So... Isn't Getting Your "Last Rites" -- And Your "Last Meal"... Only To Have The Governor Admit The "Drug Cocktail" Was Tainted And Call Off Your Execution, At Just An Hour Before Your Injection... Isn't THAT "CRUEL, And Unusual"?

Yep -- I put the entire narrative arc into the headline, above.

Tennessee sought to execute the oldest man it holds on death row, this morning. The Supremes had turned down his last appeal. He received communion. He ate a bacon double cheesburger and apple pie, only a very short walk from the gurney [death] chamber:

. . .Republican Gov. Bill Lee didn’t elaborate on what exactly forced the surprise 11th-hour stop to the planned execution of 72-year-old Oscar Smith. But Amy Harwell, an attorney with the federal public defender’s office representing Smith, said her office received a notice that the issue dealt with “mishandling” of the drugs — though no further specifics were provided to her office.

The inmate had been scheduled to receive a three-drug injection only a short while later at a Nashville maximum security prison. . . .

Now a new Tennessee state Supreme Court order will be needed to set a new execution date. It is hard to imagine that anyone would remain sane, getting mere moments away from death -- only to be taken back to the general population. . . and told "no, not today. . . but one day soon -- probably three months away" (again). He's been living like that since the 1990s. Several execution dates set -- and postponed.

Yes his crimes were horrific. But we have sworn not to inflict cruel punishments on the mentally ill -- which he certainly is, by now. This alone (start-stop-start-stop-start-stop over decades) is cruel punishment, in violation of our Eighth Amendment. . . . Out.

नमस्ते