Court Opinion

ID: 9716516
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:42:34.057786+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:46.334143
License: Public Domain

Reardon, J.,
dissenting (with whom Quirico, J., joins). I dissent. When on April 18, 1975, the four separate opinions in Commonwealth v. O’Neal, 367 Mass. 440 (1975) (O’Neal I), were released I pointed out that constitutional issues relative to the imposition of the death penalty had been fully argued and should be met by this court. Those issues were not addressed. Instead the first of the opinions, that of the Chief Justice inviting further briefs on a “narrow issue,” a result in which three Associate Justices concurred, did not meet the constitutional issues which had already been fully argued, save that four Justices agreed that there should be no revision of the verdict on the basis that discretion was lodged with the jury to determine whether the death penalty should be imposed. O’Neal I, at 443-445, 453. In reference to the Eighth Amendment argument by counsel on the death penalty as “cruel and unusual punishment,” the first of those opinions stated that “in deciding the case on this basis [viz., whether the death penalty is violative of the Eighth Amendment], we would simply enter the morass in which many others have floundered before us,” and that “[i]n view of the rationale of this opinion, further debate and controversy on the applicability of the constitutional prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment will serve no useful purpose at this time. We elect instead to adopt an approach free from the abundant commentary and exhaustive material surrounding the Eighth Amendment route.” Id. at 447. Having thus avoided the real question before the court, we issued an order that the parties reappear before us and argue to the point whether the imposition of the death penalty for rape-murder subserves a compelling State interest and “satisfies the least restrictive means test.” A majority of the court, *284having themselves thus posed a new issue which the parties had neither raised nor argued in their briefs, then allowed the parties the limited period of thirty days within which to file briefs thereon. The case was advanced for reargument on that basis and the present opinion, O’Neal II, is the result.
1. The Significance of North Carolina v. Fowler.
In the interim North Carolina v. Fowler, 285 N.C. 90 (1974) , cert. granted, 419 U.S. 963 (1974), raising identical Federal constitutional questions, has been argued before the Supreme Court of the United States and is set for reargument in the present term. 422 U.S. 1039 (1975) . It is my belief that this court would do well, in view of the changed circumstances, to await that decision before launching on another excursion in this case. My view is strengthened in the light of the curious development that, while somewhat clouded, the first opinion at this juncture picks up the very questions which were refused consideration before and, in endeavoring to deal with them, engages in a large discussion indeed of the extensive literature on capital punishment. This is so notwithstanding that in O’Neal I there is recognition that the constitutional issues, State and Federal constitutional provisions, dictate identical results (fn. 5), a thought which is repeated in O’Neal II (fn. 1 to the opinion of the Chief Justice). A majority of the court are of opinion that in spite of the foregoing we should come down now with this opinion presumably since we are at liberty to assess the weighty questions before us under art. 26 of the Massachusetts Constitution. Passing for the moment the facts that the core of the Chief Justice’s O’Neal II opinion rests on Federal precedent, I am led to believe that it does not contribute to the symmetry of the law to have this court go off on one tangent while the Supreme Court of the United States presently may go off on quite another. In short, with the question of Federal constitutionality presently pending before the United States Supreme Court in the Fowler case, we should defer to *285that court on that phase of the question, as ultimately we must. If that court, considering only the question of Federal constitutionality, rejects capital punishment, that will be decisive of the O’Neal case. But if it upholds capital punishment the decision will not preclude Massachusetts or any other State from considering the question under its own Constitution. This is not “subservience to Federal precedent.” Rather it is the exercise of simple common sense.
Nothing which I have said above is intended to be an expression of my personal views on the highly controversial subject of capital punishment, or on the present statutes of this Commonwealth on that subject. Indeed, a judge’s personal philosophies on this subject cannot prevail over constitutional mandates or prohibitions, nor should they be permitted to affect constitutional judgments. I am quite familiar with the literature now adverted to in the main opinion. It is a sample of much more. But in evaluating the “evidence” contained therein we must be careful not to exceed the authority or abuse the power entrusted to us as a court. “That there may be an earnest conflict of serious opinion does not suffice to bring matters of legislative judgment within the range of judicial cognizance.” Commonwealth v. Leis, 355 Mass. 189, 201 (1969) (Kirk, J., concurring). We should not permit a strong desire to cure the evils of the world to lead us into areas properly reserved, under our constitutional system of government, for other branches. In other words, our task here is to appraise the constitutional propriety of our statutes unhampered by any attempt to inject personal views which may warp the constitutional frame. Whether we judges, as individuals, like it or not, and how many times do we review legislation that we would dearly like to revise if we could, we are bound to remain within our proper confines and hew to an application of the several Constitutions which gives them a fair reading uninhibited by any sense of strain. That is at once our duty and our function.
*2862. Due Process of Law.
The foregoing is prefatory to the discussion which follows on aspects of due process and whether the death penalty constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment” in a constitutional sense. The guidelines set up in the Chief Justice’s opinion in O’Neal I were in essence designed to discover whether the imposition of the death penalty for rape-murder could be sustained against a challenge under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Three Justices concurred. However, at least two of them joined in the call for further briefs only because the question of the Commonwealth’s interest in imposing capital punishment in rape-murder cases was deemed to be important under the cruel and unusual punishment clauses of the State and Federal Constitutions. As previously stated, I felt then and feel now that this question had been fully argued and that no further inquiry was necessary. I might add that having perused the second set of briefs and heard argument on the narrow issue on which O’Neal I invited arguments, I cannot say that anything of consequence has surfaced which was not presented to us originally. The O’Neal I net caught very small fish indeed.
In O’Neal I, I specifically reserved the right to state my views on the constitutional issues, and I address myself first to the thesis there presented by the Chief Justice, that the death penalty should be reviewed under the due process clause and that the statute imposing the penalty must fall unless the Commonwealth convinces this court that it serves a compelling State interest and satisfies the least restrictive means test. O’Neal I, at 450. I am convinced that this framework of analysis is both unwise and constitutionally unsound.
First, let us clarify the role played by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in a constitutional attack on the Commonwealth’s right to impose the death penalty in this case. The Eighth Amendment is the appropriate avenue for consideration of this question but
*287standing by itself is not applicable to the States. Rather it is because the due process clause has been held to incorporate the proscription against cruel and unusual punishments contained in the Eighth Amendment that we refer to the latter amendment as binding on the States. Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660, 667 (1962). Fur-man v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 241 (1972) (Douglas, J., concurring). Cf. Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber, 329 U.S. 459, 463 (1947). It becomes evident that the due process clause contains at least one substantive limitation on the severity of punishments which the State may impose and that is that they not be cruel and unusual. The question which the opinion of the Chief Justice in O’Neal I raises is whether there is a second, independent substantive limitation on punishments stemming from the due process clause. If so, it would follow that imposition of the death penalty might be held not violative of due process as cruel and unusual yet still be impermissible as failing to satisfy some other requirement of due process.
Putting to one side the question of arbitrary inflictions of punishments (see In re Kemmler, 136 U.S. 436, 448-449 [1890]), all indications are that the only substantive limitation on punishments contained in the Federal Constitution is the Eighth Amendment proscription against cruel and unusual punishments. For example, in Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349, 372-373 (1910), the Supreme Court explained the adoption of the Eighth Amendment as a necessary restriction on otherwise “unlimited” legislative power to inflict cruel punishments. Similarly, in referring to Federal legislation in Bell v. United States, 349 U.S. 81, 82 (1955), the Court noted: “The punishment appropriate for the diverse federal offenses is a matter for the discretion of Congress, subject only to constitutional limitations, more particularly the Eighth Amendment.” Most recently, in Furman v. Georgia, supra at 263, Mr. Justice Brennan wrote that the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments *288was included in the Bill of Rights “precisely because the legislature would otherwise have had the unfettered power to prescribe punishments for crimes.”
That the due process clause does not substantively limit the severity of legislatively imposed punishments except in so far as they are cruel and unusual is evident from In re Kemmler, supra at 448-449. In the Kemmler case, a sentence of death by electrocution imposed by the State of New York was challenged under the Fourteenth Amendment. As the law then stood, the Eighth Amendment proscription against cruel and unusual punishments had no application to the States, so the challenge was based instead on the due process clause. The Court rejected the argument. While conceding that due process would forbid any arbitrary deprivation of life, liberty, or property, the Court emphasized that the due process clause “was not designed to interfere with the power of the State to protect the lives, liberties and property of its citizens, and to promote their health, peace, morals, education and good order.” Id. at 449.
As a matter of construction, it makes little sense to me to bypass consideration of the Eighth Amendment proscriptions in favor of the substantive due process analysis relied on in today’s opinion by the Chief Justice in this case. The Eighth Amendment was designed specifically to circumscribe the power of the Legislatures to impose criminal punishments. Surely in interpreting the already broad provisions of a Constitution we should favor the specific over the general, especially here where we are left only to ponder “the vague contours” of the due process clause. Adkins v. Children’s Hosp. of D.C. 261 U.S. 525, 568 (1923) (Holmes, J., dissenting).
To pinpoint the defect of the O’Neal I approach, let us consider a case arising under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The police, having probable cause, obtain an arrest warrant, and proceed to enter a dwelling to effectuate an arrest. All Fourth Amendment requirements have been satisfied. See *289Commonwealth v. Forde, 367 Mass. 798, 804-806 (1975). However, it appears that the right of privacy is considered a fundamental interest protected by the due process clause. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 152-153 (1973). Is the result of O’Neal I that we must further determine whether the arrest in a dwelling with a warrant is the least restrictive means toward furtherance of a compelling governmental end? For example, it may well be that there is no particular emergency requiring quick action by the police. The arrest may be safely made at some later time outside the dwelling where the invasion of privacy is minimized.
Furthermore, by characterizing life as a fundamental interest, today’s opinion by the Chief Justice not only tests the death penalty against the general language of the due process clause but also requires that the court undertake “strict scrutiny” of the Commonwealth’s justification for the death penalty. Without traversing the enormity of the decision to extinguish the life of a human being, no matter what the crime, I am disturbed by the implications of this requirement. I might first point out that no cases are cited in the opinion in which the United States Supreme Court or any other court has found life to be a fundamental interest within the meaning of the due process or equal protection clauses for the purpose of exercising strict scrutiny over governmental decisions affecting the interest in life. This characterization is critical, for once it has been made, the consequence is “the abandonment of the otherwise proper restraint on judicial review.” Developments in the Law — Equal Protection, 82 Harv. L. Rev. 1065, 1131 (1969). Indeed, the very dogmatic and mechanical nature of the analysis occasioned by the mere dubbing of an interest as fundamental has come under mounting criticism in recent years. See Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U.S. 330, 363-364 (1972) (Burger, C.J., dissenting); San Antonio Independent Sch. Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1, 98-110 (1973) (Marshall, J., dissenting); Goodpaster, The Constitution *290and Fundamental Rights, 15 Ariz. L. Rev. 479, 498-499 (1973). Without doubt there is a basic, personal right to life secured by the United States and Massachusetts Constitutions; but recognition of this right does not require that the constitutionality of capital punishment for the crime of rape-murder be tested by the wooden and largely conclusory standards of “compelling state interest” and “least restrictive means.”
A further difficulty with the two step analysis is discoverable in the following question: If “life” is a fundamental interest under the Constitution, why is not “liberty” also a fundamental interest? Certainly liberty is explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution to the same extent that life is explicitly guaranteed. See Son Antonio Independent Sch. Dist. v. Rodriguez, supra, at 33-34. I agree with Mr. Justice Powell that “ [t]he Due Process Clause admits of no distinction between the deprivation of ‘life’ and the deprivation of ‘liberty.’” Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 447 (1972) (dissenting opinion). Perhaps the most telling illustration of this point lies in the two cases cited in the Chief Justice’s opinion in O’Neal I for the proposition that life is a fundamental interest. 367 Mass, at 449. In both Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 370 (1886), and Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 462 (1938), the phrase employed by the Court referred to the fundamental rights of life and liberty. It may be argued of course that nothing is so fundamental as the right to life, that it is an interest on another plane altogether. But in my view the interest in not serving the remainder of one’s life in prison is also enormously significant and could just as well be deemed “fundamental” for the purpose of triggering strict scrutiny. Yet are we then to invoke the less restrictive alternative test for a sentence of life imprisonment, and, if so, what about a twenty-year sentence, and so on down the line? Also, what if the government is never able to adduce convincing proof that any punishment is a necessary means to a compelling State interest — does it then *291lack the power to punish at all? See Furman v. Georgia, supra at 396 (Burger, C.J., dissenting).
The problematic nature of the analysis proposed in O’Neal I demonstrates to me the dangers inherent in the court’s apparent willingness to invite yet one more avenue of attack against the State’s criminal laws under the banner of substantive due process. The constitutional theory proposed is most reminiscent of the era of Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905), when statutes were thought to be violative of due process merely because they were considered unwise, that is, offensive to the judge’s “personal preferences.” Hand, The Bill of Rights 70 (1958). See Lochner v. New York, supra at 74-76 (Holmes, J., dissenting); Adkins v. Children’s Hosp. of D.C. 261 U.S. 525, 568-570 (1923) (Holmes, J., dissenting); Williamson v. Lee Optical of Okla. Inc., 348 U.S. 483, 488 (1955); Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U.S. 726, 730 (1963); Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471, 484 (1970); McGautha v. California, 402 U.S. 183, 254-255 n.4 (1971) (Brennan, J., dissenting). As in the Lochner line of cases, judicial intervention here under the due process clause involves the Court in difficult factual determinations, in this case requiring the court to make an empirical judgment about the efficacy of the death penalty as compared to life sentences in serving the various goals of the criminal law. Yet this is a subject matter most appropriate for the careful study and open debate of the legislative body. As Mr. Justice Frankfurter wrote in another context, “In effect, we are asked to enter the domain of penology, and more particularly that tantalizing aspect of it, the proper apportionment of punishment. Whatever views may be entertained regarding severity of punishment, whether one believes in its efficacy or its futility, . . . these are peculiarly questions of legislative policy.” Gore v. United States, 357 U.S. 386, 393 (1958).
Furthermore, the substantive due process analysis here actually goes well beyond the theory of judicial inter*292vention employed in the Lochner line of cases, for not even in those decisions did the Court purport to shift the burden of proof on the validity of statutes to the Legislature. See Lochner v. New York, supra, at 56-58; Ely, The Wages of Crying Wolf: A Comment on Roe v. Wade, 82 Yale L.J. 920, 940-941 (1973). Apparently the concept of judicial restraint in striking down State legislation is now to evaporate when the challenge can be fitted into the mold of substantive due process, and I fear we have not seen the last of this tantalizing device. We would do well to heed the words of Mr. Justice Holmes, who was the first to recognize that the Lochner approach was fraught with danger: “I have not yet adequately expressed the more than anxiety that I feel at the ever increasing scope given to the Fourteenth Amendment in cutting down what I believe to be the constitutional rights of the States. As the decisions now stand, I see hardly any limit but the sky to the invalidating of those rights if they happen to strike a majority of this Court as for any reason undesirable. I cannot believe that the Amendment was intended to give us carte blanche to embody our economic or moral beliefs in its prohibitions.” Baldwin v. Missouri, 281 U.S. 586, 595 (1930) (dissenting opinion).
My concern for a proper measure of judicial restraint applies of course to our consideration of the Eighth Amendment challenge as well, and I shall return to this theme in that context. But I believe it is of particular moment in the area of the due process clause, providing a further reason, if one is needed, for questioning the analysis undertaken by the Chief Justice in this case and for avoiding its consequences.
It remains only to.add on this point that while other language in our State Constitution is somewhat different (see arts. 10 and 12 of the Declaration of Rights) in its provisions for due process from those of the Federal Constitution, in Pugliese v. Commonwealth, 335 Mass. 471, 474-475 (1957), we construed the language to mean *293practically the same thing as that of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. There were in essence no differences between the Federal and the State Constitutions. I reiterate that the substantive due process approach of O’Neal II to the State Constitution relies almost entirely on Federal precedents dealing with the Fourteenth Amendment. My references to due process apply equally to both Constitutions.
3. Cruel and Unusual Punishments.
I now turn to what seems to me to be the real issue in the case, namely, the proscription of cruel and unusual punishments in the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and of cruel or unusual punishments in art. 26 of the Declaration of Rights of the Constitution of the Commonwealth.
The defendant argues that both Constitutions strike down the death penalty as cruel and unusual or cruel or unusual. Initially I see no difficulty with the use of “and” and “or.” While in Gaynor’s Case, 217 Mass. 86, 89-90 (1914), we referred to the word “or” as a disjunctive particle rather than a conjunctive particle, we noted in the same case that “or” is often construed as “and.”
While this court has never before focused specifically on the meaning of “or” in art. 26, it has used the phrase “cruel and unusual” interchangeably with “cruel or unusual.” Compare Sturtevant v. Commonwealth, 158 Mass. 598, 600 (1893), McDonald v. Commonwealth, 173 Mass. 322, 328 (1899), and Harding v. Commonwealth, 283 Mass. 369, 374 (1933), with Commonwealth v. Hitchings, 5 Gray 482, 486 (1855), Commonwealth v. Murphy, 165 Mass. 66, 69 (1895), and Commonwealth v. Novak, 272 Mass. 113, 116 (1930). In addition, although Chief Justice Holmes initially reserved judgment on the question in Storti v. Commonwealth, 178 Mass. 549 (1901), he noted in dicta that “ [n]ot only is the prohibition addressed to what in a proper sense may be called the punishment but, further, *294the word ‘unusual’ must be construed with the word ‘cruel’ and cannot be taken so broadly as to prohibit every humane improvement not previously known in Massachusetts.” Id. at 553. In the absence of historical evidence suggesting that the framers meant to proscribe every new form of punishment, regardless of its nature, or every form of punishment which might be characterized as “cruel” without regard to its ordinariness, I believe Chief Justice Holmes’s reading of the two adjectives together is the only sensible construction of the phrase.
With reference to People v. Anderson, 6 Cal. 3d 628, cert. den. 406 U.S. 958 (1972), in which the California Supreme Court held the- death penalty unconstitutional under a California provision prohibiting “cruel or unusual” punishment, that court emphasized the fact that the disjunctive established independent tests for cruelty and unusualness. I am not persuaded by this California precedent, particularly in light of the fact that the decision did not in fact turn on the independence of the standards, since the court found the death penalty to be both cruel and unusual.
Furthermore, there is nothing in our case law which suggests that art. 26 imposes a more rigorous limitation on punishments than the Eighth Amendment. Indeed, if anything, art. 26 imposes less restriction on possible punishments. The early cases read art. 26 as applying only to action by the courts and not inhibiting the Legislature. Commonwealth v. Hitchings, supra. Sturtevant v. Commonwealth, supra. While later we recognized that the Legislature is not unlimited by this provision, McDonald v. Commonwealth, supra, it has been accorded great deference even where penalties could fairly be characterized as Draconian or excessive, e.g., Harding v. Commonwealth, supra, Commonwealth v. Moore, 359 Mass. 509 (1971).
Thus I conclude that for purposes of this analysis art. 26 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights imposes a *295standard no more restrictive than that expressed in the prohibition of “cruel and unusual” punishment in the Eighth Amendment.
The question whether the death penalty constitutes “cruel and Unusual” punishment within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment was recently and exhaustively discussed in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972). In a per curiam decision, the Court held that “the imposition and carrying out of the death penalty in these cases constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments” (emphasis supplied). Id. at 239-240. Each of the five Justices supporting the decision, and each of the four dissenting from it, filed a separate opinion. Such elaborate scrutiny, however, while serving to air thoroughly the arguments on both sides of the issue, left unclear the precise extent of the decision, another reason for awaiting the outcome of the Fowler case. A reading of the per curiam decision and of the supporting opinions leads to the conclusion that Furman v. Georgia does not prohibit the imposition of the death penalty in cases where the Legislature has prescribed a mandatory death sentence for murder.
In the three cases involved in the Furman case, the determination whether the penalty should be death or a less severe punishment was left by the statute to the discretion of the judge or of the jury.
Mr. Justice Douglas, writing in support of the decision, focused almost exclusively on the discretionary aspect of the State statutes in question, concluding that “these discretionary statutes are unconstitutional in their operation. They are pregnant with discrimination and discrimination is an ingredient not compatible with the idea of equal protection of the laws that is implicit in the ban on ‘cruel and unusual’ punishments.” Id. at 256-257.
Mr. Justice Stewart rested his conclusion that the death penalty in the cases before the Court was “cruel and *296unusual” at least in part on the discretionary aspect of the sentencing procedure. “For, of all the people convicted of rapes and murders in 1967 and 1968, many just as reprehensible as these, the petitioners are among a capriciously selected random handful upon whom the sentence of death has in fact been imposed.” Id. at 309-310.
Finally, Mr, Justice White pointed out that the “facial constitutionality of statutes requiring the imposition of the death penalty for first-degree murder, for more narrowly defined categories of murder, or for rape would present quite different issues under the Eighth Amendment than are posed by the cases before us,” id. at 310, and concurred in the judgment of the Court because “the death penalty is exacted with great infrequency even for the most atrocious crimes and . . . there is no meaningful basis for distinguishing the few cases in which it is imposed from the many cases in which it is not.” Id. at 313.
Thus, three of the five majority Justices expressly limited the decision to discretionary imposition of the death sentence by judge or jury, and refused to consider whether a mandatory death sentence would vitiate the Eighth Amendment.
Furthermore, as Mr. Justice Blackmun pointed out in his dissent, “The several concurring opinions acknowledge, as they must, that until today capital punishment was accepted and assumed as not unconstitutional per se under the Eighth Amendment or the Fourteenth Amendment. This is either the flat or the implicit holding of a unanimous Court in Wilkerson v. Utah, 99 U.S. 130, 134-135, in 1879; of a unanimous Court in In re Kemmler, 136 U.S. 436, 447, in 1890; of the Court in Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349, in 1910; of all those members of the Court, a majority, who addressed the issue in Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber, 329 U.S. 459, 463-464, 471-472, in 1947; of Mr. Chief Justice Warren, speaking for himself and three others (Justices Black, *297Douglas, and Whittaker) in Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86, 99, in 1958; in the denial of certiorari in Rudolph v. Alabama, 375 U.S. 889, in 1963 (where, however, Justices Douglas, Brennan, and Goldberg would have heard argument with respect to the imposition of the ultimate penalty on a convicted rapist who had ‘neither taken nor endangered human life’); and of Mr. Justice Black in McGautha v. California, 402 U.S. 183, 226, decided only last Term on May 3, 1971.” Id. at 407-408.
General Laws c. 265, § 2, provides that the death penalty is mandatory for any person found guilty of murder in the first degree committed in connection with the commission of rape or attempted rape. Thus all those found guilty of this combination of crimes will be subjected to the same penalty.
The sheer infrequency of imposition of the death penalty, referred to by several of the opinions in the Furman case, will not be decreased. However, the essence of the complaint of infrequency was that it raised a presumption of arbitrariness in the imposition of the penalty. Where, as here, the Legislature has made a judgment that all found guilty of a particular class of crime must be punished by death, such objection cannot be raised.
Thus Furman v. Georgia does not decide the question before us in this case, and I turn now to consider whether the Eighth Amendment prohibits the imposition of a mandatory death sentence for murder committed in the course of a rape.
On purely historical grounds, there are strong arguments for finding that the death penalty is not “cruel and unusual” punishment within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment. As was noted by four Justices in Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86, 99 (1958), “[T]he death penalty has been employed throughout our history, and, in a day when it is still widely accepted, it cannot be said to violate the constitutional concept of cruelty.” Evidence *298internal to the Constitution such as the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment guaranties against deprivation of life without due process suggests that the framers never contemplated that the death penalty per se was a cruel and unusual punishment. It seems without doubt that the framers of the Eighth Amendment (and of the Massachusetts Constitution as well) had as their principal intention the elimination of the tortures of the Stuart regime in England. In all the elaborate literature dealing with this subject, which has received extensive treatment in Furman v. Georgia, supra, and People v. Anderson, supra, there is no evidence on the drafting of our fundamental documents which discloses any intention to open the way for the abolition of capital punishment. I do not venture into a repetition of the basic sources of this statement. The Furman and Anderson cases treat them quite completely. Argument that capital punishment was cruel and unusual punishment in the eyes of the constitutional fathers cannot be supported.
As Mr. Justice Black noted in a separate opinion in McGautha v. California, 402 U.S. 183, 226 (1971), “The Eighth Amendment forbids cruel and unusual punishments.’ In my view, these words cannot be read to outlaw capital punishment because that penalty was in common use and authorized by law here and in the countries from which our ancestors came at the time the Amendment was adopted. It is inconceivable to me that the framers intended to end capital punishment by the Amendment. Although some people have urged that this Court should amend the Constitution by interpretation to keep it abreast of modern ideas, I have never believed that lifetime judges in our system have any such legislative power.”
Even if we move beyond purely historical considerations, and recognize that clauses such as “cruel and unusual” draw their meaning “from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society,” Trop v. Dulles, supra at 101, it is far from clear *299what those standards of decency are, or that the mandatory imposition of the death penalty in a case such as this violates them. When such a standard is uprooted from its historical origins, and where there is little indication, either from the language itself or in the circumstances of its enactment, what the content of those words should be now, the temptation is great for a court simply to use a vague standard as a vehicle for its own moral values.
We must be ever reluctant to overturn a decision by the popular branch of the government to impose a particular punishment in the absence of strong evidence that the Legislature has overstepped the constitutional limit. As Mr. Chief Justice Burger said, dissenting in the Furman case, “There is no novelty in being called upon to interpret a constitutional provision that is less than self-defining, but, of all our fundamental guarantees, the ban on ‘cruel and unusual punishments’ is one of the most difficult to translate into judicially manageable terms. . . . [I]t is essential to our role as a court that we not seize upon the enigmatic character of the guarantee as an invitation to enact our personal predilections into law.” Furman v. Georgia, supra, at 375-376.
It seems clear that one meaning which may be attributed to the phrase “cruel and unusual” is that no illegal punishments be imposed, i.e., none that is not authorized by statute. There is some evidence that “unusual” had no meaning except as “illegal” in this context, and that it was the unauthorized punishments of Titus Oates during the reign of James II which were in the framers’ minds. There is, of course, no question in this case along this line since the Legislature has clearly authorized this punishment.
“Cruel and unusual” may be taken to mean that a punishment not be grossly disproportionate to the offense. Thus in Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349, 367 (1910), the Court interpreted the Eighth Amendment as requiring as “a precept of justice that punishment for crime should be graduated and proportioned to offense,” *300and held that a punishment of a fine, plus twelve years in jail, involving wearing of chains, and deprivation of civil rights during that time, followed by perpetual disqualification from political rights, and subjection to surveillance, all for a crime of making false entries in public records, was unconstitutional. While adoption of this precept does not necessarily mean we on the other hand wholeheartedly indorse a hard eye-for-an-eye, or as here, life-for-a-life, morality, it is at least true that the death penalty is not grossly disproportionate to the crime of murder committed in the course of a rape.
It has also been said that a punishment must not be excessively painful, unnecessarily painful, or demeaning to human dignity. Presumably it is these considerations which lie behind our intuitive rejection of torture, burning at the stake, and drawing and quartering, as “cruel and unusual.” Thus in Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber, 329 U.S. 459 (1947), the Court denied relief against a second execution after the first execution failed to cause the defendant’s death presumably because of a mechanical difficulty. The Court noted, “There is no purpose to inflict unnecessary pain nor any unnecessary pain involved in the proposed execution.” Id. at 464. It has been argued that the death penalty in this case is unnecessarily cruel because life imprisonment could achieve the same goals. This argument, however, requires not only that we refuse to allow retribution as a justifiable social purpose in punishment of murderers, but also that we deny that the death penalty has a greater deterrent effect. The evidence such as there is on this point appears inconclusive but we do not see that fact as enabling us to substitute our judgment on it for that of the Legislature.
Another factor which may be taken into account in assessing the meaning of “cruel and unusual” is whether there is external evidence that in fact a punishment does not meet contemporary standards of decency. Thus, in Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. at 102, in ruling that loss of *301citizenship for desertion from the armed forces was cruel and unusual, the court noted that “ [t]he civilized nations of the world are in virtual unanimity that statelessness is not to be imposed as punishment for crime.” There is nothing even approaching virtual unanimity of opinion in opposition to the death penalty. While we may take judicial notice of the fact that the death penalty has not been carried out in Massachusetts since 1947, we may also take judicial notice of the fact that in 1968, at the general election, when presented with the question, “Shall the commonwealth of Massachusetts retain the death penalty for crime?” a substantial majority of those expressing an opinion voted in favor of retaining the death penalty.1 While there are many reasons why such an advisory vote might not be taken as the definitive expression of opinion on this topic, it is at least sufficient to show that public opinion is deeply divided.
4. Conclusion.
In sum, it is my conclusion that the due process analysis contained in O’Neal I and O’Neal II is unsound and could be the genesis of great and unwarranted constitutional difficulty. It is further my conclusion that, notwithstanding the treatises for and against, mostly against, capital punishment cited in the Chief Justice’s opinion, the death penalty is not cruel and unusual punishment in the constitutional sense. It is further my conclusion that this court is compelled by art. 30 of the Declaration of Rights of Massachusetts to remain away from the determination of questions which are legislative and not judicial. I conclude that the death penalty is not prohibited in this case by the Eighth Amendment or the Declaration of Rights. I would also conclude that the provision of G. L. c. 265, § 2, which mandates the death penalty for murder committed in connection with *302the commission of rape or an attempt to commit rape is not unconstitutional, and that sentences imposed under that provision are valid. I reiterate that the dubious constitutional consequences of today’s opinion by the Chief Justice could be avoided without prejudice to the Commonwealth were we to await the outcome of North Carolina v. Fowler, 285 N.C. 90, cert. granted, 419 U.S. 963 (1974), set for reargument 422 U.S. 1039 (1975).

The total number of ballots cast was 2,348,005. Of these 1,159,348 voted, “Yes,” 730,649 voted, “No,” and 458,008 were blank. Election Statistics, Pub. Doc. No. 43, 1968, at 406.