The Supreme Court will hear arguments Monday on whether a common lethal injection method is unconstitutional. The case, which has prompted a temporary halt in executions, comes at a crucial time for capital punishment nationwide.
The dispute from Kentucky tests standards for when a method of execution is cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. Although the basic constitutionality of capital punishment is not at issue, the case has galvanized larger questions about the death penalty.
Executions in 2007 dropped to a 13-year low of 42, largely because states began putting executions on hold soon after the justices announced they would hear the Kentucky case. Thirty-five of the 36 states that permit capital punishment carry out executions with a lethal drug combination.
In 2007, 110 defendants were sentenced to die, the lowest number since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. At the end of 2007, New Jersey became the first state to pass a law abolishing the death penalty in more than 40 years
What I believe the court is to decide is whether lethal injection is “cruel and unusual punishment”. Since they have already ruled that death by hanging and gas chamber is neither cruel nor unusual by upholding their use, I cannot envision them calling an I.V. injection in the arm cruel or unusual.
Whether the death penalty is effective as a deterrent, proportionately applied to all races, or cost effective….are all matters that should be addressed but not part of this case, from what I’ve read.
Cruel and unjust execution?? The methods of execution used by these same “unjustly” executed murderers on their victims leave little room for them to move in. Okay don’t execute them but make sure they will never walk out freely from a prison wall. Revenge; maybe so, but the record of released mudrderers leaves much to be desired.
Ironically, IV injections were devised to remove the pain and bloodshed of executions.
Usually these cases come up because different circuits come to different conclusions and the High Court has to have the final word to straighten out the matter. The media often sets this up as the High Court being some sort of supreme arbiter of contemporary ethical standards.
Get a rope!
Tried, tested and approved at the time when the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were adopted.
The original language, “cruel and unusual,” was, I believe, intended to outlaw the British tradition of hanging, drawing, and quartering. Neither hanging alone, nor firing squad, nor any other modern execution method comes anywhere near that level of barbarity.