Posted on 01/17/2016 8:10:37 AM PST by EveningStar
How does the death penalty in America end?
For decades that has been an abstract question. Now there may be an answer in the case of Shonda Walter, a 36-year-old black woman on Pennsylvania's death row. On Friday, the Supreme Court met to discuss whether to hear a petition from Ms. Walter, who is asking the justices to rule that in all cases, including hers, the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishments.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Nice that the NY Slimes cares more about hardened criminals than the killing of unborn babies.
Not that it matters to our runaway courts, but the death penalty has been around since our founding. So it clearly doesn’t fall under what they meant by “cruel and unusual”.
As long as there is due process.
Cruel and Unusual?
Not Cruel. -Killed, not tortured.
Not Unusual. -America has had a Death Penalty since the beginning.
Though shalt not kill?
Thats’s why I am against the GOVERNMENT killing people.
Give the families machetes, pliers and blow torches and let them get medieval on her arse.
The constitution does not guarantee a painless execution.
If the death penalty was not cruel and unusual punishment at the time of its adoption but it is now because (in short) things have changed, what might be proposed in regard to the other amendments because “things have changed”?
That’s a good point. I think the death penalty should be abolished in the U.S. for a number of reasons, but it certainly should not be thrown out on Constitutional grounds in a Federal court.
I’d be willing to support a Constitutional Amendment to ban the death penalty if liberals will support a Constitutional Amendment to ban abortion.
It's clear the Founding Fathers didn't consider the death penalty to go against the Eighth Amendment, and the wording hasn't changed since.
I don’t think the death penalty should be thrown out. There is a man in our state prison system that had is father cut up and stored in his freezer. I believe that calls for the death penalty as soon as possible.
“There comes a time in the history of every people where they become so pathologically soft and tender that they actually side with those elements of their society that harms them; i.e. criminals.” F. Nietzsche
It has happened and that is bad news. However, it is such a small number that the disgust is far out weighed by the relief that many a brute beast has been placed where he cannot harm another.
Death is neither cruel nor unusual in that all that lives dies. What is cruel and unusual is maiming and torture.
What can be argued is that incarceration for years on end before execution is a cruel form of torture for the convicted, the victims of the convicted, the families of the victims because swift justice is denied. A flaunting of the 6th amendment.
Also long delays torture society at large in that it must bare the extraordinary costs of those delays. It seems that the ones who most benefit from these delays are those who work the courts.
They got due process.
Due process is not just a benefit for the accused, but for society. I would maintain it us mainly a benefit to society. It is us being able to reassure ourselves that we are at least trying to get it right, something to let society as a whole basically sleep better at night.
It is unrealistic to expect we always will get it right though. The Framers knew this. It is absurd to act, as some do, not saying you do, like the whole “executing an innocent person” is somehow a novelty that hasn’t been around since the beginning of civilization.
When it all comes down to it we execute people because they have been convicted of certain notorious crimes, not because they actually did them.
That is a good question. They say they are all innocent. Most on death row belong there. Most of them are the killers they are. Worked in the PA Dept. of Corrections and those that got life are living better than the Senior Citizens that have to pay for them to stay in prison. Flat screen TVs, Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream. $100 sneakers and boots. Medical and Dental. $75.00 Commissary every week. Getting Girl Scout Cookies, playing Play station. A Law Library, In PA the restitution and finds unpaid total over 2 billion Dollars! All those human rights groups that spew their crap about how bad it is on the crooks are a bunch of leftwing goosesteppers! Always trying to blame everyone but the crooks that committed the crimes!
Until it gives the liberal answer.
Liberal Rule of Law: nothing is ever settled until it is settled the way liberals want it settled, and then it is settled.
how many felonies can a person have been convicted of before they are no longer considered “innocent”?
When a man has his father in the freezer you don’t think that warrants the DEATH PENALTY?
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