"... but that the state has – for no good reason – refused to adopt. This requirement applies, Gorsuch explained [writing for the majority of the Supreme Court], even though Bucklew is only challenging the constitutionality of the state’s use of lethal injection to execute him, rather than the constitutionality of lethal injection more generally.... In this case... Bucklew had made only a 'bare-bones proposal' to use death by nitrogen gas, depriving the body of oxygen, as an alternative to lethal injection. In Gorsuch’s view, that proposal 'falls well short' of showing that the alternative could be 'readily implemented' because Bucklew had not offered any evidence on what Gorsuch deemed 'essential questions': 'how nitrogen gas should be administered (using a gas chamber, a tent, a hood, a mask, or some other delivery device); in what concentration (pure nitrogen or some other mixture of gases); how quickly and for how long it should be introduced; or how the State might ensure the safety of the execution team, including protecting them against the risk of gas leaks.'... Justice Clarence Thomas filed a concurring opinion in which he reiterated that, in his view, a method of execution only violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment if it is 'deliberately designed to inflict pain.'"
From "Opinion analysis: Divided court rejects lethal-injection challenge by inmate with rare medical condition" by Amy Howe (at SCOTUSblog).
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51 comments:
The state should not have the power to kill.
It is run by incompetent corrupt people who are drawn to government.
I find it odd you all want to give people as repulsive as Kamala Harris the power to kill you.
Planned prisoner.
Is there no painless way to execute? There must be.
I just think about a trial for murder where the prosecutor is Kamala Harris and the jury is made up of the population of Oakland that elected her and the judge is some federal douchebag leftist that can’t read.
And you fools want to give that the power to kill you.
Hmmm.
J2 said...
Is there no painless way to execute? There must be.
There are plenty. Anti-death-penalty people go out of their way to remove them as options.
I do not understand the obsession over making execution painless.
If you are obsessed with making execution painless, then let's just give the condemned an overdose of heroin...quick and painless.
"Blinded and shot at dawn" meets all the requirements.
He's a disgrace to the various Dukes of Buccleuch.
Two hundred grams of C-4 in a cement bunker.
The speed of C-4 is 8,000 m/s which is to say it takes 8 seconds to fully reach it's pressure wave limit, if I am understanding this correctly. Nerves conduct touch and pressure at 3 m/s. So put on an C-4 Pendant and set it off. It will be a closed casket funeral, but every locality should put it as a 'painless' option. This ruins that legal challenge of Lawyers acting in bad faith.
100% nitrogen into a face mask.
Every bit as painless as falling asleep, cheaper than heroin.
"including protecting them against the risk of gas leaks"
From nitrogen? It composes 70% of the earth's atmosphere... I'd say it's too late to protect the people at the execution from nitrogen leaks.
A bullet to the back of his head would be painless and cheap. As a Missouri taxpayer I would have appreciated a Trooper snuffing this animal during the shootout. There was a shootout because Russell Bucklew was annoyed by arresting officers interrupting his marathon raping and torturing one of his victims.
Firing squad works. A guy like that, there’s probably plenty of people ready to give him a .30 caliber heartache. Rope. The idea gahrie had about heroin sounds reasonable. Come on, people, let’s see some creativity here!
With a firing squad, and a properly aimed bullet, you're dead before you hear the gunshot, as they travel faster than sound. No pain. Quick.
However, our justice system is f!awed and too many people have been wrongly convicted. While the death penalty is just, you cannot appeal death, so I'd support eliminating it. Better a bunch of deserving people go to prison for life without parole than an innocent person gets executed.
Quick, safe, efficient, and painless: the guillotine.
Life without parole is kind of like free trade, it's imaginary.
Strap 'em down. Light 'em up.
But then again I'm old school.
Someone in the other thread wrote it, but it is true- pretty much all arguments about the death penalty are made in bad faith, especially the court case arguments. The plaintiff and his lawyers here were not arguing for another, less painful form of execution- they were arguing to stop his execution permanently, but they can't say that. Having failed previously using arguments that the penalty imposed was inappropriate or that the trial was in some way defective, they retreated to this argument that lethal injection is cruel and unusual. If the state were using nitrogen gas instead of lethal injection, the same plaintiff and same lawyers would be making the exact same argument about it being cruel and unusual. Even the Gorsuch's argument that the plaintiff has to offer an alternative method is bad faith, in my opinion, but it at least helps demonstrate the bad faith being applied by the other side.
The Nazis had a clever way of executing Soviet POW officers. The Soviet officers would be brought individually into a room that looked like a doctor's office and were told that they would be medically examined before they were transfered to another camp. The Soviet officer was told to stand with his back to a wall, which was marked with a ruler, so that his height could be measured. There was a slit in that wall, and a German behind the wall would shoot through the slit into the back of the Soviet officer's head.
The Soviet officer died unexpectedly and instantly. His blood was washed down a drainage hole in the room's floor. The dead body was carried away. Then the next Soviet officer was brought into the doctor's office.
I know this because I used to translate documents for the US Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, which deported Nazi collaborators.
I don't support the death penalty- life without possibility of parole sounds sufficient to me, but I do realize that if we did that, the same lawyers and same defendants would be back in court tomorrow arguing that life without possibility of parole is also cruel and unusual.
The death penalty lowers the murder rate, there is no perfect option where innocent people don't die.
Blogger J2 said...
Is there no painless way to execute? There must be.
The euthanasia advocates seem to think so.
OK, so we get rid of capital punishment. What do we put in its place? Life imprisonment without parole? Of course not, our progressive friends would say. That too is cruel and unusual. They always identify with the murderer, never the victim.
There's a book from the 70s (Final Exit?) listing ways to off yourself neatly. Presumably none of them are cruel or unusual, even if not done voluntarily.
Stuff found around the house.
I remember a weepie in the New York Times about poor Judith Clark, imprisoned for the Brink's robbery in 1981. It wasn't until the 43rd paragraph that the names of the officers she helped murder appeared.
Let the next of kin of the victim beat the motherfucker to death. I'm not old school, I'm medieval.
It is the argument of Abraham once again: "If there are 100 innocent people." "If there are 50 innocent people." "If there are 10..."
It is the attempt to avoid the punishment, which is an argument in bad faith. The Seventies called and they want their social policy back. "Let Em Loose Bruce".
This is a trust issue: Leftists have used quite a bit of theirs up, particularly when they call for BEATING high school students for smirking but ask to 'Free Mumia'. Hmm!
Pain is an unavoidable part of life. There's only one cure.
>>“Those highly sensitive tumours easily rupture and bleed,” the appeal said. “As he struggles to breathe through the execution procedure, Bucklew’s throat tumour will likely rupture."<<
He has a cavernous hemangioma located somewhere in his oropharynx. Probably had it all his life. Big deal. This is anti-capital punishment lawyer poppycock appeal to emotion. Ooo, blood... They pored over his medical history to see what they could take from it and cook up into their appeal. "Likely" is baloney. He is more likely to rupture the thing the next time he coughs than he will be by being sedated with Phenobarbital.
I've sedated many patients with IV Phenobarbital. You know what they do? They *go to sleep*. They don't struggle for breath. They don't thrash around. They quickly go to freakin' sleep. He'll be in LaLaland with a sedating dose well before he receives the fatal dose that stops his breathing.
This is nonsense.
I have sat, all too many times, with one of our dogs when they take their final trip to the vet's, through the final act. Not one has ever reacted to the needle being put in or done anything except slip away quietly and peacefully.
I trust the state less than anybody, but the deadly mistake they are making is not executing when they should. The opposite virtually never happens, and it could be avoided 100% with some simple criteria that only executes those where there is absolutely no doubt, which is a lot of cases. Not executing is costing many lives, and diminishing the memory of many more, while devaluing life by applying little penalty for stealing one.
I know this is somewhat inside baseball, but is this case really about federal civil procedure? The State moved for summary judgment. It was granted by the district court. The Supreme Court upheld the granting of summary judgment because the prisoner failed to provide competent, nonconclusory evidence as to one of the elements on which he had the burden of proof.
Maybe death penalty practitioners should take Gorsuch's opinion as a roadmap on how to avoid summary judgment in the future.
Thomas is right. Drawing and quartering is intended to torture, not just kill. None of the methods used in the US is in that category.
Ignorance is Bliss responds to:
Is there no painless way to execute? There must be.
With: There are plenty. Anti-death-penalty people go out of their way to remove them as options.
Yes. They would protest that some convicts are allergic to the IV drugs and that lethal injection might cause a severe reaction. :-D
I’m opposed to the death penalty because the state lacks the competence to administer it justly, but if we’re going to have it, why not simply use a massive dose of heroin? An instant feeling of bliss followed by a flash of white light and immediate unconsciousness: What’s not to like?
I'll say again, in places where the death penalty has been abolished; this has been followed by efforts to limit methods of self defense. That's because the argument that the government shouldn't have the power to take lives; then neither should the citizenry. Yet the ability to take lives requires no special equipment or training, but defending yourself from a murderer often does. I think the US Bill of Rights has it correct.
As for the ruling, I appreciate the test of "intentional infliction of pain" for cruelty.
On the flipside; I'm more supportive of the death penalty for the murderers that themselves inflict cruel and unusual harm to their victims. Bucklew threatened one of his victims because she wanted to find a better life with a better man. Bucklew shot the other man in front of his children. Actually he tried to shoot the a child first but missed and then shot the man. He then took his former girlfriend and raped her in his car before having a shootout with police trying to rescue her.
@Leland Discussions of death row appeals should indeed always include a complete record of the criminal's actions.
He also shot at police, committed a home invasion at the surviving victim's mother's house and severely injured the mother. He terrorized four children, shooting to death the father of two of them in front of the children then kidnapping the mother of two of them to rape and kill (she survived).
"including protecting them against the risk of gas leaks"
... someone ought to tell him the atmosphere is 70% nitrogen. It would take a bigger "leak" than should even be possible in that context to harm the executioners; nitrogen kills you by simply displacing oxygen, not because it's toxic itself [in this context].
"A dentist's gas mask with a nitrogen tank" would kill him just fine if he wants that, by simple asphyxiation, and, yes, ought to be harmless to others and painless to him.
(I am not enthused by the Court's complaint that he hadn't put together a full protocol and action proposal for the State.
I can figure this out in ten minutes. It's not rocket surgery.)
Nitrogen gas.
It’s all ready 80% of every breath you take.
Bump the percentage up to 100% and you’re on the floor after the 2nd breath.
5-4. If the case were the sun rising in the east, it would be 5-4. Good grief.
Planned Parenthood et al have an arsenal of human-rights approved methods to abort a human life for social progress, and sometimes cannibalize a human body for medical progress.
"in what concentration (pure nitrogen or some other mixture of gases)"
I would like 50% NO2, 40% Nitrogen and 10% Oxygen. It should be fun and the oxygen will keep me alive for a while.
"Justice Clarence Thomas filed a concurring opinion in which he reiterated that, in his view, a method of execution only violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment if it is 'deliberately designed to inflict pain.'"
Seems obvious. Oh well.
Nitrous Oxide [N2O] is a trip much too good for convicted murderers.
Why not an alcohol + sleeping pill mixture? Sounds like an easy way to go. Plus, I thought carbon dioxide puts you to sleep and then kills you. No pain at all.
The 8th Amendment probably prohibits methods of execution intended to inflict long periods of pain and suffering before death - which were fairly common in the premodern era. I'm thinking of the medieval Chinese practice of execution by cutting in half at the waist or the American Indian practice of staking the prisoner out on a fire ant hill. But firing squad, hanging, electrocution, gas? The pain is incidental and not the primary goal. Ditto for side effects from injections of poisons.
The 8th was to stop things like burning at the stake, crucifixion, being pulled apart by horses, boiled in oil, etc...
Death by a broken neck, electrocution, gas chamber, etc.. are not that painful IF DONE RIGHT.
Personally I'd just use Nitrogen gas and be done with it. Why use some fancy method that takes $$ to do. Just put a mask on 'em and turn it on.
But.. I still feel to qualify for that one needs the evidence to be "BEYOND A SHADOW OF A DOUBT" instead of reasonable doubt. If the jury cannot decide on the evidence showing beyond a shadow of a doubt but it is beyond a reasonable doubt, the life in prison.
I love reading the commentary on this by the "expert class." They are shocked that the "bitterly divided" Supreme Court Justices are so "heartless".
Because, apparently, "having a heart" means caring more about a rapist and murderer, than caring about his victims.
F'em
Blogger Paul said...
Personally I'd just use Nitrogen gas and be done with it. Why use some fancy method that takes $$ to do. Just put a mask on 'em and turn it on.
Um, Paul, read the decision. You want to use Nitrogen gas? That's fine. Answer all of Gorsuch's question about exactly how to do it.
Personally, I'd bring back firing squads. Those are well tested.
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