punishment and Article 1, Section 6 of the California Constitution (the provision has since moved to Article 1, Section 17), which read (emphasis added): Since the State Constitution prohibits a punishment which is either of the two conditions (as opposed to prohibiting ones that violate both conditions), the court found the penalty unconstitutional on state constitutional grounds since if it violated either provision it was unconstitutional at the state level. The court even went so far as to decline to even consider if the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution since it had already found it to be in violation of the state constitution. The court decided it on April 24, 1972. The state contended that while the use of capital punishment served no rehabilitating purposes, it was a legitimate punishment for retribution in serious offenses, in that it served to isolate the offender, and was a useful deterrent to crime. The court rejected the state's defense citing that there were far less onerous means of isolating the offender, and the lack of proof that capital punishment is an effective deterrent. Dissent Justice Marshall F. McComb wrote a brief dissent on the basis that the landmark case, Furman v. Georgia was currently on the docket of the Supreme Court of the United States and that the court should await its decision before ruling. (The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled in Furman that the death penalty—as then practiced in almost all of the states that used it—was unconstitutional.) As it turned out, the U.S. Supreme Court would set aside the question whether the death penalty was per se unconstitutional (later in Gregg v. Georgia it ruled that the death penalty was constitutional). McComb also argued that the death penalty deterred crime, noting numerous Supreme Court precedents upholding the death penalty's constitutionality, and stating that the legislative and initiative processes were the only appropriate avenues to determine whether the death penalty should be allowed. McComb was so upset about the Anderson decision that he walked out of the courtroom. Aftermath The Anderson decision caused all capital sentences in the state of California to be commuted to life in prison. Notably, it is because of this decision that Charles Manson avoided execution following his conviction and resulting death sentence for the "Tate-LaBianca" murders in 1969. Sirhan Sirhan also had his death sentence for the assassination of Robert Kennedy