Posted on 04/26/2006 8:55:48 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
Supreme Court justices clashed on Wednesday over how states execute killers, with one court member saying current lethal-injection drugs would not be used on cats and dogs and a second arguing that executions do not have to be pain-free.
The court blocked Florida, at the last minute, from executing Clarence Hill in January, as Hill lay on a gurney with IV lines in his arms.
The justices took up his case with a lively and sometimes contentious discussion about the way states carry out capital punishment. The court's ruling will determine whether inmates can file last-minute civil rights challenges claiming their deaths would be cruel and unusual punishment.
"Your procedure would be prohibited if applied to dogs and cats," Justice John Paul Stevens told Florida's assistant deputy attorney general, Carolyn Snurkowski.
On the other side, Justice Antonin Scalia said the Constitution does not require painless deaths. "Hanging was not a quick and easy way to go," he told Hill's lawyer, referring to one of the country's oldest execution methods.
States gradually have stopped using hangings, firing squads, gas chambers and electric chairs. Now the federal government and every capital punishment state but one uses lethal injection because it is considered more humane. Nebraska still has the electric chair, but its use is being challenged in court.
Critics of lethal injection have been bolstered by a 2005 study published in the Lancet medical journal indicating that a painkiller administered at the start of an execution can wear off before a prisoner dies.
Hill's lawyer, D. Todd Doss, said Hill accepts that he can be executed for slaying police officer Stephen Taylor in the coastal town of Pensacola 24 years ago. Hill just does not want to suffer, Doss said.
Florida argues that it is too late for Hill to contest the plans for his death. Snurkowski said the only way Hill could file a challenge to lethal injection is if Hill comes up with an alternative proposal. That argument angered several court members.
Justice David H. Souter said "why does he have an obligation ... to tell the state how to execute people?"
"Doesn't the state have a minimal obligation on its own" to investigate whether its executions cause gratuitous pain, asked Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.
Later, Kennedy reprimanded his colleagues for laughing as several justices joked about the mischief that defense lawyers could cause if forced to propose ways to execute their clients.
"This is a death case," snapped Kennedy, who is expected to be a key vote in the case.
Chief Justice John Roberts said that death row lawyers, if allowed to pursue last-minute challenges, could drag out appeals.
Florida's three-drug combination is similar to that used in other states. The painkiller sodium pentothal is followed by a chemical, pancuronium bromide, that paralyzes the inmate. The final drug is potassium chloride, which causes a fatal heart attack.
Florida is one of 30 states that restrict the use of an agent such as pancuronium bromide in euthanizing animals, justices were told in a brief by three veterinarians. The veterinarians said "its only effect is to mask any suffering endured by the patient." They said that the Florida protocol does not meet standards for animals.
Several justices appeared surprised that the state has laws that spell out how animals should be euthanized, but that there are no guidelines for how prison officials should execute people.
Snurkowski said the protocol was devised by prison officials six years ago after the state stopped using its electric chair, nicknamed "Old Sparky," unless an inmate specifically requests death by electrocution.
Justice Stephen Breyer said it "doesn't seem too difficult" to alter the drugs because of concerns and that the state should not "have any interest in causing pain."
The court's ruling, which will be announced before July, will deal with a limited part of the subject: whether inmates can file special last-minute civil right challenges to the chemicals used in lethal injection even if inmates have exhausted all their regular appeals.
The justices' decision to hear the case renewed legal efforts around the country on behalf of death row prisoners; executions have been blocked in California, Maryland and Missouri.
In the California case, attorneys for condemned Michael Morales claim he might feel too much pain when executed because the sedative he's given might not work before the paralyzing agent is given. A federal judge in San Jose will hold a hearing on those allegations on May 2.
The case is Hill v. McDonough, 05-8794.
The solution is simple, kill them in the same manner that they killed their victim(s). Apparently they have no problem with that manner of execution.
Justice Antonin Scalia said the Constitution does not require painless deaths.
That's ALL that needs to be said.
But we can't guarantee an innocent will never be executed.
Scalia does not believe cruel and unusual is an evolving standard. That point of view, I don't agree with, and I don't think a majority of SCOTUS agrees with. Where the rubber meets the road, is what is deemed cruel and unusual now, by the public square, or the elite legal public square, when SCOTUS gets parochial. I never embraced the New Testament myself, so my point of view on that, is rather harsh. But most of the public square on the fruited plain, takes the New Testament, as it has evolved, in the mind's eye, with more gravitas than I do.
Guilllotine. Quick, painless and a bucket to catch the head.
I see it differently --- it's an end around capital punishment.
I'd gladly set child murderers afire and sing burn baby burn.
What we think is cruel and unusual, is interesting, but beside the point. As I said, for myself, ala the late Ed Davis, I would hang them at the airport. But the public square does not resolve about me, or its sensibilities, and this one clause of the Constitution, in my view, is about current sensibilities. Then it comes down to whose sensibilities? And there is the rub. As per usual, those of my guild will carry more weight (I am out of sync with my guild on this one), than those of Joe Sixpack. I don't agree with that.
Disco inferno? I think I would sing "These are afew of my favorite things."
YES! That's the one! Disco Inferno.
Thanks.
The Penn & Teller BS show on Showtime used the argument that lethal injection could sometimes be extremely painful, but for some reason it's difficult to be compassionate, although it would be nice to find a painless way...
Joe Sixpack's executions just might deter crime. I'd love to give it a chance.
What's to debate? Knock them out with whatever they use on operating tables, then inject them with poison. Just get rid of them. Sheesh. It ain't rocket surgery.
This has got to be one of the most stupid things I have heard in awhile. There is no reason that the method used should be considered cruel and unusual. Good grief. We knock out patients all day long every day for surgical procedures without any problem. They could if they wanted give a lethel dose of sodium pentothal and leave it at that. If this is cruel and unusual for killing we in the Medical Profession all the time do cruel and unusual things to save a life. Alot of times without adequate or any Pain medication as we do not have the time to waste.
In cases where guilt is proven unambigously, its hard to
beat the guillotine. One could even ask the condemned to
wink afterwards...
Otherwize, I can't justify taking of an innocent life.
You just can't make amends if you are wrong.
Old fashioned justice of the West was far more effective than the liberal court system we have now. The tree, rope and horse method was a good deterrent in those days with no questions asked.
Criminals then knew there was justice waiting for them. Today they just laugh, and spend 20 years in a death row hotel, courtesy of the tax payers.
Guillotine? Now, that's cruel and unusual: to think we would have to take lessons from the French!
I say "Get a rope!" All the constitutions involved implicitly approved the death penalty, which was generally administered by hanging at the time. So, we know that would have passed muster with the Founding Fathers. Yaknowwhuddamean?
Cousin Vinnie
I just thought of a more humane way to kill the condemned.
We place their head in a kind of vise while they are sitting up. Kinda like that thing you sit in when you get your eyes checked at the opthamologist.
Then a machine quickly immobilizes his head and a jet of air or a bolt enters his/her brain at the base of his/her head...the medulla oblongata.
Kinda like how we kill cows.
It's quick and painless.
Oh wait...then the machines let's go and allows the condemned to flop around and spray blood everywhere so that the family can see that justice has been served.
Oh wait...we televise it too...so that everyone can see what happens to when you murder someone.
That is basically what is done. This whole damn argument is about capitol punishment, not pain. So long as you give them a massive dose of thiopental at the beginning, they will feel nothing and will simply go to sleep and die. This is a bogus issue, and you can bet your last dollar the ACLU is in this someplace.
I haven't been to Langtry in a long time. Next time I go home (Texas) in October, I'm going to make it a point to take my family there.
Seems to me the justices that are anti-capital punishment should rightly recuse themselves, since their opinions on the method will be tainted by their base opinion. This will diminish greatly these "clashes" by the justices.
I agree, absolutely. This fool had no problem shooting a police officer, hubby assures me it hurts to get shot! Morales raped and strangled a young woman. Not a painless way to die either. Why should WE be playing to these bottom feeding slime balls fear of pain? I remember the old saying: They can dish it out, but they're too cowardly to take it.
"Knock them out with whatever they use on operating tables"
Then grab some needed parts and then poison them.
Beheading with the guillotine leaves the head conscious for 5 to 15 seconds before passing out from lack of oxygen. The brain remains viable for another 3 to 5 minutes.
Where was Stevens on Terri Schiavo?
I still don't understand what the job of these justices is. I really don't. Shouldn't they be thinking of terms "are these drugs prohibited in the Constitution"?. Answer: no. Period. Instead, they are creating a law to say how to perform an execution.
I also thought the guilliotine was painless. But it's not. At least at the times it was used. Some times it failed to chop off the head and that to be taken up again and released again. Yikes!.
"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, ... nor be deprived of life, ... without due process of law; ... "
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment05/
Clearly the constitution allows for the death penalty after the criminal been proven guilty in the court of law.
And not a pain free execution either.
Thanks for the link.
"I still don't understand what the job of these justices is. .. Instead, they are creating a law to say how to perform an execution."
It must be in the "penumbra" of the constitution... or maybe there's a law allowing it in France or Nigeria... Remember: Darth Bader Ginsburg was a lawyer for the ACLU, she knows what's best for us.
"And not a pain free execution either."
Agreed. I'd say the argument would be in the 8th ammendment against cruel and unusual punishment, but I don't see how this is either cruel (pain does not mean torture), nor unusual (quite common throughout history).
BUMP!
I am interested to see the vote on this issue.
I could very easily become an advocate for abolishing the death penalty.
Contigent upon one condition.
That the murderer spend the rest of his natural life in complete darkness in a very small solitary room, with no human contact, save for perhaps a bi-yearly physical.
(Denny Crane: "Every one should carry a gun strapped to their waist. We need more - not less guns.")
I wouldnt be opposed to that idea.....
I also favor bringing back chain gains.
Ever heard of Angola? Put em to work!!!
Many of them (the ones that are extremely stupid) should sit around contemplating their navels.
This is the problem right here. Take a poll tomorrow asking regular Americans about how to execute murderers and rapists, and see what they say. I'll bet it's a lot different than the view of a few lib lawyers in robes. What's next? Capital punishment causes too much mental stress? Maybe we should lay our criminals on silk pillows and peel grapes for them?
I know of an absolutely pain free execution.
Two 6 inch thick, 10 foot by 10 foot steel plates. One on the ground, one suspened 30 feet above the other on guide bearings.
Place the person to be executed on the lower plate.
Release the upper plate.
No pain whatsoever.
I wouldn't stand very near it either.
I'm at a loss to know why there is any difficulty anesthetizing someone. Especially when there is no concern about collateral damage . . .
Use a gas chamber, only pump it full of nitrogen. The criminal will pass out in 10 seconds and soon die of oxygen deprivation.
Yes we can. After conviction and before execution, question them on a lie detector, voice detector, under the influence of truth serum under hypnosis and if just one test indicates their possible innocence, go to a lesser sentence.
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