Posted on 09/10/2007 10:32:15 AM PDT by SmithL
Columbus, Ohio (AP) -- A federal judge has delayed the October execution of a death row inmate who joined a lawsuit challenging lethal injection as unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment.
Romell Broom, who raped and stabbed to death a 14-year-old girl, is one of 15 Ohio inmates claiming the procedure may cause prisoners to suffer.
U.S. District Judge Gregory Frost on Sept. 5 ordered Broom's Oct. 18 execution halted while the lawsuit proceeds.
Another death row inmate asked Frost on Friday for permission to join the lawsuit. Michael Turner, 48, killed his estranged wife and her boyfriend at her apartment in a Columbus suburb in June 2001.
Broom, 51, abducted Tryna Middleton in Cleveland at knifepoint on Sept. 21, 1984, while the girl was walking with friends. He raped her and stabbed her seven times, according to the attorney general's office.
The state argues that the 15 inmates missed a deadline for filing their lawsuit against lethal injection.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Just bring back the guillotine. It's 100% effective, quick and painless; the very definition of quick, humane execution.
And not a single recidivist...
Sit him on his namesake, after sharpening it, of course.
They put the families of the victims through hell with these stays and delays.
I remember reading that the Japanese have a system where the condemned criminal doesn’t know the day when their demise is coming. Is that cruel?
It has to be psychologically maddening.
The guards will walk up to the cell door too, making the convict think that it's his time, only to have them walk away.
I would think he'd almost welcome the actual execution to end the suspenseful madness!
How many times are courts going to have to rule on this? Practically every state that has the death penalty has entertained half a dozen of these idiotic, obstructionist lawsuits. There's no new matter of law to rule on; it's stare decisis. Nuke this slob, and his 14 colleages as well!
Romell Broom, who raped and stabbed to death a 14-year-old girl, is one of 15 Ohio inmates claiming the procedure may cause prisoners to suffer.
Of COURSE it's going to make them suffer. Nothing in the Constitution prohibits "suffering." The injunction is against "cruel and unusual punishment." Period. Punishment, by its very nature, is cruel to some degree; that's why they don't call it "reward." But there's nothing notably cruel or unusual about lethal injection. It's by far the most humane way extant to put a person to death.
Well said.
Unbelievable...
She only enjoyed 14 years of life and he took the rest of it away from her. He’s been alive another 23 years since killing her.
Unbelievable that people consider this justice.
I don’t think the mods would allow me to post what kind of execution would be appropriate.
Gee...........I wonder if it hurts to be stabbed to death?
Who cares if his injection might hurt a few minutes. I would say this poor child suffered much pain...IMHO so should Broom. I like the idea of hanging him. Hang him in the yard so all the inmates can see it. Put it on TV so everyone can see it too.
> It’s by far the most humane way extant to put a person to death.
I disagree. There are too many tales of long, long minutes being taken to find a vein. Hanging in the UK used to be complete within a dozen or so seconds of the opening of the prisoner’s cell door. Quick, clean and more humane.
The anti-death penalty crowd will argue that there is some objection to every form of execution: hanging can actually decapitate the criminal if the drop is too long or the person is too heavy, or it may not snap the neck thoroughly if not long enough or the person is too light. Firing squad may not kill with the first volley, leaving the victim to be dispatched with a coup de grace. Gas suffocates. The "chair" burns the criminal and may require several agonizing jolts to stop the heart. The guillotine has never found favor in this country; we're not as bloodthirsty as the French.
Then there are all the variations on gibbeting, impalement, beheading, burning, etc.. All have their drawbacks, and some are nothing more than thinly disguised sadism. A clinical, medically sound lethal injection is certainly within the constitutional limit on "cruel and unusual."
IMHO murderers ought to suffer. Why should they be able to rape, torture etc and then get a painless death? Who cares if they suffer as long as the end outcome is that they are dead? I guess I must be barbaric because I really don’t care if they hurt a few minutes, hang for an hour or die from a volley of bullets. They had no feelings for their victims so why must we find a “kind” way to end their lives? I hate life in jail without parole too because there is always the chance they can get out.
Guillotine may be messy, but the head is severed before the nerve endings can send pain signals to the brain.
We don't. We just have to find one that isn't "cruel" or "unusual."
To a culture squeamish about the gas chamber or hanging, the exsanguination of the guillotine would provide plenty of horrific ammunition to outlaw the death penalty altogether. You can argue the medical realities all you want, but image is everything, and the vision of heads rolling while decapitated torsos gush blood is one to haunt all but the shrieking hordes at the Place de la Concorde.
Yep, additionally these actions are not appeals, (they are done and over with) and so the judge does not have to entertain them.
I suspect that a judge could issue an injunction forbidding the condemned from filing these actions, and I'm sure the prison authorities would help the prisoner comply.
The injunction technique is how Terri Schiavo was killed and the Bush brothers were snookered.
Seems the judge is the problem.
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