Page:Russell Bucklew v. Anne L. Precythe, Director, Missouri Department of Corrections.pdf/35

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, concurring.

I adhere to my view that “a method of execution violates the Eighth Amendment only if it is deliberately designed to inflict pain.” Baze v. Rees, 553 U. S. 35, 94 (2008) (opinion concurring in judgment); ante, at 14. Because there is no evidence that Missouri designed its protocol to inflict pain on anyone, let alone Russell Bucklew, I would end the inquiry there. Nonetheless, I join the Court’s opinion in full because it correctly explains why Bucklew’s claim fails even under the Court’s precedents.

I write separately to explain why ’s dissenting opinion does not cast doubt on this standard. Post, at 15–16. As I explained in Baze, “the evil the Eighth Amendment targets is intentional infliction of gratuitous pain.” 553 U. S., at 102 (opinion concurring in judgment). The historical evidence shows that the Framers sought to disable Congress from imposing various kinds of torturous punishments, such as “‘gibbeting,’” “‘burning at the stake,’” and “‘embowelling alive, beheading, and quartering.’” Id., at 95–98 (quoting 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *376 (Blackstone), and S. Banner, The Death Penalty: An American History 71–72 (2002)). In England, these aggravated forms of capital punishment were “‘superadded’” to increase terror and disgrace for