Opinion of The Court
Per curiam, the Supreme Court vacated the lower court's ruling without issuing an opinion. The case was remanded to the Louisiana Supreme Court for further deliberation in view of Washington v. Harper (1990), also a case involving involuntary medication, which had been decided after the District Court's ruling.
Upon remand, the lower court ruled against the forcible medication of individuals in order to maintain their competency for execution. This decision was based on the distinction that, unlike Harper v. Washington which was concerned with involuntary medication for treatment issues, forcing medication for the purposes of execution was not medical treatment (being "antithetical to the basic principles of the healing arts") but punishment.
In addition, the court found two state laws on which to base its holding. First it found that forcibly medicating a person for the purposes of execution was cruel and unusual punishment under Louisiana state law because "it fails to measurably contribute to the social goals of capital punishment" by adding to the individual's punishment "beyond that required for the mere extinguishment of life," and could be "administered erroneously, arbitrarily or capriciously". It also held that forcible medication in this situation violated the right to privacy guaranteed by the Louisiana State Constitution because the inhumanity of the situation rendered the state's interest in executing a person under these conditions less compelling.
Read more about this topic: Perry V. Louisiana
Famous quotes containing the words opinion of, opinion and/or court:
“Government is being founded on opinion, the opinion of the public, even when it is wrong, ought to be respected to a certain degree.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Roughly speaking, any man with energy and enthusiasm ought to be able to bring at least a dozen others round to his opinion in the course of a year no matter how absurd that opinion might be. We see every day in politics, in business, in social life, large masses of people brought to embrace the most revolutionary ideas, sometimes within a few days. It is all a question of getting hold of them in the right way and working on their weak points.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
“As to “Don Juan,” confess ... that it is the sublime of that there sort of writing; it may be bawdy, but is it not good English? It may be profligate, but is it not life, is it not the thing? Could any man have written it who has not lived in the world? and tooled in a post-chaise? in a hackney coach? in a Gondola? against a wall? in a court carriage? in a vis a vis? on a table? and under it?”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)