June 29, 2020

"The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a challenge to new federal death penalty protocols..."

"... potentially clearing the way for the government to resume executions as soon as next month for the first time since 2003. The court, without comment, declined to take up the lawsuit filed by four death row inmates. As is customary, it gave no reason. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor indicated they would have accepted the case.... The individual inmates facing execution could file additional challenges, which could affect whether and when these sentences are carried out.... An attorney for one of the inmates assailed the Justice Department for its push to execute the four men... 'Even as people across the country are demanding that leaders rethink crime, punishment and justice, the government is barreling ahead with its plans to carry out the first federal executions in 17 years'....  Attorney General William P. Barr announced last summer that the department planned to resume executions using a new lethal-injection procedure that involves a single drug, pentobarbital.... A district judge said last year that the government’s new protocol was inconsistent with the Federal Death Penalty Act, a 1994 law requiring that federal executions be carried out 'in the manner prescribed by the law of the state in which the sentence is imposed.'... A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled 2 to 1 this spring... that the law applies only to the top-line choice among execution methods, such as whether to use lethal injection instead of hanging or electrocution...."

From "Supreme Court won’t hear challenge to new federal death penalty procedure" (WaPo).

The 4 persons facing execution were all convicted of murdering children.

The top-rated comment over there should win a prize for predictability: "And the GOP calls themselves the pro-life party."

35 comments:

Tyrone Slothrop said...

Top comment is also the most idiotic comment. The lives that conservatives want to protect are by definition the most innocent. To compare babes in the womb with those who have willfully transgressed the most sacred rules of civilization is, as I say, idiotic.

Surely this argument can be turned around. If it is so easy and desirable to terminate unborn humans, what on earth could be the reservation against terminating the most evil among us?

mccullough said...

Time to put Hasan down. McVeigh was executed within 6 years. Hasan is still breathing over 10 years later.

Wince said...

So many murals to paint!

Skeptical Voter said...

WaPoo article was behind a pay wall. I doubt that I missed much. But the 1994 Federal Death Penalty Act reference in the visible post was interesting. Assming that a death sentence was imposed for violation of a federal law, why should execution be carried out in accordance with the law of the state where the sentence was imposed. And since, as I understand it, federal executions are carried out in only one or a few federal prisons, what if the sentence was imposed in State "A" but the execution will take place in State "B" and the law of State A specifies lethal injection and the law of State B specifies a firing squad? How did Congress get itself in this mess? Of course they were passing Hillary and Bill's mass incarceration criminal act at or about that time (1994). Ah well, glad I never practiced criminal law.

Drago said...

The 4 persons facing execution were all convicted of murdering children.

The mistake the Defense attorney's made was not claiming these men were just performing Very Late Term Abortions.

No democrat can resist that siren song.

The killers might even have gotten movie deals!

Howard said...

Murderers Lives Matter

Rick said...

Who is surprised the left can't tell the difference between a child and a child murderer?

Gordy said...

"And the GOP calls themselves the pro-life party."

They're pro-life of the people these fucks won't be killing.

h said...

I am so far from being expert on this stuff that I should probably just not post a comment. But it seems to me that Roberts has some kind of implicit agreement with Kagan (and possibly Breyer) that stare decisis means stare decisis, in controversial cases at least. So Texas decision settled Louisiana in Roe v Wade, and some other decision settled this issue on death penalty.

Leland said...

I don't think it is members of the GOP assembling guillotines outside homes. It turns out it was Democrats that were brandishing guns outside their St. Louis home. Sometimes taking a life is about being pro your own life, which is why I support certain provisions allowing for abortion.

Narr said...

Seventeen years.

I'd say the "barreling" is overdue.

Narr
BIANAL

RNB said...

"...the government is barreling ahead with its plans to carry out the first federal executions in 17 years..." No federal executions in nearly two decades, but this is "unseemly haste" to death-penalty opponents.

(I do appreciate the [minimal] reference to the victims for whose deaths these sentences were imposed. It is my opinion that news media should not discuss death penalty cases without the article including 1) the victim(s)' names, 2) their age(s), and 3) the manner and motive for their killing.)

gilbar said...

one of these is an infamous iowa case
Dustin Honken and Angela Johnson strangled two little girls to keep them quiet after the pair — now charged with five murders — killed the girls' mother and her boyfriend...
Honken, with the aid of his girlfriend, Angela Johnson, beat and tortured Nicholson and killed him the day before he was scheduled to testify about Honken's drug-related activities. Duncan and her daughters disappeared the same day...
Honken and Angela Johnson parked their car a couple of blocks away from Duncan's house and carried a rope and gun in a canvas bag to the house where Nicholson, Duncan and her daughters were living.

Four months later, DeGeus, 32, another informant, disappeared. The five bodies were found during 2000, buried in fields southwest of Mason City.

"I strangled the rat and his girlfriend," said Honken. "Kate strangled the children because they wouldn't shut up.

Achilles said...

I oppose the death penalty.

The State should not be trusted with that power.

But it is also clear that the Democrat Party would gladly let those murderers out of prison to go attack law abiding citizens on their behalf.

Big Mike said...

We are the pro-children party. We don’t kill them before they’re born and we don’t like it when they’re killed after they’ve been born.

MikeR said...

"And the GOP calls themselves the pro-life party." The commenter didn't notice that children are alive.

Clyde said...

Althouse wrote: The top-rated comment over there should win a prize for predictability: "And the GOP calls themselves the pro-life party."

Well, pro-children's lives, perhaps; the lives of children snuffed short by heinous murderers. The Democrats, in contrast, are the party of Moloch, sacrificing babies on their Planned Parenthood altars. Of course they would object to child-murderers paying for their crimes with their lives, out of professional courtesy.

n.n said...

Justice with due process. Not witch trials and warlock judgments (e.g. "protests").

n.n said...

The State should not be trusted with that power.

That's a reasonable concern. Case in point: Obama's enemy list.

n.n said...

To compare babes in the womb with those who have willfully transgressed the most sacred rules of civilization is, as I say, idiotic.

The latter is justice for elective abortion (e.g. Planned Prisoner) committed against the individual and society, the former is social justice (e.g. Planned Parenthood) for being a "burden" and obstructing social progress and medical progress.

bagoh20 said...

Maybe BLM has a point, and all lives don't matter.

The opponents of the death penalty are saying those murdered children's lives don't matter, at least not as much as their killers', and I'm saying the murderers' lives haven't mattered since the day they murdered those children. Their forfeited their rights to everything but due process, which they had.

bagoh20 said...

"The State should not be trusted with that power."

I would agree, except there is nobody else. We could say the same about the more dangerous war powers we give them, but someone has to be in charge of killing those who need killed, and government, despite all its flaws, must be that party.

Justice and national defense must be government, but not much else needs to be.

Yancey Ward said...

LOL! So, snails, glaciers, statues, and Joe Biden barrel ahead?

Nichevo said...

Assming that a death sentence was imposed for violation of a federal law, why should execution be carried out in accordance with the law of the state where the sentence was imposed.


Because Congress=wimpfags.



Achilles said...
I oppose the death penalty.

The State should not be trusted with that power.

But it is also clear that the Democrat Party would gladly let those murderers out of prison to go attack law abiding citizens on their behalf.

Thing is, if we had, and I mean since the 60s or 70s, more state killings rather than fewer, we'd be better off today. The rot has set so deep that indeed trusting the State with this power is dicey.

But some people need killing. If the State won't do it, it will fall to the People.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

The 4 persons facing execution were all convicted of murdering children.

Progressives don't want to harm the child-killers. Progressives want you to leave poor child-killers alone! Lets pay for child-killer's housing and meals for the rest of their natural lives. Those children didn't get that choice. Proggy don't care.

Progressives do not care. They don't give one thought to the child who was taken and killed.
Nope - bleeding hearts bleed for the lowest common denominator. The child-killer.

mockturtle said...

Yep, we're pro-life and anti-murder.

Doug said...

Does this help? "Pro-innocent-life"

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Latest Seattle CHOP shooting kills 16-year-old boy, critically wounds 14-year-old boy

Narr said...

Nichevo, we're cool. I know full well that there were lots of Reds in the USG back in the day (I've studied it) but I was not objecting to that--the behind every bush reference was obliquely to Tailgunner Joe-- who IMO actually did damage to a real look at the situation by being such a stereotypical Mick drunk, bully, and blowhard. Moscow couldn't have hired anyone better at making Anti-Communism look like the province of drunks bullies and blowhards . . . helped by the left media of course. And Roy Cohn.

******

I have never been persuaded that capital punishment after a fair trial and conviction from a very small list of crimes (treason, murder, heinous or egregious torture short of death, I could even go for offing anyone who rapes more than one woman) is not justified.

Narr
I support gun rights and abortion rights, and for the same reason

Narr said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
cubanbob said...

The top-rated comment over there should win a prize for predictability: "And the GOP calls themselves the pro-life party."

It takes a special wilful stupidity to equate infanticide with a lawful punishment. Then again it's the Washington Post. I never understood the position of those who are the death penalty. Every single law or regulation that can lead to an arrest and or imprisonment is a death penalty. Try resisting arrest with violence for anything you can be arrested and you can find yourself legally killed by an agent of the State. You could be killed for not paying your taxes. You could be killed in some jurisdictions for not wearing a mask. I fail to see the problem in executing violent criminals if we are willing to let the police kill for underlying crimes that are not violent when the arrestee resists. I also don't believe in disbanding the police or the military. I do however believe that qualified immunity for all local and state employees and for elected officials and judges. Same for the federal government excluding the president and cabinet officers and the Supreme Court. I don't buy the argument that no one will take the job. If we can find people who will risk their lives in the military and especially in the combat arms we can find replacement officials. Finally why must we guarantee a completely painless death to a criminal that is to be executed? No one in life is otherwise guaranteed a painless death. And certainly not in the military.

cyrus83 said...

The left is quite fine with capital punishment, it currently takes the form of trying to make people permanently unemployable and financially destitute social outcasts for the crime of saying or thinking the wrong thing by means of mob justice or big tech deplatforming.

The left will eventually be fine with the killing of innocent people based on ridiculous notions of privilege, social justice, and some kind of inherited racial original sin, they just aren't yet at the point where they can demand that people celebrate someone else's death or else. They are ramping up the statue attacks to get people used to the idea that certain sins are worthy of damnation.

n.n said...

Does this help? "Pro-innocent-life"

Yes, Planned Parenthood (e.g. selective-child, cannibalized-child) are prohibited by the 8th (cruel and unusual punishment) and 5th and 6th (due process) Amendments. There are four choices, then Pro-Choice, the wicked solution, which has found accomplice with the Menegele set. Women, and men, are not children. We have the right to choose, four choices. The Pro-Choice religion, including reproductive rites, is the wrong choice. It seems that the elective abortion of a life in self-defense is a rational threshold that mitigates historical progress that we cannot afford to indulge.

wendybar said...

I love how Progs want to save all the child rapists and murderers, but love to kill babies up to the time up birth...(and some even after, right Governor Coonman????)

Nichevo said...

Narr, think we might have skipped a thread? But: all good; and, all good.

It's just a pity how the Rs have to be perfect in every way to even pretend to hope to have their points heard. It's as if Lucy blamed Charlie Brown for his imperfect form every time she yanked the football.