Glass v. Louisiana
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The case Glass v. Louisiana (or Jimmy L. Glass v. Louisiana) was decided by the United States Supreme Court in 1985.
Jimmy L. Glass was sentenced to death by the state of Louisiana. According to then Louisiana's law, the only authorized method of execution was the electric chair.
Glass and his lawyers argued that executions by electrocution violate the Eighth and and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, because causing to pass through the body of the person convicted a current of electricity of sufficient intensity to cause death, and the application and continuance of such current through the body of the person convicted until such person is dead and electrocution causes the gratuitous infliction of unnecessary pain and suffering and does not comport with evolving standards of human dignity.
However, a majority of the court found electrocution to be a method authorized by the state as constitutional.
In favor of this decision were Chief Justice Warren Burger and Associate Justices William H. Rehnquist, Lewis F. Powell, Byron White, and Sandra Day O'Connor.
Against the decision were Associate Justices William J. Brennan, who authored the dissent opinion, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, and John Paul Stevens.
In his dissent, Brennan concluded that the "death penalty in unconstitutional in every circumstances" (Marshall and Blackmun joined). Stevens wrote that he didn't think that the death penalty is unconstitutional in all circumstances, but electrocution is.
Brennan's dissent is known for its gruesome depiction of electrocution:
"Th[e] evidence suggests that death by electrical current is extremely violent and inflicts pain and indignities far beyond the 'mere extinguishment of life.' Witnesses routinely report that, when the switch is thrown, the condemned prisoner 'cringes,' 'leaps,' and 'fights the straps with amazing strength.' 'The hands turn red, then white, and the cords of the neck stand out like steel bands.' The prisoner's limbs, fingers, toes, and face are severely contorted. The force of the electrical current is so powerful that the prisoner's eyeballs sometimes pop out and 'rest on [his] cheeks.' The prisoner often defecates, urinates, and vomits blood and drool. "[1]
Brennan also concluded that electrocution is ""nothing less than the contemporary technological equivalent of burning people at the stake."[2]
Glass was electrocuted on June 12, 1987.
