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GLOSSIP v. GROSS SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting

(2010) (emphasis added). Simply stated, the “Eighth Amendment categorically prohibits the infliction of cruel and unusual punishments.” Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U. S. 302, 330 (1989) (emphasis added). B The Court today, however, would convert this categori­ cal prohibition into a conditional one. A method of execu­ tion that is intolerably painful—even to the point of being the chemical equivalent of burning alive—will, the Court holds, be unconstitutional if, and only if, there is a “known and available alternative” method of execution. Ante, at 15. It deems Baze to foreclose any argument to the con­ trary. Ante, at 14. Baze held no such thing. In the first place, the Court cites only the plurality opinion in Baze as support for its known-and-available-alternative requirement. See ibid. Even assuming that the Baze plurality set forth such a requirement—which it did not—none of the Members of the Court whose concurrences were necessary to sustain the Baze Court’s judgment articulated a similar view. See 553 U. S., at 71–77, 87 (Stevens, J., concurring in judg­ ment); id., at 94, 99–107 (THOMAS, J., concurring in judg­ ment); id., at 107–108, 113 (BREYER, J., concurring in judgment). In general, “the holding of the Court may be viewed as that position taken by those Members who concurred in the judgments on the narrowest grounds.” Marks v. United States, 430 U. S. 188, 193 (1977) (internal quotation marks omitted). And as the Court observes, ante, at 14, n. 2, the opinion of JUSTICE THOMAS, joined by JUSTICE SCALIA, took the broadest position with respect to the degree of intent that state officials must have in order to have violated the Eighth Amendment, concluding that only a method of execution deliberately designed to inflict pain, and not one simply designed with deliberate indifference to the risk of severe pain, would be un­