Court Opinion

ID: 9557653
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 16:54:03.232929+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:06:08.091208
License: Public Domain

Hale, C.J.
(concurring specially) — I concur in the remand for resentencing not because I believe the death penalty now is or ever has been unconstitutional in this country, but because it is unthinkable that this court affirm an execution of death in the face of the Supreme Court declaration that “the death penalty in [these cases] constitute^] cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.” Furman v. Georgia, 405 U.S. *171912, 33 L. Ed. 2d 346, 92 S. Ct. 2726 (1972). As Mr. Chief Justice Burger so carefully delineates in his monumental dissent to that opinion, the court “fundamentally misconceives the nature of the Eighth Amendment guarantee and flies directly in the face of controlling authority of extremely recent vintage.” Whatever personal views one may have of capital punishment and no matter how fervent his hopes for its abolition, neither represents a legitimate component of constitutional interpretation. If the death sentence is constitutional, the courts are and should be without power to abolish it. It is a fundamental tenet of self-government suffusing the whole scheme of constitutional law in this country that the defining of crimes and the prescribing of punishment therefor is an attribute of sovereignty to be discharged by the people through their legislative branch of government — a principle not to be denied or abridged by the judicial branch of government.
As the dissenting justices so trenchantly point out in Furman v. Georgia, supra, not only do the constitutions fail to deny to the states and the United States the power to apply the sentence of death for deliberate and horrendous crimes, but the constitutions in their very language authorize it. The Fifth Amendment states:
“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury . . . ; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; . . . nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. . . .”
(Italics mine.) See discussion in Mr. Justice Powell’s dissenting opinion in Furman v. Georgia, supra. Neither should the language of the Fourteenth Amendment be overlooked: “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” — a phrase which, one must assume, congruently restates the principle of the Fifth Amendment. (Italics mine.)
Although the judiciary may be the final interpreter of the constitution, it is. not the only one. All offices of the *172government — state, federal and local, legislative, executive and judicial — are solemnly committed to preserve, protect and defend it. It is a singular fact of history that never, since the founding of this Republic on the 4th of March, 1789, the day fixed for commencing the operations of government under the new constitution, has an American president, whatever his personal views, taken the position that the death penalty is unconstitutional. If it never occurred to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Abraham Lincoln, nor any of their successors in the presidency, that the United States and the states of the Union are without constitutional authority to impose capital punishment, it is safe to assume prima facie at least that the authority has always existed and still exists today.