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.
It is able to be compared. They are both punishments with final consequences.
Yes, the closure of knowing that the murderer gave his last dime in attempting to counterbalance the value of the life he had murdered.
I answered, so now it's your turn.
People who are opposed to the death penalty (on spiritual grounds) for murder clearly fail to understand the importance and value that God places on Human life. God made man in His image. That is why he instituted the death penalty for murdering humans.
“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image. Gen 9:6 ESV
The life of one man is so important that when one takes an innocent life, one loses the right to continue to live. God has placed this judgment in the hands of men. It is the duty of a just society to carry it out.
And if society doesn't follow through, then it has declared 'open season' on innocent life. Witness gun deaths in black communities. Witness ISIS.
When they stand before God and their names are not found in the Book of Life, do they gleefully jump into the lake of fire, or are they cast kicking and screaming into the lake of fire?
And if they are cast into the Lake of Fire, then who exactly is it that is doing the casting?
I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about (viz., this topic) ... but I am sure you absolutely think you are contributing something — anything — intelligent.
Revelation 20:15 KJV 15 And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
cast
Throw (something) forcefully in a specified direction.
... and your point is? (I’m sorry ... you don’t appear to have one.)
Not from what I’ve seen
They choose that life or maybe born into it
But that’s an old example
The American Mafia is a shell of its former self
And nothing as organized replaced it
RICO and Sentencing Guidelines ain’t fer sissies
No, but then that’s what forgiveness is all about isn’t it? Forgiveness is ALWAYS unequal. But Jesus, who never did anything wrong, took the full punishment for my sins and forgave me and gave me eternal life. So in order to be free I need to forgive others. Equal treatment, eye for an eye vengeance, whatever you want to call it, never brings peace and closure.
Jesus did not take the repentant thief down from the cross he was on. The civil punishment held.
Forgiven does not mean consequences in this life go away. A homosexual with AIDS who repents and is saved will still have AIDS in almost all cases.
Do you understand the difference between a “sin” and a “crime”?
The sins that Jesus died for and for which you have been forgiven are the transgressions that you have committed against God. When you sin you transgress against a Holy God.
So God has forgiven you for your transgressions against him.
Ok, when someone commits a crime, they have transgressed against an individual (such as assault, battery, theft, murder) and against society (which cannot continue to exist if there is no legal means of stopping such behavior.
So a person who commits a theft has transgressed against God, society and the individual. If they repent of their transgression against God, he will show mercy and forgive them. The spiritual punishment will be commuted (but understand that Jesus still had to take the punishment for that sin against God. The punishment was not commuted, it was paid by someone else.
Now in regard to the individual, if the party goes to the individual and repents, then then the individual is under a spiritual obligation to forgive that person, however he is not under any temporal obligation to forgive them and if they don’t repent and ask that person for forgiveness, that person is not even under a spiritual obligation to forgive them. Just as forgiveness by God is contingent upon repentance and asking forgiveness, the obligation of the wronged person to forgive their transgressor is contingent upon the person confessing their wrongdoing and requesting the forgiveness of that person whom they wronged.
Society has an obligation to be less forgiving in that if every criminal who committed a crime was given mercy then society would collapse. It is the duty of a just society to punish criminals. Showing unbridled mercy is a death sentence to a functioning society. Society therefore cannot simply turn the other cheek every time a crime is committed in its midst. Crimes such as theft, assault, battery, murder, robbery must be dealt with in a sometimes brutal manner in order that each member of society understands that they cannot simply go around killing, maiming, robbing and assaulting the members of said society and expect that they will walk away free simply because they claim they are sorry for their crimes.
In Biblical times there were basically three types of civil punishment: restitution, exile and death. You made the person and society whole by paying restitution, you were thrown out of the society or you were killed. No prisons. Those punishments were necessary in order to ensure that those types of behavior was discouraged. All punishments served the dual purpose of making the person or society whole and as a deterrent to those who would otherwise tend to engage in the prohibited behavior.
So when you say that “it’s all about forgiveness” that is valid in a spiritual sense. But it does not apply in a societal sense. The thief on the cross was forgiven of his sins, but Jesus did not yank him down from the cross, nor were the nails in his hands and feet miraculously removed so that he dropped to the ground and walked away a free man. No, he still had to suffer the earthly consequences of his sin. He was sentenced to death and he died.
You then state that the concept of an eye for an eye “never brings peace and closure”. I noticed earlier in the thread that you have just graduated from Law School. I don’t know what field of law you want to practice, but you should have learned somewhere in your studies that the entire field of jurisprudence is built upon the concept of “an eye for an eye”.
All fields of law exist for the purpose of correcting wrongs and making society or the individual whole. Without a method of correcting wrongs, there is no purpose for lawyers and no purpose for judges or juries. Society cannot exist without some method of making people whole without resorting to vigilantism or mob action.
So as I said earlier it is the duty of a just society to meet out PUNISHMENT for civil wrongs.
And as far as using the cross as an argument against the punishment of murder, murder is the one crime for which a perpetrator cannot go to the victim and ask forgiveness. The victim is in no position to forgive.
The biblical concept of surrendering your own life as a punishment for taking someone else’s predates the ten commandments and is one of the first precepts given in the bible. God gives the reason for this harsh punishment right there in Genesis 9:6. God made man in his image.
The only “just” punishment a society can give a murderer is to take his life. Anything less diminishes the value of the person whose life they took.
The only proper restitution for murder is to surrender the thing you took. You took a life, so you must give up yours.
Just as a Christian who steals would be expected to return what he has stolen, a true Christian who has repented of the crime of murder should be more than willing to voluntarily walk the green mile to the gallows. That may not bring what liberals call “closure” but it does satisfy the requirements of a just society.
Don’t switch horses in the middle of the stream and confuse the issue. We were talking about forgiveness by the victim’s family, not by the state. The efficacy of forgiveness by the victim’s family and the futility of vengeance is an important element of why the death penalty is a literal dead-end street and has nothing to do with the state abdicating it’s role and responsibilities.
And don’t pretend I’m advocating no consequences. That’s bad faith on your part if you’ve paid any attention at all to what I’ve been saying. The state has a responsibility to deal with criminals, first and foremost to incarcerate them to protect society.
Of course there’s a difference between sin and crime the same way there’s a difference between a county and a state. The county is not the same as the state but the county is within the state. Likewise, it should be fairly obvious that all crime (based on just law) is sin but not all sin is a crime.
Thank you for an outstanding essay at #197, P-Marlowe.
I know you are a lawyer, lifelong, and probably nearing retirement. Your explanation of a requirement for restitution to society and to individuals for harms committed against them are juxtaposed against the forgiveness found in Christ. It nails it theologically and in terms of justice. Forgiveness by Christ does not change necessary consequences that must follow crimes committed.
The death sentence is among other things, an exercise in futility. It solves nothing, it heals nothing, it satisfies vengeance which many confuse for justice, it reconciles nothing, is irreversible, and is unjust.
That struck us as an anti-capital sentence comment. I believe new_life was saying similar things.
If you are telling me now that you are only referring to personal forgiveness and not to the societal necessity to have capital punishment, then we have been talking past one another.
"My child" refers to how I, as the victim's family, personally would feel about my child's murderer not getting "an eye for an eye", an "equal trade" for what he did. That is an issue about the families of murder victims' response of either vengeance or forgiveness, which is a separate issue from the appropriate state response.
My post #4 was not in response to any question about families of victims but a general statement about the death sentence.
Papa New’s point appears to be that he believes that Capital Punishment is an exercise in futility and that he believes that it is wrong for a society to execute someone.
I don’t have a problem if someone has taken that belief, but I don’t think it is logical to bring into the argument the idea that because Jesus died on the Cross that somehow this makes a lifetime of incarceration (where someone is fed 3 meals a day, gets to watch TV and read books and basically enjoy life with a limitation on where he can go until he dies in his sleep) a just recompense for taking the life of an innocent victim (who no longer has the opportunity to enjoy an earthly life).
I will have to forgive Papa New as he apparently just graduated from Law School where he has obviously been subjected to 7 or 8 years of university and law school indoctrination into the theology of political correctness.
I was young and stupid once too. I have since shaken off the chains of liberalism.
The bottom line in this debate comes down to whether or not we value life. If we value life, then the only just recompense for taking a life is for justice to take the life of the murderer. Anything less than that demeans the value of the life that was taken.
This is both a logical and spiritual position. One does not have to be religious to see that justice demands restitution and there is no restitution in the case of murder other than the death of the person who murdered.
It is no coincidence that people who tend to be pro-abortion are almost universally of the opinion that Capital Punishment should be abolished.
But what will happen when it is abolished? Will the bleeding hearts stop there? No they will continue to press for lighter sentences based on their attitude that a sentence of “life without the possibility of parole” is a cruel and unusual punishment. Then they will attack the 25 to life. Eventually they will succeed in reducing the whole theory of guilt and just send murderers out for re-education.
So if you oppose the imposition of the death sentence for murder then I would have to conclude that you value the life of the murderer more than the life of the victim. There really isn’t any other explanation. The death penalty for murder is just compensation, which is the basis of Western Civilization’s entire judicial system. If you claim that the death penalty should not be imposed because our judicial system is “broken” then you are contributing to it’s breakage rather than striving to fix it.
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