Posted on 03/17/2015 9:02:00 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Missouri cop killer Cecil Clayton was executed Tuesday night after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected arguments he should be spared because he was missing a piece of his brain.
Clayton, who at 74 was the state's oldest death-row prisoner, was pronounced dead at 9:21 pm CT, eight minutes after his lethal injection was administered, prison officials said in a statement.
"They brought me up here to execute me," he said in his final statement.
Clayton was convicted of murdering sheriff's deputy Chris Castetter after a domestic disturbance in 1996. His case drew extra attention because of his brain injury, the result of a 1972 sawmill accident that forced doctors to remove one-fifth of his frontal lobe. His lawyers contended the damage not only sparked a massive personality change that may have turned him into a killer, but also rendered him mentally incompetent and therefore ineligible for capital punishment.
"Cecil Clayton had — literally — a hole in his head," his attorney, Elizabeth Unger Carlyle, said in a statement after the execution. "Executing him without a hearing violated the Constitution, Missouri law and basic human dignity.
"He suffered from severe mental illness and dementia related to his age and multiple brain injuries," she added. "The world will not be a safer place because Mr. Clayton has been executed."
Missouri had argued that medical experts found Clayton understood why he was being executed and that meant he was competent to face the needle. They argued that his intellectual deficits had to be present before he turned 18 to let him escape execution and that he waited too long to raise his claim.
Castetter's brother said in a statement that he had no doubt Clayton was in his right mind.
"We know this execution isn't going to bring Chris back," he said. "But it destroys an evil person that would otherwise be walking this earth."
Clayton's 11th-hour appeals delayed his execution for several hours. But ultimately, none of the U.S. Supreme Court justices accepted his claims arguments for a stay based on his brain injury.
Four justices from the liberal wing did say they would have granted a stay based on his claim that Missouri's secrecy-shrouded process for obtaining the lethal dose of pentobarbital could lead to an unconstitutional death.
Gov. Jay Nixon also denied him clemency in the final minutes, saying he agreed with the state's assessment that Clayton was competent.
"This crime was brutal and there exists no question of Clayton's guilt," he said in a statement.
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Totally agree with you. WI has life in prison and abolished its death penalty in 1853.
Mumia Abu Jamal’s brain is fully intact, and yet he is still alive.
I have never known anyone on death row. I have never, to my knowledge, known anyone, who knew anyone on death row.
I'd be honored. I don't usually join in debate about the death penalty, it's an exercise in futility. I've yet to see anyone change their minds on the subject but I do feel somewhat obligated to let my stance be known from time to time, to totally ignore the issue would be a cowardly thing.
I've have had my conservatism and even my Christianity questioned because of that stance, as you have on this thread, usually by having Old Testament verses cited to me.
Thank God Jesus Christ freed me from Mosaic/Levitical law and I will continue to pray for everybody who still binds themselves to it.
If we are bound by one law, we are bound by all of them and quite frankly, at age 69, I'm not as old as Abraham was when he was circumcised but I sure wouldn't want to have it done now.
God bless you and yours and everyone on this thread, no matter what their opinion on the matter is.
The death sentence is not intended to perform any of the above feats of majic. It only does two things; provides a certain degree of deterrence, and guarantees against recidivism.
He won’t do that again.
Next?
He’s dead, Jim.
[Whether he had part of a brain or a whole brain, he will never do it again.]
Then you can't sit on a jury.
Let me ask you, if someone raped and tortured and murdered your three year old daughter or granddaughter, would you be comforted in the thought he gets to live on the public dole for the next 50 years and dreaming and getting sexually aroused at the memory of torturing and raping your little girl, or would you prefer that his miserable life end as quickly as possible?
My position is that those who do not favor the death penalty for murder do not value the life of those they murdered. Instead they have more compassion for the perps than the victims.
“he who sheds mans blood by man shall his blood be shed.” God.
Take It up with Him when you meet Him.
L
And as another post said, recidivism is simply more evidence that we have a broken penal Code and Prison System that doesn’t place Restraint (protection of society against dangerous criminals) at the top of the list of why we incarcerate criminals.
Killing is not the only way to stop recidivism. We have a broken penal code and prison system that doesn’t place Restraint (protection of society against dangerous criminals) at the top of the list of why we incarcerate criminals.
It’s just easier to kill ‘em than to fix our broken penal code.
No. Incarceration under a fixed penal code and prison system that puts restraint (protection of society) first and for other reasons I’ve given, are valid consequences for a crime.
I know this: vengeance will not have assuaged my hatred nor sorrow. Only forgiveness by God’s grace would set me free from the bitterness of that situation.
Thanks free life. Maybe I’ll try to copy you once in a while on these kinds of discussions that involve “thinking outside the box” which to me means solutions outside the status quo and conventional wisdom and not on the radar screen of popular culture.
Didn’t know that. It would be interesting to see what you might have of any relevant stats about the results of WI’s policy vis-a-vis the usual reasons, like those mentioned on this thread, that people want to have the death penalty.
It solves nothing, it heals nothing, it satisfies vengeance which many confuse for justice, it reconciles nothing, is irreversible, and is unjust.
Please provide your reasoning for calling it "unjust". I've read the whole thread (thus far) and haven't seen anything resembling a rationale behind your statement - only the assertion itself.
I decided to frame my inquiry based on the one tenet of your argument that is actually debatable in terms of logic - the "nothing" arguments are clearly opinion based on one's frame of reference, and the irreversible argument is irrefutable (but also immaterial).
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