Posted on 09/30/2018 3:06:59 PM PDT by EveningStar
Without being aware of it, Vernon Madison might become a footnote in constitutional law because he is barely aware of anything. For more than 30 years, Alabama, with a tenacity that deserves a better cause, has been trying to execute him for the crime he certainly committed, the 1985 murder of a police officer. Twice the state convicted him unconstitutionally (first excluding African Americans from the jury, then insinuating inadmissible evidence into the record). In a third trial, the judge, who during his time on the bench overrode more life sentences (six) than any other Alabama judge, disregarded the jury’s recommended sentence of life imprisonment and imposed the death penalty...
His counsel of record, Bryan A. Stevenson, head of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala., says it was undisputed in the penalty phase of Madison’s third trial that he already “suffered from a mental illness marked by paranoid delusions.” ...
Madison’s case compels us to focus on the death penalty in its granular reality: Assisting someone who is non-ambulatory, and bewildered because he is (in Stevenson's phrase) “memory-disordered,” to be strapped down so an executioner can try to find a vein — often a problem with the elderly — to receive a lethal injection. Capital punishment is withering away because the process of litigating the administration of it is so expensive, and hence disproportionate to any demonstrable enhancement of public safety, but also because of a healthy squeamishness that speaks well of us...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
never trumpers are just liberals playing the MCCain game. George Will might have been conservative once, but he is no longer.
If he is capable of discerning right or wrong, i.e the McNaughton Rule, he is worthy of the death penalty.
But then it's hard to imagine anyone wanting to rape *you*!
His body is, but apparently not his mind.
No.
Take out Hasan first....
Interesting timing. Someone Will knows is eligible, you think?
Stop right there.
Mr. Will, why should that be unconstitutional?
I mean, unseemly, unwise, OK, I can accept that.
But are you saying that white people cannot evaluate evidence fairly? You say, right in your first sentence, that he is unquestionably guilty.
That's the fact. That's what the jury found.
So, the jury did a good job, white, black, or purple.
What is it, Mr. Will, about white people specifically that makes their presence on a black criminal's jury "unconstitutional"?
Wasn’t it Tookie Williams?
Technically, hanging isn’t all that hard to do right, is fast, efficient, cheap, and relatively pain-free.
You took the words out of my um fingers.
I never cared for guy but he’s become a complete tool.
I didn’t know but he’s a self-described “low voltage atheist” whatever the hell that means.
We need to get rid of automatic appeals and leave only procedural appeals. that would cut costs dramatically. Healthy squeamishness? I have a healthier squeamishness about leaving murderers alive to kill again. They could escape, kill another inmate, kill a guard,
Also in getting rid of the death penalty, that will be the end of using that as a bargaining chip. If you threaten the death penalty a killer may then enter a plea for life. If life is the ultimate punishment they will try to plead to get out earlier, and then have the opportunity to kill again.
George Will and Bill Kristol are destined for the anals of history.
So does a rope, a branch (or lamp post), and a kitchen chair.
Actually, while G.W. is T.D.S. in the flesh, he became unreadable long before Trump announced he was running for President.
Here's a guy who wrote about draining the swamp long before it became popular. His biggest problem in those days was, when too many people started agreeing with him, his next column became about some arcane figure of yore with some arcane pronouncement that G.W. thought was applicable today.
His book and pronouncements on Baseball are still the second best of all time after Ted Williams' pronouncements about hitting.
George Will always had the ability to become tedious. He became unreadable only after he proclaimed to the world that he, a man raised and reared a practicing conservative Catholic, was, actually, an atheist.
Apparently, he never understood that atheists, on their most inspiring days, were a soporific lot, i.e. they put their listeners to sleep.
Not so long as people murder people, some in horrendous ways. The DP puts them to sleep - maybe issue them prison jammies?
YUP!
Executed in 2005 for a Crime committed in the 1970’s I believe. Justice delayed is Justice denied, or so I was taught.
Back in 2005 Kamala Harris was letting Willie Brown grab her Pussy while she was sucking on his Brown Willie. She wasn’t the CA Attorney General then, she was in training.
She is anti Death Penalty, which is why no Executions happened on her watch. The Law means nothing to a Liberal Democrat or any Democrat for that matter.
How do we resolve the mistake of sending innocent people to Death Row?
We have done that, and will likely do that again.
I have a question about “cruel and unusual punishment”. Does that mean only punishments that are BOTH cruel AND unusual are prohibited and therefore cruel punishments that aren’t unusual or unusual punishments that aren’t cruel are allowed?
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