Court Opinion

ID: 9716513
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:42:34.042843+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:46.295640
License: Public Domain

*276Wilkins, J.
(concurring in the result). I agree that the defendant should be resentenced to imprisonment for life. I reach this conclusion on the sole ground that execution of the defendant for this crime would violate art. 26 of the Declaration of Rights of the Constitution of the Commonwealth.
The Commonwealth has not established that the imposition of the death penalty for this crime serves any purpose which cannot be achieved as well by a sentence of imprisonment for life. Therefore, the sentence of death constitutes “cruel or unusual punishment” in violation of art. 26 of the Declaration of Rights. Because of this conclusion, I need not address arguments resting on any other portion of the State Constitution or any arguments based on provisions in the Constitution of the United States.
In writing on this matter earlier, I said that “I believe that art. 26 requires, at the very least, that the Commonwealth not take a person’s life unless that action serves a substantial purpose which cannot otherwise be achieved.” Commonwealth v. O’Neal, 367 Mass. 440, 451 (Wilkins, J., concurring).1 I then joined in an order of the court which in effect allowed further briefs to be filed on “the *277question of the extent of the Commonwealth’s interest in the imposition of the death penalty in rape-murder cases.” Id. at 451.
Without reaching the question whether the death penalty may be imposed constitutionally in any circumstance, I conclude that the Commonwealth has not established that a sentence of death for a rape-murder, as opposed to life imprisonment, serves a substantial public purpose. If the brutality of taking a human life can be sustained at all in this Commonwealth, where no one has been executed since 1947, I believe that the Commonwealth must show a need for that death.
From the discussion in the Chief Justice’s opinion it seems clear that if the death penalty, as opposed to life imprisonment, could be sustained in these circumstances deterrence would be the principal ground of support.2 There are crimes as to which the deterrent effect of the threat of death may serve a purpose which cannot be achieved by the threat of life imprisonment. One example is murder in the course of the commission of a serious crime, such as kidnapping or holding a hostage, during which the criminal has ample time to reflect on the consequences of his taking of a life. Another example may be murder by a convicted murderer who is already subject to life imprisonment where the threat of the imposition of the death penalty may be the only available deterrent. There are no doubt other examples. The Commonwealth has not shown that murder in the course of rape or attempted rape is such a crime. One cannot infer with confidence from the nature of the crimes that the threat of the death penalty, as against life imprisonment, deters the commission of murder in the course of rape or attempted rape, and at this time there are no legislative findings or a report of a commission on which *278the Commonwealth may rely in support of the death penalty.3
The application of constitutional principles is not immutable, and criminal penalties thought appropriate in 1780 are no longer accepted in our society. See Weems v. United States, 217 U. S. 349, 378 (1910); Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86, 100-101 (1958). In my view, our State Constitution tells us today that the State may not engage in the senseless tolling of a murderer, even though he is by definition a person who has committed a senseless tolling himself. Execution of such a criminal would be both “cruel” and “unusual” within the meaning of those words in art. 26 of the Declaration of Rights.

We in Massachusetts should be particularly conscious of the seriousness of the imposition, or at least the threat of the imposition, of the penalty of death. In the past 300 years, we have attracted inordinate attention, not all of it favorable, because of the existence of capital punishment. The irreversible finality of the execution of a criminal defendant can be both the source of universal regret, as events subsequent to the Salem witch trials plainly show, and the reason for intensified feelings concerning fairness in the administration of justice, as certain consequences of two murders in South Braintree in 1920 also plainly show. In addition, the existence of the penalty of death may be a deterrent not to crime but to conviction of murder in the first degree. See Judge Robert Sullivan’s studied views of the reason for the 1893 acquittal of Lizzie Andrew Borden in Goodbye Lizzie Borden, p. 194 (1974). See also the foreword by Mr. Joseph N. Welch to The Untried Case by Mr. Herbert B. Ehrmann (2d ed. 1960) in which Mr. Welch discusses the cases of the Salem witches, Lizzie Borden and Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in relation to the death penalty.

 Retribution does have an important place in justification of the amount of punishment for the commission of a crime but cannot carry the burden alone of sustaining the imposition of a sentence of death, as opposed to life imprisonment, in these circumstances.

 Indeed, for years, the threat of capital punishment may not have had any significant deterrent effect in this Commonwealth. Since the last execution for murder in this Commonwealth in 1947 and prior to the decision in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S. 238 (1972), numerous persons were convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death, as was required in the absence of a contrary jury recommendation. However, none of these murderers has been executed. If we assume that a person is sufficiently reflective to note that his conduct may result in the commission of murder in the first degree, we may reasonably assume as well that that person will conclude that one way or another he will not suffer capital punishment because no one has been executed in Massachusetts since 1947.