a former warden of California’s prison at San Quentin, has described, “One night on death row is too long, and the length of time spent there by [some inmates] constitutes cruelty that defies the imagination. It has always been a source of wonder to me that they didn’t all go stark, raving mad.” C. Duffy & A. Hirshberg, 88 Men and 2 Women 254 (1962).

 Cf. In re Kemmler, 136 U.S. 436, 447 (1890) (“[T]he punishment of death is not cruel, within the meaning of [the Eighth Amendment], It implies there something inhuman and barbarous, something more than the mere extinguishment of life”). Most Federal precedent relating to the death penalty has demonstrated insensitivity to the mental anguish of the condemned. See Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber, 329 U.S. 459,464 (1947) (plurality opinion), cited with approval in Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 178 (1976) (plurality opinion): “The cruelty against which the Constitution protects a convicted man is cruelty inherent in the method of punishment, not the necessary suffering involved in any method employed to extinguish life humanely.” But see Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 288-289 (1972) (Brennan, J., concurring); cf. Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86, 101 (1958) (Eighth Amendment protection not limited to physical mistreatment). For a discussion of the issue under art. 26 of our State Constitution, see O’Neal II, 369 Mass. 242, 249-250 (1975) (Tauro, C.J., concurring). See also id. at 282-283 (Braucher, J., concurring in the result).

 See, e.g., F. Bacon, Of Death, in The Oxford Anthology of English Literature 1437-1438 (F. Kermode & J. Hollander, gen. eds. 1973). Bacon goes on to say that any emotion can overwhelm the fear of death, id., but this shows only that the mind is not static. It is constantly in motion. Furthermore, the fear of death takes many covert forms. See generally E. Becker, The Denial of Death (1973).

 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book III, c. 7, 65 (D. Ross trans. 1969) (“What is terrible is not the same for all men; but we say there are things terrible even beyond human strength. These, then, are terrible to every one . . .”).

. Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View § 27 (1978).

W. Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act III, Scene i.

 Such thoughts, of course, are not invariably comforting:
“[T]he dread of something after death — The undiscover’d country from whose bourn No traveller returns . . . .”
W. Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene i. See generally J. Choron, Death and Western Thought (1963).

 See, e.g., J. Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I, Lines 2-3.

 W. Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act III, Scene i.

 See J.P. Sartre, Being and Nothingness 685-687 (Barnes ed. 1969).

 For five hundred years, in various manifestations, the ideal of natural death has prevailed in Western society. See I. Illich, Political Uses of Natural Death, in The Hastings Center Report, Death Inside Out 25, 29-42 (P. Steinfels & R. Veatch, eds. 1975). In the Eighteenth Century, Condorcet stated the ideal plainly. See J. Choran, supra at 135-136. The notion that death is natural, a part of life, even the “final stage of growth,” underlies Dr. Elisabeth K'dbler-Ross’s approach to helping terminally ill patients adjust to approaching death. Death: The Find State of Growth (E. Kiibler-Ross ed. 1975). E. Kiibler-Ross, On Death and Dying 5-6 (1969). If he achieves the last stage of the psychological process of dying, the patient comes to accept his death as a natural event in his life. See E. Kiibler-Ross, On Death and Dying c. 7 (1969). It seems unlikely that a condemned prisoner could arrive at the same attitude of acceptance.

 The circumstances of a person’s death profoundly affect the experience. Montaigne believed that the cause of a dying person’s fear of death is the fear in the faces of those attending him. M. de Montaigne, Essays, 1:20, 67-68 (D.M. Frame, trans. 1958). Kiibler-Ross asserts that *682death is easiest to cope with in a familiar environment. E. Kiibler-Ross, Questions and Answers on Death and Dying, c. 6 (1974). See generally P. Aries, Western Attitudes Toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present (1974). See also Mauksch, The Organizational Context and Dying, in Death: The Final State of Growth 7 (E. Kiibler-Ross ed. 1975).

 Lofland, The Dramaturgy of State Executions, in State Executions Viewed Historically and Sociologically 275, 319 (1977) (hereinafter Lofland). As Lofland points out, these are features of many modern ways of dying. See P. Aries, Western Attitudes Toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present, c. 4 (1974).

 See, e.g., D. Cooper, The Lesson of the Scaffold (1974); M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, Part 1, c. 2 (1979). Public spectacles, complete with execution sermons of the clergy and speeches of the condemned, were the practice in early Massachusetts. E. Powers, Crime and Punishment in Early Massachusetts 1620-1692, 294-298 (1966). Powers also documents in part the movement favoring “humane” capital punishment in Massachusetts in the Nineteenth Century. Id. at 310-320.

 See, e.g., Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber, supra at 480-481 n.2 (Burton, J., dissenting); Bills to Suspend for Two Years or to Abolish the Death Penalty: Hearings on H.R. 8414, H.R. 8483, H.R. 9486; H.R. 3243, H.R. 193, H.R. 11797; and H.R. 12217 Before Subcommittee No. 3 of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 92d Cong., 2d Sess. 305-306 (1972); A Bill to Abolish the Death Penalty Under All Laws of the United States: Hearings on S. 1760 Before the Subcommittee on Criminal Laws and Procedures of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 90th Cong., 2d Sess. 20-21 (1968) (hereinafter Senate Hearings) (testimony of Clinton T. Duffy); Lofland, supra at 314-315; G.R. Scott, The History of Capital Punishment 216-220 (1950); Comment, The Death Penalty Cases, 56 Cal. L. Rev. 1268, 1338-1339 (1968). But see In re Kemmler, 136 U.S. 436, 443-444, 447 (1890) (relying on lower court finding that death by electrocution is instantaneous and painless).

Senate Hearings, supra at 31 (testimony of James Bennett). Id. at 40-42 (testimony of Douglas Lyons). A. Camus, Reflections on the Guillotine, in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death 135-142 (1960). W.C. Bok, Star Wormwood, quoted in Gottlieb, Capital Punishment, 15 Crime & Delinquency 1, 7-8 (1969).

 West, Psychiatric Reflections on the Death Penalty, in Voices Against Death 290-291 (P. Mackey ed. 1976).

 See, e.g., R.A. Liston, The Edge of Madness 104 (1972); Lofland, supra at 320; Smith, Count Down for Death, 15 Crime & Delinquency 77 (1969).

 See Lofland, supra at 320-321. Mythology and history are replete with the instances of honorable death. Saints, martyrs, heroes, and patriots have met death not only with pride and courage, but even with joy. Seneca has stated: “Death is sometimes a punishment, sometimes a gift; *684to many it has come as a favor.” Seneca, Hercules Oetaeus, quoted in Evans’ Dictionary of Quotations 149 (1968). Whether one is a coward or courageous, modern methods of execution produce no martyrs or patriots. The romantic notions of heroic death are precluded by the realities of modem “humane” methods of execution.

 Contrast the death of Socrates, who died for an idea after conversation with an audience of friends and disciples, at a time of his choosing, and out of sight of officials other than the man who prepared the hemlock. See Plato, Phaedo, in Plato: The Collected Dialogues 40, especially 41-43 and 95-98 (E. Hamilton & H. Cairns, eds. 1961).

 See Black, The Crisis in Capital Punishment, 31 Md. L. Rev. 289,292 (1971): “What cannot be changed, apart from the killing itself, is the fear. To say the literal truth about this fear, and about its grosser physiological consequences, even in restrained language, is to incur the charge of sensationalism. This is the standard fatigued old charge which must always be borne by the opponents of cruelty in any form. . . . But I solemnly assert that those who are still in doubt owe it to their own consciences to think often ... on what it does to a human being to be classified as a piece of trash, fit only to be disposed of, and then to be given a while, in close confinement but under close observation, to think about the impending disposition. . . . [I]f anything at all is evil, then I submit that the imposition of this fear, with its consequences, is in itself an evil of a size too big for language, an evil sternly demanding the clearest and most weighty justification.”

 West, supra at 292. For brief case histories showing inmate reaction to the death sentence, see, e.g., Bluestone & McGahee, Reaction to Extreme Stress: Impending Death by Execution, 119 Am. J. of Psychiatry 393 (1962); Gottlieb, supra at 8-10.

 When a condemned prisoner does become insane, the psychiatrist faces the task of restoring him to sanity so the execution can take place. West, supra at 292. Gottlieb, supra at 10.

M. Slonim, Introduction to F. Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov at v, v-vi (C. Garnett trans. 1950).

 F. Dostoyevsky, The Idiot 47-48 (D. Magarshack trans. 1955).