Posted on 03/08/2006 8:00:32 PM PST by NormsRevenge
The American Civil Liberties Union claimed in a federal lawsuit Wednesday that California's lethal injection protocol violates the First Amendment rights of execution witnesses by not allowing them to see if the inmate is experiencing pain before death.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, says the only reason San Quentin State Prison officials inject a paralyzing agent is to sanitize the execution and prevent witnesses from perhaps seeing convulsions.
The paralyzing drug, according to the lawsuit, "makes it impossible for witnesses to determine whether death row inmates in California are being subjected to substantial and unnecessary pain before dying."
The induced paralysis, the group argued, conceals significant information to which the public is entitled.
The ACLU, which filed the suit on behalf of San Francisco-based Pacific News Service, made a similar argument a year ago before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of a condemned inmate. The court rejected it on procedural grounds, and did not reach the merits of the challenge.
In response to Wednesday's filing, Nathan Barankin, spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer, said "The ACLU does not have a right to determine what method the state of California should use in carrying out the death penalty." He said the "paralyzing agent effectively stops inmate breathing."
Under California's injection protocol, a sedative, then a paralyzing agent and finally heart-stopping drugs are injected. The state is seeking court permission to drip a sedative continually to ensure unconsciousness.
At California executions, about two dozen members of the media, in addition to public officials and relatives of the slain are present. They are able to see prison officials strap the condemned man onto a gurney, see them wrap the inmate's fists into a ball of tape and watch as they poke him with needles.
Prison officials then move out of public site and the drugs begin pouring.
Wednesday's lawsuit comes two weeks after the execution of California prisoner Michael Morales was called off amid questions of whether inmates suffer too much pain during the execution in violation of the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Litigation is ongoing in the Morales case, with hearings on California's injection protocol set to begin May 2 in San Jose federal court. The Supreme Court has never addressed whether lethal injection amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, and 37 states use an injection protocol similar to California's.
The case is Pacific News Service v. Woodford, 06-1793
Thank you.
I had other suggestions for what to do to the ACLU but those suggestions might have caused a we bit of pain.
Amen!
Absolutely.
This whole argument is so retarded, as if it were some great intellectual puzzle how to dispatch someone quickly and without suffering (not that I have anything against a littler suffering in some of these cases. In fact, I am liking the IV cocktail much better now that this possibility of extreme suffering while paralyzed has been introduced. It is probably a bogus concern, but I bet it is causing some bad dreams on death row. They should be having bad dreams.)
With all his gifts and insight, even George Orwell could not have invented the ACLU; with each passing day, their endless forays into The Absurdist Political Theatre of Obnoxiousness gets ever closer to treason.
But far from warming up to these reasonable arguments, I become more entrenched in my support for the death penalty with every effort by the other side to overrule the people with this kind of nonsense.
The only way these b'tards cause me to reconsider capital punishment is to make me fantasize about some more Old Testament-style means and methods.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
I am not right up to speed on my academic protocol, but I believe this "Abd" may mean "all but dissertation." That seems an appropriate expression to me when you are applying for a job while still working on the dissertion. But it strikes me as pathetically whiney for man, of a certain age, who has gained some fame in the intellectual trades (liberal division) to still be carrying around this bit about the PhD he almost got one time.
Of course, if he is a dean at Berkeley maybe it gets both him and his employer a little tense for him to be undercredentialed. I think I will add some things that I ~almost~ did to my resumé! (Of course, if "Abd" here means something else, then I've made a fool of myself.)
After formal approval has been given for the dissertation topic, the student is referred to as a "Ph.D. Candidate" or an "ABD", which is an acronym representing the words "All-But-[the]-Dissertation".
If a candidate completes all coursework up to but not including the final dissertation, he may use the informal All But Dissertation (ABD) status
Let's send this poooor murderers into an nice, pleasant death by starvation, which the same leftist idiots claimed sends one into a state of euphoria when Terri Schaivo was the one being killed.
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