Lawyers challenging the death penalty imposed yesterday on convicts said the law was cruel and shameful. The problem is not what people say, but what the Constitution says about it. Katende told the judges that according to the petitioner the burden of the death penalty on convicted prisoners does not comply with Articles 24 and 44(a) of the Constitution. He said the Constitution promotes consideration of fundamental rights and freedom of the individual and requires everyone, including the government, to respect such rights. Katende said the court's role should not decide cases based on public opinion, but what the constitution says. Katende said the execution process causes mental and psychological distress to the condemned. ("'Death Penalty Unconstitutional'.") William J. Brennan, JD, Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, in his July 2, 1976, dissenting opinion in Gregg v. Georgia, stated: "Death is not only an unusually severe punishment, unusual in its pain, its finality, and its enormity, but it serves no penal purpose more effectively than a less severe punishment... The fatal constitutional infirmity in punishment of death is that it treats "members of the human race as non-human, as objects to be played with and discarded [is] therefore inconsistent with the basic premise of the clause that even the vilest criminal remains a human being