Posted on 09/25/2007 10:47:33 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
depends on the meaning of the word “and”
Cruel and unusual as compared to what, electrocution or the gas chamber? Give me a freakin’ break. Of all the methods of execution, lethal injection is by far the most humane.
Maybe we should just start injecting them with drain cleaner.
You could slam them with a barbituate until it paralyzed the cardiac and respiratory centers of the brain. That’s what you do when you euthanize an animal. If it’s good enough for a dog it’s good enough for a convict.
Drawing and quartering may be cruel and inhumane in some cases, but going to sleep and not waking up after you have been tranquillized...seems almost too humane.
Too bad some many judges can only “feel” for the accused and not their victims...
It sure beats letting the victim's family have at you with crowbars and empty moonshine jugs, like they used to do in Kentucky, right?
Although I am a death-penalty opponent, I have to say that this sort of suit is just stupid.
The Constitution explicitly mentions depriving someone of life and it was written at a time when hanging was the standard, meaning that hanging must pass the original intent test concerning what is cruel and unusual punishment.
If they want to refuse the lethal injection, offer them that time-honored tradition of hanging.
Now, how does one file a friend of the court brief stating that even if it was excruciating pain, it’s just the warm up act for hell they’ll suffer fro the rest of their immortal lives.
We just had an execution delayed in Tennessee over the same case.
One of the biggest problems with capital punishment is the inability to distinguish “painless” from “aesthetically pleasing”. That is, the one limitation on execution is “cruel or unusual”. If it is not painful, it should not matter if it is pleasing to the eye of witnesses.
The most painful methods of execution used in the US, from most to least, could be choking, either a botched hanging or poison gas; an ineffective injected chemical cocktail; a bullet that misses the small kill zone around the heart; and the least painful, electrocution.
However, lethal injection is the least objectionable to witnesses of the lot. But is this a good reason to prefer it over something that is not painful?
Electricity travels far faster than the electrical nerve impulses. Electrocution is designed to fry the electrical system of the brain instantly, so that it *cannot* feel pain. The only known failures of this process came about by a man who inserted and left hundreds of needles in his flesh, thus short circuiting the electricity; and when the heart continued to beat in some cases, even though the brain was fried, so too much electricity is used, and a degree of “cooking” happens. The condemned was dead, but their heart didn’t know it yet.
If something wasn’t considered cruel and unusual to the founding fathers, then it is constitutional to practice it now unless it has been re-addressed by another constitutional amendment. And NonValueAdded is right—The constraint is cruel AND unusual, not cruel OR unusual.
Since the state argues they do not want to be cruel why not give the prisoner the choice of also having enough morphine to feel no pain. Wouldn’t that make this issue go away?
The most humane form of execution is the guillotine, the nerves are severed before the pain signal can be sent to the brain.
It’s a nasty mess to clean up, though.
I suggest they start with Ginsburg.
(yes..that's sarcasm. Don't taze me, Jim.)
L
And?
When I had my wisdom teeth taken out... they gave me a shot to knock me out... and told me to count backward from 10.
I think I made it to 8.
Now if they could give me that shot... and then go in and rip out my 4 wisdom teeth without me feeling a thing...the 3-drug cocktail for lethal injection is just fine.
Just another case of liberal thought - forget the REAL victim and make the criminal into the victim.
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