The Conservative Cave
Current Events => General Discussion => Topic started by: Chris_ on January 07, 2008, 11:39:21 AM
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Court Divided Over Lethal Injection Case
WASHINGTON (AP) - Supreme Court justices indicated Monday they are deeply divided over a challenge to the way most states execute prisoners by lethal injection, which critics say creates an avoidable risk of excruciating pain.
With executions in the United States halted since late September, the court heard arguments in a case from Kentucky that calls into question the mix of three drugs used in most executions.
Justice Antonin Scalia was among several conservatives on the court who suggested he would uphold Kentucky's method of execution and allow capital punishment to resume.
States have been careful to adopt procedures that do not seek to inflict pain and should not be barred from carrying out executions even if prison officials sometimes make mistakes in administering drugs, Scalia said. "There is no painless requirement" in the Constitution, Scalia said.
But other justices said they are troubled by the procedure in which three drugs are administered in succession to knock out, paralyze and kill prisoners. The argument against the three-drug protocol is that if the initial anesthetic does not take hold, a third drug that stops the heart can cause excruciating pain. The second drug, meanwhile, paralyzes the prisoner, rendering him unable to express his discomfort.
"I'm terribly troubled by the fact that the second drug seems to cause all risk of excruciating pain," Justice John Paul Stevens said.
*snip*
Lined up in front of the court waiting to attend the arguments, college students Jeremy Sperling and Gira Joshi said they oppose the death penalty, but regard making executions less painful and more humane as a worthy goal.
"You have the right to die with dignity," said Joshi, a political science and religion major at New Jersey's Rutgers University. Sperling, a psychology and religion major at New York University, said serving a life prison term is the appropriate alternative to the death penalty.
IMO, they chose to forfeit that right ("to die with dignity") when the committed a crime punishable by death.
MORE (http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8U15VGG0&show_article=1)
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and the countless innocent victims were oddly not available for comment. :banghead:
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and the countless innocent victims were oddly not available for comment. :banghead:
No complaints from the executed prisoners either.
IMO, the DP should be painful. Add another level of fear to it. :censored:
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and the countless innocent victims were oddly not available for comment. :banghead:
No complaints from the executed prisoners either.
IMO, the DP should be painful. Add another level of fear to it. :censored:
I think about what Jessica Lunsford had to endure at the hands of John Couey and there is no death too horrible for him and the likes of him to be subjected to.
(http://209.85.12.232/7417/2/emo/machinegunsmilie.gif)
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"I'm terribly troubled by the fact that the second drug seems to cause all risk of excruciating pain," Justice John Paul Stevens said.
I said it in the BN thread. unless you have a someone sitting around complaining about how much it hurt to die by lethal injection, I'm just not sure what you base something like this on.
but then of course, the point changed from "excruciating pain" at the beginning of the story to "die with dignity" towards the end.
I'm not thrilled that the supremem court is in the business of defining what "pain" is and is not, but I wonder if the roberts court has picked this case up just to affirm lethal injection as a means of capital punishment once and for all.