Court Opinion

ID: 9716514
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:42:34.0462+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:46.325269
License: Public Domain

Kaplan, J.
(concurring in the result). I agree with Justice Wiltons that the result in the present case should be pitched on art. 26 of the Declaration of Rights, and I join in the substance of his opinion. I add a note, however, about a proposition which in Justice Wilkins's opinion is put more as a question than an assertion, but which emerges perhaps more definitely as an implication from the opinion of the Chief Justice. The proposition is this: If there are crimes (or perhaps homicidal crimes?) to which the prospect of punishment of death could be shown to serve as a stronger deterrent than life imprisonment (how much stronger?), then those crimes may be constitutionally amenable to that punishment. The “if” *279clause is a highly speculative one. But supposing that the condition is satisfied, I. note that the constitutional question would hardly be concluded. Among other matters, a court would then have to consider whether any legislative rule authorizing capital punishment, even a nominally “mandatory” rule, can be administered without caprice edged with discrimination against racial minorities and the poor, and whether, judged by evolved standards, the penalty itself is not so brutal and brutalizing as to be proscript. I mean to emphasize that “deterrence” is only one of the several factors that bear on the constitutional issue.