It Is Ordered That Relief Be Granted and That Complainant Receive One Bullet to the Head
With all due respect, any judge who says it’s cruel and unusual punishment to keep a guy on Death Row for 30 years is a moron.
I said “due.”
Seriously. This reminds me of the “wrongful life” tort lawsuits I studied in first-year law school. (These are lawsuits where a plaintiff complains that his mom would have aborted him if only she had been told the truth about his disability — therefore, someone should give the plaintiff money.) I have an easy solution to a plaintiff complaining that he’s alive, and it ain’t giving him money. It’s the same solution I would offer to a criminal defendant complaining that he has lived on Death Row too long.
Heartless? Nah. Just practical.
UPDATE: I have another practical suggestion. Let the assisted suicide nut-cases draft the protocol for how to put Death Row prisoners to death. If it’s good enough for a patient desiring assisted suicide, it’s good enough for a murderer.
Of course Breyer would want to refer such an absurd case. Cue the music for Alpho and Levy to start braying.
The only thing that you want to ask is why he hasn’t been executed years ago. If someone can’t finish his appeals within five years he should be sent off to make his maker and explain why he didn’t murder two innocent girls in person. I’m sure heaven won’t wait 30 years to insure he gets his just reward.
Thomas Jackson (bf83e0) — 10/17/2007 @ 9:14 pmThe solution to crime deterrence is to scrap the 8th Ammendment, subject convicted, violent felons
to forced vivisection.
But the solution to the claims of the disabled
King Pandeen (87ec7f) — 10/17/2007 @ 9:34 pmis to disable the anti-abort industry, force its
mobsters to find real jobs.
Tangent Warning!
I have long felt that something similar should be done with the disgusting people – calling themselves, truthfully enough, Bastard Nation – who want the government to open all adoption records, regardless of what the government may have promised the women in question in the first place.
An officer of the Court would visit the woman in question and ask her if she was now sorry she hadn’t had an abortion. If she said “yes”, the officer would then return to the Adopted one, blow his or her (doubtless microscopic) brains out with a 12 gauge, and record the cause of death as “late term abortion”
C. S. P. Schofield (fa850f) — 10/17/2007 @ 10:12 pmNo need to draft a protocol, we already know the humane way to kill people: starve and dehydrate them to death.
Xrlq (6c2116) — 10/18/2007 @ 2:47 amI’ve had surgery three times in my life – 2 to put a dislocated shoulder back in place, and 1 where a catheter was put into my urinary tract. I remember … nothing. No pain … nothing. So … what’s the beef?
monsoon (001e7b) — 10/18/2007 @ 4:31 amEvery human being on earth knows they will die someday. Few of us know when, or how, it is going to happen and it is largely out of our control. Given the state of capital litigation, endless appeals, and habeas challenges to every detail including now the method and sometimes finding a sympathetic federal habeas judge to start the whole process over again, it seems me that death row inmates, at least in California, now share a common human experience. A long life, knowing you are going to die, but not knowing how and when. Perhaps it is neither cruel, nor usual.
David (c893f6) — 10/18/2007 @ 4:49 amActually, I favor fining 9th Circuit judges and CA Supreme Court justices for this abuse of power in forcing these people to live on Death Row longer than anyone expected. So perhaps there’s some merit in these suits.
Perhaps if each judge who has taken over 6 months to rule on a case, or one month to respond to a motion, was fined, oh, $10,000 for each infraction, there would be less of this extended period of unconstitutional “living torture” and a more rapid reduction in Death Row crowding.
How do they do it so quickly in Texas? Here we have people on Death Row for 20 years who have not yet gotten close to the end of their appeals. I’m waiting for the first heart transplant on Death Row (and no, not as a donor).
—-
Oh, there’s another thing to try: Death Row crowding cases — maybe they’ll get released by some idiot judge, Where’s Thelton Henderson when you need him.
Kevin Murphy (0b2493) — 10/18/2007 @ 6:45 amA simple fix: require any such appellant to waive his right to a speedy execution.
Kevin Murphy (0b2493) — 10/18/2007 @ 6:50 amas a resident of the assisted suicide state, i wanted our state’s quarter to depict a gravestone with a bottle of pills on top.
assistant devil's advocate (32caad) — 10/18/2007 @ 6:58 amEventually we will not be able to execute anyone unless he will enjoy it or wants to commit suicide.
Patricia (4117a9) — 10/18/2007 @ 7:08 am“as a resident of the assisted suicide state, i wanted our state’s quarter to depict a gravestone with a bottle of pills on top.”
-assistant devil’s advocate
Heh. And your state plant can be hemlock.
Leviticus (b987b0) — 10/18/2007 @ 7:13 amBy filing these briefs, the lawyers are extending the inmate’s time on Death Row. They are extending his cruel and unusual punishment.
Are state dollars being used to pay these lawyers? Are taxpayers funding cruel and unusual punishment?
It has to stop. Who can we sue?
Patterico (241cc2) — 10/18/2007 @ 7:19 amSo Breyer thinks it “unusual” than someone should stave off execution for 30 years.
Funny, when I heard someone had been on death row for 30 years, I didn’t think it unusual at all. I may be a bad choice for a “reasonable person” standard, but it didn’t surprise me a bit.
Two Texas inmates were executed in 1999, after 23 and 24 years on the row. The average time on the row for Florida inmates is over 12 years.
A Lhasa Apso named Word was on death row in Washington for 8 and a half years – for a dog, that’s about 60 years.
Glen Wishard (b1987d) — 10/18/2007 @ 10:26 amGiven the headline, I don’t know how to read that second paragraph. Did suicides move executions to the the number two cause of death on death row, or is there some cause of death more prevalent than both suicide or execution?
Fritz (d62210) — 10/18/2007 @ 1:01 pmFrom the L.A. Times:
Fritz (d62210) — 10/18/2007 @ 1:04 pmI think Breyer is related to Alphie.
daleyrocks (906622) — 10/18/2007 @ 4:00 pmHe’s SCOTUS’s Justice Breyer’s baby brother. Appointed by Billy.
nk (6e4f93) — 10/18/2007 @ 4:08 pmI think Crazy Andy studied under Breyer. It explains his incoherent comments. I wonder how many of the jurists who condemned this man to death are still alive. Think about it for a moment.
We need the swift execution of a death sentence not prolonged appeals. For all the BS about the innocent being executed I’d like to see two examples in the last 20 years of an innocent man being put to deth (deathbed confessions not accepted s an mitigating circumstance).
Thomas Jackson (bf83e0) — 10/18/2007 @ 10:26 pmMany, many years ago, Florida’s then governor Martinez put forth the muse that it is cruel and unusual punishment for defense lawyers to take so many years to run out the appeals of the death row inmates. That the full gamut of appeals could be filed in less than a year, permitting the death row inmate to know as soon as possible what his fate would be. The state congress, as much into punishment by delay, (they being lawyers for the most part), as the defense lawyers, would have nothing of this common sense approach to the appeals process. Hence, we the taxpayers are financing the futures of the death row inmates, and the inmates themselves have years and years of constant worry about when their end will come. A truly slow death punishment.
Frankly Opinionated (e9fc8a) — 10/18/2007 @ 11:02 pmThey should just stop all those stupid appeals and do what they did with the notorios CHARLE STARKWEATHER they did,nt have all those stupid years of rediclous appeals they exicuted him with in a year of his conviction for firs degree murder
krazy kagu (171210) — 10/20/2007 @ 6:31 am