Saturday, September 29, 2007
Texas Death Penalty Before Supreme Court
The Supreme Court has ordered a halt to an impending execution in Texas, having accepted on cert review a case involving a prisoner challenging how lethal injection is implemented in the state. Texas officials have declared that executions will go on regardless. We are nothing if not an ornery and stubborn people. As the NY Times article makes clear, it is likely that lawyers for the inmante scheduled to die next will apppeal the sentence also on the lethal injection issue, forcing the Supreme Court to grant cert in an effort to bring about a de facto moratorium on the death penalty in the U.S.
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6 comments:
Crazy Texans...
As a whole, the people of the US shouldn't really care about how a prisoner is put to death, just that he is put to death as punishment for the horrible crimes he has committed.
Did that person on death row ever consider the inhumane way he or she was torturing an innocent person? Did that prisoner scheduled to die consider the inhumane way he/she just killed someone's mother, father, sister, brother, friend, wife, husband...?
Then why should it even be an issue? Before you kill someone you already know the penalty. Other countries wouldn't think twice. Our criminals on death row have more rights than that victim and the victim's family. That is pathetic and makes me ashamed of my county sometimes.
Other countries like what? Iran, North Korea, China? Most don't have the death penalty at all.
Karen, that would all be find and dandy if as Adam says, we lived in a 3rd world country and had no Constitution. Even our forefathers didn't torture people to death, no matter how egregious the crime, and neither should we. Justice is not about revenge, nor should we overlook the obligations of our laws simply because we don't think the person subject to them is worthy of protection. This is what it means to live in America.
Plus the death penalty costs more, doesn't act as a deterrent, sometimes kills innocent people, etc.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: when we put people to death, the method we choose to do it says nothing about the condemned and everything about us as people. You insist we shouldn't care how another human being feels because they didn't care when they killed another person. But only murderers don't care what they do to another human being, no matter how you may rationalize it. We still care, and should.
Sometimes it may be necessary to put a criminal to death. Others can argue for and against that. I simply say that if it is necessary, we do it in a way that does not compromise our dignity or our humanity. Inflicting pain on a criminal is needless. If they have not repented, it will not make them repent. It will not teach them a lesson except that society is as evil as they are. We don't need to do that, and we don't need to be that.
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