Page:Glossip v. Gross.pdf/127

 Cite as: 576 U. S. ____ (2015)

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SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting

Unnatural American History 39 (1999) (quoting Editorial, New York Herald, Aug. 10, 1884); see generally Banner, supra, at 169–207. A return to the firing squad—and the blood and physical violence that comes with it—is a step in the opposite direction. And some might argue that the visible brutality of such a death could conceivably give rise to its own Eighth Amendment concerns. See Campbell v. Wood, 511 U. S. 1119, 1121–1123 (1994) (Blackmun, J., dissenting from denial of stay of execution and certiorari); Glass v. Louisiana, 471 U. S. 1080, 1085 (1985) (Brennan, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari). At least from a condemned inmate’s perspective, however, such visible yet relatively painless violence may be vastly preferable to an excruciatingly painful death hidden behind a veneer of medication. The States may well be reluctant to pull back the curtain for fear of how the rest of us might react to what we see. But we deserve to know the price of our collective comfort before we blindly allow a State to make condemned inmates pay it in our names. “By protecting even those convicted of heinous crimes, the Eighth Amendment reaffirms the duty of the govern­ ment to respect the dignity of all persons.” Roper v. Simmons, 543 U. S. 551, 560 (2005). Today, however, the Court absolves the State of Oklahoma of this duty. It does so by misconstruing and ignoring the record evidence regarding the constitutional insufficiency of midazolam as a sedative in a three-drug lethal injection cocktail, and by imposing a wholly unprecedented obligation on the con­ demned inmate to identify an available means for his or her own execution. The contortions necessary to save this particular lethal injection protocol are not worth the price. I dissent.