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
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