MR. JUSTICE REED announced the judgment of the Court in an opinion in which THE CHIEF JUSTICE, MR. JUSTICE BLACK and MR. JUSTICE JACKSON join.
This writ of certiorari brings before this Court a unique situation. The petitioner, Willie Francis, is a colored citizen of Louisiana. He was duly convicted of murder, and, in September, 1945, sentenced to be electrocuted for the crime. Upon a proper death warrant, Francis was prepared for execution and on May 3, 1946, pursuant to the warrant, was placed in the official electric chair of the State of Louisiana in the presence of the authorized witnesses. The executioner threw the switch, but, presumably because of some mechanical difficulty, death did not result. He was thereupon removed from the chair and returned to prison, where he now is. A new death warrant was issued by the Governor of Louisiana, fixing the execution for May 9, 1946.
Applications to the Supreme Court of the state were
filed for writs of certiorari, mandamus, prohibition and habeas corpus,
directed to the appropriate officials in the state. Execution of the
sentence was stayed. By the applications, petitioner claimed...that an
execution under the circumstances detailed would
deny due process to him because of the double jeopardy provision of the
Fifth Amendment and the cruel and unusual
punishment provision of the Eighth Amendment.
These federal constitutional protections, petitioner claimed, would be
denied because he had once gone through the difficult preparation for
execution, and had once received through his body a current of
electricity intended to cause death....
Accidents happen for which no man is to blame. We turn to the question as to whether the proposed enforcement of the criminal law of the state is offensive to any constitutional requirements to which reference has been made....
We find nothing in what took place here which amounts to cruel and unusual punishment in the constitutional sense. The case before us does not call for an examination into any punishments except that of death. The traditional humanity of modern Anglo-American law forbids the infliction of unnecessary pain in the execution of the death sentence. Prohibition against the wanton infliction of pain has come into our law from the Bill of Rights of 1688. The identical words appear in our Eighth Amendment. The Fourteenth would prohibit by its due process clause execution by a state in a cruel manner.
Petitioner's suggestion is that, because he once underwent the psychological strain of preparation for electrocution, now to require him to undergo this preparation again subjects him to a lingering or cruel and unusual punishment. Even the fact that petitioner has already been subjected to a current of electricity does not make his subsequent execution any more cruel in the constitutional sense than any other execution. 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. The fact that an unforeseeable accident prevented the prompt consummation of the sentence cannot, it seems to us, add an element of cruelty to a subsequent execution. There is no purpose to inflict unnecessary pain, nor any unnecessary pain involved in the proposed execution. The situation of the unfortunate victim of this accident is just as though he had suffered the identical amount of mental anguish and physical pain in any other occurrence, such as, for example, a fire in the cell block. We cannot agree that the hardship imposed upon the petitioner rises to that level of hardship denounced as denial of due process because of cruelty.....
MR. JUSTICE BURTON, with whom MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, MR. JUSTICE MURPHY and MR. JUSTICE RUTLEDGE concur, dissenting.Under circumstances unique in judicial history, the
relator asks this Court to stay his execution on the ground that it
will violate the due process of law guaranteed to him by the
Constitution of the United States. We believe that the unusual facts
before us require that the judgment of the Supreme Court of Louisiana
be vacated, and that this cause be remanded for further proceedings not
inconsistent with this opinion....
The relator's execution was ordered by the Governor of Louisiana to take place May 3, 1946. Of the proceedings on that day, the Supreme Court of Louisiana has said:
. . . between the Hours of 12:00 o'clock noon and 3:00 o'clock p.m., Willie Francis was strapped in the electric chair and an attempt was made to electrocute him, but, because of some defect in the apparatus devised and used for electrocutions, the contrivance failed to function, and, after an unsuccessful attempt to electrocute Francis, he was removed from the chair.
Of the same proceedings, the State's brief says:
Through a latent electrical defect, the attempt to electrocute Francis failed, the State contending no current whatsoever reached Francis' body, the relator contending a current of electricity did pass through his body; but, in any event, Willie Francis was not put to death.
On May 8, the death warrant was canceled, and the relator's execution has been stayed pending completion of these proceedings. The Governor proposes to issue another death warrant for the relator's electrocution, and the relator now asks this Court to prevent it for the reason that, under the present unique circumstances, his electrocution will be so cruel and unusual as to violate the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States....
The capital case before us presents an instance of the violation of constitutional due process that is more clear than would be presented by many lesser punishments prohibited by the Eighth Amendment or its state counterparts. Taking human life by unnecessarily cruel means shocks the most fundamental instincts of civilized man. It should not be possible under the constitutional procedure of a self-governing people. Abhorrence of the cruelty of ancient forms of capital punishment has increased steadily until, today, some states have prohibited capital punishment altogether. It is unthinkable that any state legislature in modern times would enact a statute expressly authorizing capital punishment by repeated applications of an electric current separated by intervals of days or hours until finally death shall result. The Legislature of Louisiana did not do so. The Supreme Court of Louisiana did not say that it did. The Supreme Court of Louisiana said merely that the pending petitions for relief in this case presented an executive, rather than a judicial, question and, by that mistake of law, it precluded itself from discussing the constitutional issue before us.
In determining whether the proposed procedure is unconstitutional, we must measure it against a lawful electrocution. The contrast is that between instantaneous death and death by installments -- caused by electric shocks administered after one or more intervening periods of complete consciousness of the victim. Electrocution, when instantaneous, can be inflicted by a state in conformity with due process of law....
[Louisiana law] does not provide for electrocution by interrupted or repeated applications of electric current at intervals of several days or even minutes. It does not provide for the application of electric current of an intensity less than that sufficient to cause death. It prescribes expressly and solely for the application of a current of sufficient intensity to cause death and for the continuance of that application until death results. Prescribing capital punishment, it should be construed strictly. There can be no implied provision for a second, third or multiple application of the current. There is no statutory or judicial precedent upholding a delayed process of electrocution....If the state officials deliberately and intentionally had placed the relator in the electric chair five times and, each time, had applied electric current to his body in a manner not sufficient, until the final time, to kill him, such a form of torture would rival that of burning at the stake. Although the failure of the first attempt, in the present case, was unintended, the reapplication of the electric current will be intentional. How many deliberate and intentional reapplications of electric current does it take to produce a cruel, unusual and unconstitutional punishment? While five applications would be more cruel and unusual than one, the uniqueness of the present case demonstrates that, today, two separated applications are sufficiently "cruel and unusual" to be prohibited. If five attempts would be "cruel and unusual," it would be difficult to draw the line between two, three, four and five. It is not difficult, however, as we here contend, to draw the line between the one continuous application prescribed by statute and any other application of the current.
Lack of intent that the first application be less
than fatal is not material. The intent of the executioner cannot lessen
the torture or excuse the result. It was the statutory duty of the
state officials to make sure that there was no failure.....
Footnote: The following excerpts are from copies of affidavits printed as appendices to the brief on behalf of the petitioner. The official witnesses named were persons charged by statute with the duty of making a signed report or "proces verbal" reciting the manner and date of the execution to be filed with the clerk of the court in which the sentence was imposed. The statements refer to what happened after the relator had been strapped into the electric chair and a hood placed before his eyes.
Then the electrocutioner turned on the switch, and when he did, Willie Francis' lips puffed out and he groaned and jumped so that the chair came off the floor. Apparently the switch was turned on twice, and then the condemned man yelled: "Take it off. Let me breath."
Affidavit of official witness Harold Resweber, dated May 23, 1946.
I saw the electrocutioner turn on the switch and I saw his lips puff out and swell, his body tensed and stretched. I heard the one in charge yell to the man outside for more juice when he saw that Willie Francis was not dying, and the one on the outside yelled back he was giving him all he had. Then Willie Francis cried out "Take it off. Let me breath." Then they took the hood from his eyes and unstrapped him.
This boy really got a shock when they turned that machine on.
Affidavit of official witness Ignace Doucet, dated May 30, 1946.
After he was strapped to the chair, the Sheriff of St. Martin Parish asked him if he had anything to say about anything, and he said nothing. Then the hood was placed before his eyes. Then the officials in charge of the electrocution were adjusting the mechanisms, and when the needle of the meter registered to a certain point on the dial, the electrocutioner pulled down on the switch, and at the same time said: "Good-bye, Willie." At that very moment, Willie Francis' lips puffed out and his body squirmed and tensed, and he jumped, so that the chair rocked on the floor. Then the condemned man said: "Take it off. Let me breath." Then the switch was turned off. Then some of the men left, and, a few minutes after, the Sheriff of St. Martin Parish, Mr. E. L. Resweber, came in and announced that the governor had granted the condemned man a reprieve.
Affidavit of
official chaplain Reverend Maurice L. Rousseve, dated May 25, 1946.