Post by SoulTrainOz on Jun 24, 2006 3:01:53 GMT -5
U.S. Supreme Court hears case
Ventura County Star, Editorial
When even the U.S. Supreme Court expresses misgivings about the death penalty, it's time for all of us to take notice.
Recently, the court agreed to hear a case to consider one of the current methods of execution - lethal injection. The case on appeal came from Florida, which uses a combination of three drugs - one that anesthetizes, a second that paralyzes and a third that stops the heart.
The claim, as in most cases appealing lethal injections, is that the person being executed does feel pain, despite the anesthesia. If so, that could be considered "cruel and unusual punishment," which is forbidden by the U.S. Constitution.
Although this case came from Florida, the whole issue comes much closer to home, since some California death sentences have been appealed on similar grounds. In one case, the convict was due to be executed in February, but the execution was postponed when the Supreme Court intervened in the Florida case.
This doubt about the constitutionality of lethal injection is only the
latest in a long, historic string of doubts about the cruelty of executions going back for centuries. Once, the guilty were burned at the stake or beheaded by guillotine. Then, they were hanged or shot to death. When the brutality of those methods became too obvious, we turned to the electric chair and then the gas chamber.
Now, we have lethal injections - with the highest court expressing
misgivings about that method. The inescapable truth is, there is no method for killing a human being that is humane.
Granted, some of the convicts on death row have committed the most savage kinds of murders. Why should we concern ourselves with searching for a humane way to execute them? So that we, as a society, don't sink to the same level of brutality with them - by murdering the murderers.
There's really no need to keep searching for a constitutional form of execution. Not when the available alternative is a sentence of life in prison with no possibility of parole.
That protects the public from the convict as surely as execution does. That also would allay the endless appeals in death penalty cases, which have left us in this contradictory situation of having capital punishment, in name at least, without having executions.
In the past three decades, more than 1,000 convicts have been executed in the U.S. - while 123 death row inmates have been exonerated before they could be executed. These aren't convicts whose sentences were commuted to life, but convicts sentenced to die, who were later found not guilty of the crimes for which they were convicted.
Since we don't need executions to protect us from these convicts, and since we can't seem to find a constitutional method of execution, it's time to reaffirm this newspaper's historic opposition to the death penalty.
Source : Ventura County Star, Editorial
www.venturacountystar.com/vcs/opinion/article/0,1375,VCS_125_4792378,
Ventura County Star, Editorial
When even the U.S. Supreme Court expresses misgivings about the death penalty, it's time for all of us to take notice.
Recently, the court agreed to hear a case to consider one of the current methods of execution - lethal injection. The case on appeal came from Florida, which uses a combination of three drugs - one that anesthetizes, a second that paralyzes and a third that stops the heart.
The claim, as in most cases appealing lethal injections, is that the person being executed does feel pain, despite the anesthesia. If so, that could be considered "cruel and unusual punishment," which is forbidden by the U.S. Constitution.
Although this case came from Florida, the whole issue comes much closer to home, since some California death sentences have been appealed on similar grounds. In one case, the convict was due to be executed in February, but the execution was postponed when the Supreme Court intervened in the Florida case.
This doubt about the constitutionality of lethal injection is only the
latest in a long, historic string of doubts about the cruelty of executions going back for centuries. Once, the guilty were burned at the stake or beheaded by guillotine. Then, they were hanged or shot to death. When the brutality of those methods became too obvious, we turned to the electric chair and then the gas chamber.
Now, we have lethal injections - with the highest court expressing
misgivings about that method. The inescapable truth is, there is no method for killing a human being that is humane.
Granted, some of the convicts on death row have committed the most savage kinds of murders. Why should we concern ourselves with searching for a humane way to execute them? So that we, as a society, don't sink to the same level of brutality with them - by murdering the murderers.
There's really no need to keep searching for a constitutional form of execution. Not when the available alternative is a sentence of life in prison with no possibility of parole.
That protects the public from the convict as surely as execution does. That also would allay the endless appeals in death penalty cases, which have left us in this contradictory situation of having capital punishment, in name at least, without having executions.
In the past three decades, more than 1,000 convicts have been executed in the U.S. - while 123 death row inmates have been exonerated before they could be executed. These aren't convicts whose sentences were commuted to life, but convicts sentenced to die, who were later found not guilty of the crimes for which they were convicted.
Since we don't need executions to protect us from these convicts, and since we can't seem to find a constitutional method of execution, it's time to reaffirm this newspaper's historic opposition to the death penalty.
Source : Ventura County Star, Editorial
www.venturacountystar.com/vcs/opinion/article/0,1375,VCS_125_4792378,