Keeping up appearances

Over the last few months, the U.S. Supreme Court has issued two important opinions in which the court determined that the "dignity of the procedure" should trump the rights and interests of a criminal defendant.

In Baze v. Rees (pdf), the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a decision by the Kentucky Supreme Court that Kentucky's protocol for carrying out the death penalty did not violate the constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment in part because the protocol protected the "dignity of the procedure." Kentucky is a State where the death penalty is carried out by the injection of three separate drugs: the first drug is meant to induce a deep coma, the second drug paralyzes the muscles and stops the person's breathing, and the third drug stops the heart. It was asserted that the second drug should not be used because the person who is being killed may still be conscious but unable to show that he or she is in excruciating pain because his or her muscles are being paralyzed. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected this challenge to the use of the muscle-paralyzer in part because:

"[t]he Commonwealth has an interest in preserving the dignity of the procedure, especially where convulsions or seizures could be misperceived as signs of consciousness or distress."

Keeping up appearances for the witnesses and maintaining decorum during the execution is more important than avoiding the suffering of the person who is actually being killed.

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court in Indiana v. Edwards (pdf), the U.S. Supreme Court vacated and remanded a decision of the Indiana Supreme Court which had held that a defendant who is mentally competent to stand trial has a constitutional right to self-representation and cannot be forced to accept representation by counsel. In part to protect the dignity of the proceedings, the U.S. Supreme Court disagreed and held instead that the constitutional right to self-representation does not forbid State laws requiring that someone who is mentally competent to stand trial but not mentally competent to conduct that trial must accept representation by counsel. The U.S. Supreme Court explained that in those circumstances a criminal defendant's constitutional right to self-representation should be overridden because:

"given that defendant's uncertain mental state, the spectacle that could well result from his self-representation at trial is at least as likely to humiliating as enobling. Moreover, insofar a defendant's lack of capacity threatens an improper conviction or sentence, self-representation in that exceptional context undercuts the most basic of the Constitution's criminal law objectives, providing a fair trial."

Again, keeping up the appearance that all is peachy while prosecuting someone who is not competent to defend himself is more important than the constitutional rights of the person who is being prosecuted. However, as Grits wondered, "[i]s it any less a spectacle if we just lock up mentally ill people in prison en masse without the trial judge having to listen to them personally?"

Looking at both instances, is the focus on the marginal governmental interest in keeping up appearances and maintaining decorum at the expense of fundamental rights and due process more acceptable because the overruled constitutional rights are asserted by "bad" people?