Opinion of the Court
and the risk of pain involved was considered “unfortunate but inevitable.” Ibid.; see also id., at 48.
What does all this tell us about how the Eighth Amendment applies to methods of execution? For one thing, it tells us that the Eighth Amendment does not guarantee a prisoner a painless death—something that, of course, isn’t guaranteed to many people, including most victims of capital crimes. Glossip, 576 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 4). Instead, what unites the punishments the Eighth Amendment was understood to forbid, and distinguishes them from those it was understood to allow, is that the former were long disused (unusual) forms of punishment that intensified the sentence of death with a (cruel) “‘superadd[ition]’” of “‘terror, pain, or disgrace.’” Baze, 553 U. S., at 48; accord, id., at 96 (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment).
This Court has yet to hold that a State’s method of execution qualifies as cruel and unusual, and perhaps understandably so. Far from seeking to superadd terror, pain, or disgrace to their executions, the States have often sought more nearly the opposite, exactly as Justice Story predicted. Through much of the 19th century, States experimented with technological innovations aimed at making hanging less painful. See Banner 170–177. In the 1880s, following the recommendation of a commission tasked with finding “‘the most humane and practical method known to modern science of carrying into effect the sentence of death,’” the State of New York replaced hanging with electrocution. Glossip, 576 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 2). Several States followed suit in the “‘“belief that electrocution is less painful and more humane than hanging.”’” Ibid. Other States adopted lethal gas after concluding it was “‘the most humane [method of execution] known to modern science.’” Ibid. And beginning in the 1970s, the search for less painful modes of execution led many States to switch to lethal injection. Id., at ___ (slip
