Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Maverick on June 12, 2006, 02:15:10 PM
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This story showed up today.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060612/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_death_penalty;_ylt=AtVOSSIn92RIIvkjDRMNhnys0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b2NibDltBHNlYwM3MTY-
I think it's pure and unadulterated BS in this situation. Lethal injection is certainly far kinder than the death those inmates provided for their victims. :mad:
AAAARGH freaking link broke, here is the cut n paste.
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By GINA HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer
57 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court opened the door Monday to new constitutional challenges to lethal injection, the method used by most states and the federal government to execute death row inmates.
In an unanimous decision, the court allowed those condemned to die to make last-minute claims that the chemicals used are too painful — and therefore amount to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Constitution's Eighth Amendment.
Justices, in a separate 5-3 ruling, also made it easier for death row inmates to challenge their convictions with new evidence. The court said Tennessee death-row inmate Paul Gregory House can use DNA evidence to try to get his conviction overturned in the 1985 murder of a neighbor.
"This is not a case of conclusive exoneration," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in the decision, which permits House to proceed in federal court claiming innocence for the murder of Carolyn Muncey in Union County, Tenn., in July 1985.
The lethal injection ruling sets the stage for a nationwide legal battle over that subject, with the country's 3,300 death row inmates armed with a new tool to contest how they are put to death. Justices have never ruled on the constitutionality of a specific type of execution.
The winner in the case was Florida death row inmate Clarence Hill, who was strapped to a gurney with lines running into his arms to deliver the drugs when the Supreme Court in January intervened and blocked the execution.
Kennedy, writing for the court, said that while Hill and other inmates can file special appeals, they will not always be entitled to delays in their executions.
"Both the state and the victims of crime have an important interest in the timely enforcement of a sentence," he wrote.
Hill, convicted of killing a police officer, had run out of regular appeals so he went to court using a civil rights law claiming that his constitutional rights would be violated by Florida's lethal injection drug protocol. The court's decision renews his bid to have Florida change its chemical combination.
The decision is setback for Florida and other states that will have to defend more last-minute filings from inmates. More than two dozen states had filed arguments at the court seeking the opposite outcome. They said dragged-out appeals jeopardize justice for victims' families.
Lethal injection is the main method used by every state that has capital punishment except Nebraska. Nebraska still has the electric chair, although that, too, is being contested.
Kennedy said that Hill is not claiming that he cannot be executed, only that he should not be forced into a painful execution.
"Hill's challenge appears to leave the state free to use an alternative lethal injection procedure," Kennedy wrote.
Justices seemed worried about the possibility of pain when they took up Hill's case in April. Justice John Paul Stevens told Florida's lawyer that their procedure would be banned for use to euthanize cats and dogs.
Following the Supreme Court's intervention in the Hill case, executions were stopped in California, Maryland and Missouri.
Hill's lawyer, D. Todd Doss, said Monday that the state can revise its method or try to defend its system in court.
"It is a good day in the sense that we get to litigate on the merits of this. We have an opportunity to litigate an execution claim," he said.
Retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote the court's 2004 ruling in its last lethal injection case. Justices said then that an Alabama death row inmate could pursue a last-ditch claim that his death by lethal injection would be unconstitutionally cruel because of his damaged veins.
In Monday's ruling, Kennedy wrote that the court was only following precedent set in that case.
The case is Hill v. McDonough, 05-8794.
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i thought one state had a firing squad as a option?
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I don't understand why we don't just chop off their heads. It's neither cruel or unusual, it's quick and simple.
Given the choice, I know I'd much rather have my head cut off than any other form of execution done here in the U.S.
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first off the link...
yahoo news likes to make you "email" the link.... choose email story, then there will be a "real" link you can copy and paste here...
chicken... you do realise most generally accept that your head stays alive for up to 10 seconds. you wanna see and feel that?
as for the article... how in the FFFF can anyone say "that the chemicals used are too painful..." there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY of knowing this at all :confused: :huh :O
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Perhaps a chair with a small shaped charge at neck level for the inmate. He sits, strapped in then boom. Instantaneous execution and the concussion should be plenty to induce instasnt unconsciousness for the recipiant. No pain, very fast, just messy.
It would be rough to keep chairs in stock but if ya gotta you could modify a lawn chair and use some wood to mount the shaped charge. Oh yes make sure you use multiple caps to insure ignition.
It could work.
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my question on lethal injection... why do they prep the arm with alcohol and use a sterilized needle when performing this function... i dont think dead people will complain about an infection... :huh
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(http://www.genitron.com/Ammunition/45auto-new.jpg)
The shaped charge idea is interesting, but gawd that would be messy and there sure as hell wouldn't be any open casket funerals. :D It does get around the cruel and unusual requirements, though.
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Hmmm... isn't hypoxia fairly painless?
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40,000 uncomplaining frenchmen can't be wrong. :aok
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Badische_Guillotine.JPG)
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Originally posted by Sandman
Hmmm... isn't hypoxia fairly painless?
Too long to implement. I'd see this as failing the cruel and unusual test quite easily.
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I'm pretty sure the shaped charge would fail the "unusual" part of the cruel and unusual punishment clause.
-- Todd/Leviathn
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Originally posted by Sandman
Hmmm... isn't hypoxia fairly painless?
Ask some republi-bot ... their brain are oxygen deprived since january 2001.
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I'd be curious to see the arguments for the charge being unusual. As long as bombs are internationally considered to be acceptable forms of warfare, I don't really see why they're too unusal for the scum of society.
Has the SC ever established a test for "unusual"?
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Almost anything that causes instant death will fall under either the cruel or the unusual designation.
The Russians at one time used a pistol shot to the base of the skull.
Any form of electrocution, beheading, hanging, or gas inhalation will fit one or both categories, at least according to some.
The firing squad will as well. Since the subject is shot in the chest, it takes time for the brain to die. Of course, it wouldn't be nearly as "nice" and "neat" if they were shot in the head instead, but death would be more likely to be instant.
A more appropriate phrase would be "unreasonably crual and unusual", since the subject is in fact being put to death.
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dead in an Airbus crash, certainly not unusual...
... i m teh tr0O013r3r
i +r0o| no0bs
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Well Raider14 considers lethal injection mentally cruel because you know you are gonna die, you can ask him to enlighten you if you want. Otherwise I think a few states havie firing squad, some have the gas chamber, hanging, lethal injection, or the electric chair.
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Originally posted by Maverick
This story showed up today.
I think it's pure and unadulterated BS in this situation. Lethal injection is certainly far kinder than the death those inmates provided for their victims. :mad:
You know... what's wrong with the Supreme Court opening this up to a challenge? If the challenger can prove to the satisfaction of the court that it is indeed cruel, than the state should find another way. If not, it's business as usual.
Much ado about nothing, IMHO.
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Originally posted by Sandman
You know... what's wrong with the Supreme Court opening this up to a challenge? If the challenger can prove to the satisfaction of the court that it is indeed cruel, than the state should find another way. If not, it's business as usual.
Much ado about nothing, IMHO.
Well, what's wrong is that we've moved from any number of violent and possibly very painful methods to a method that is very similar to how a surgical patient is anesthetized, except of course that the criminal does not wake up (some times the patient doesn't either). As I sated up thread, ANY manner or method of execution will ALWAYS be challenged as "cruel and unusual" since the subject is in fact being EXECUTED. Again, as I stated up thread, the best solution is to rephrase it to read "UNREASONABLY cruel and unusual". So no, it is NOT much ado about nothing. There is no way you will EVER find an execution method that NO ONE will find to be "cruel and unusual". The challenges will go on FOREVER. The ONLY ONE not paying the bill is the CRIMINAL.
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We are definitely becoming a bunch of panzies.
There is a reason they were chosen to be executed, and I see that one of these guys has been on death row since 1985. That's alot of tax dollars wasted on living expenses for someone that has been sentenced to death.
I don't think any victim that was murdered had more that a few hours to plead for there lives, let alone 21 YEARS. And the ones that actually had those precious few hours, most definitely were facing cruel and unsual punishment.
They should hang them, and the following day it should be on the front page of every newspaper in the state.
"So and so was put to death today for the murder of victimx last month. Remember kids, to stay in school and drink your ovaltine."
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Originally posted by Captain Virgil Hilts
Well, what's wrong is that we've moved from any number of violent and possibly very painful methods to a method that is very similar to how a surgical patient is anesthetized, except of course that the criminal does not wake up (some times the patient doesn't either). As I sated up thread, ANY manner or method of execution will ALWAYS be challenged as "cruel and unusual" since the subject is in fact being EXECUTED. Again, as I stated up thread, the best solution is to rephrase it to read "UNREASONABLY cruel and unusual". So no, it is NOT much ado about nothing. There is no way you will EVER find an execution method that NO ONE will find to be "cruel and unusual". The challenges will go on FOREVER. The ONLY ONE not paying the bill is the CRIMINAL.
Once lethal injection is challenged and ruled upon by the Supreme Court, do you think the court will waste its time with later challenges of the same thing?
I don't think so.
As for rephrasing the Constitution, I'm against it. I think the 8th Amendment is fine the way it is.
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Originally posted by Sandman
Once lethal injection is challenged and ruled upon by the Supreme Court, do you think the court will waste its time with later challenges of the same thing?
I don't think so.
As for rephrasing the Constitution, I'm against it. I think the 8th Amendment is fine the way it is.
They are accepting the challenge on lethal injection this time, what makes you think they won't accept continual challenges? it will be challenged, again, and again, and again. Every time ANY court changes it will be challenged again.
Once more, ANY method of execution will continually be challenged as "cruel and unusual" from now until infinity, or in perpetuity, whichever you prefer.
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There is such a thing as precedent. I'm okay with letting the system work the way it's supposed to.
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Nuh huh... if the punishment is too cruel for them to bear then they should have thought it before they went to kill innocent people. Usually cruel things happen to criminals, whether it was being locked in a box 18 hours a day or put to death by an injection. Most of the time they themselves are to blame for it. With little thought they could've avoided ending up in cruel circumstances unlike their victims.
Oh well, maybe some day we'll get enough of thinking such useless details as cruelty on convicted murderers and we'll begin to concentrate on more useful thoughts again.
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they call the execution cruel and unusual.... ha ha ha... how about the victim... think about how some of the victims find their end... recently a lady was strangled by her own bikini top.. imagine how she felt... getting choked out... watching the man on top of her doing it... i dont feel sorry for the perps... life for a life is what i say.. i feel they should be executed by the means they used to kill the victim.. :aok
i cant believe how our judicial system has become so.... sissified..
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Personally, I have long felt that murderers who have received the death penalty should be turned over to the families of their victims for execution of sentence. Whatever they wanted to do to them would be perfectly okay.
It might be cruel and unusual, but it would certainly be justice, as well as giving the lie to the argument that the death penalty has no deterrent effect.
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We learned in my Cultural Anthropology class that there are some cultures out there that do just that... let the family carry out the punishment... it we were to bring back all the fun ways to execute someone, i think that some criminals would think twice about what they are about to do.... well wishfull thinking anyways..
bring back public stoning!!!!! ha ha ha ha I could be the monday night football preshow!!! :rofl