Supreme Court Skeptical Of Lethal Injection Challenge
The Supreme Court gave a skeptical hearing today to lawyers challenging the use of lethal injections to carry out executions in the United States.
The lawyers argued to the court that the three-chemical compound used in the injection causes inmates to die a painful death.
If these three drugs are “properly administered,” the inmate should die peacefully, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. told a lawyer for a Kentucky death-row inmate.
More than 30 years ago, death-penalty states moved away from using electrocutions or the gas chamber to execute inmates and instead adopted lethal injections. At that time, and with little public debate, they decided to use a three-drug concoction. It includes an anesthetic, a paralyzing agent and a heart-stopping drug.
However, this formula has been cast into doubt in recent years. In the Kentucky case, defense lawyers argued that veterinarians do better with the use of a single, powerful barbiturate to put horses to death.
“The risk here is real,” that the drugs will not be administered correctly, argued Attorney Donald Verrilli Jr.
If the inmate is not given enough anesthetic and is then given a paralyzing drug, he may be fully awake on the execution table, yet unable to react when he is given a heart-stopping drug that causes searing pain, he said.
Justice Antonin Scalia said the defense lawyers are simply trying to stop executions. If the court agrees there are problems with Kentucky’s method, “this never ends,” Scalia said.
The Justices also said they didn’t think there was a better alternative to lethal injection.
I think a better solution than all of the methods for execution in the U.S. is to bring back hanging. The way Saddam was executed costs almost nothing, while a lethal injection costs the state thousands of dollars.
If a “Standard Drop Hanging” is done correctly it will cause the persons neck to break and they will die instantly. This was the method used on Saddam, and most of the Nazis convicted at Nuremberg.
-Chris Jones
Supreme Court Looks At Death Penalty For Child Rape
The Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide whether a state can execute someone convicted of raping a child, one of the few remaining crimes that does not require the death of the victim to result in capital punishment.
Patrick Kennedy, 43, was sentenced to death for the rape of his 8- year-old stepdaughter in Louisiana.
He is the only person on death row in the United States for a rape that was not also accompanied by a killing.
The Supreme Court banned executions for rape in 1977 in a case in which the victim was an adult woman.
Kennedy’s lawyers say the death penalty for child rape violates the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
It’s ridiculous not to apply the death penalty to child rapists. They may not have physically killed a child, but emotionally and psychologically they have.
Child rapists are usually impossible to rehabilitate and almost always re-offend if they are released.
Every week in this country we hear about some pedophile who gets paroled and then rapes another child. Unfortunately, the child usually ends up dying a horrifying death sooner or later.
For a prison system that is dangerously overcrowded already, we simply don’t have the space to warehouse every predator.
We can’t let them out and we don’t have the room or money to house them, so the death penalty makes for a great alternative. An alternative that they indeed deserve many times over.
Any person who would rape their 8-year old daughter simply does not deserve to live. There is no room in this world for people who commit such heinous acts.
-Chris Jones
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