UPDATED -- Based on precedents finding lethal injection to be cruel where a vein cannot be secured in elderly, infirm patients, the Eleventh Circuit has granted a temporary stay of execution, while briefing occurs on the factual issues -- which include that Mr. Smith's vein likely cannot be found, even in recent medical exams. This will likely go back to the Supremes tomorrow. But I'd not expect a new death warrant now, for several weeks. Here is his cogent brief to get the stay. Good news. End update.
Amy Gou -- ably writing, again at The SCOTUS Blog has it all down cold -- in unsparing prose.
At around 5 PM this evening, Alabama will ignore a lawfully-empaneled jury's vote, in a capital murder case -- and despite 11-1 saying he should live on. . . Alabama will execute him, solely on a single local (elected; political; GOP) judge's say so.
I gather in ruby red Alabama, the Constitution's guarantee of a jury of one's peers, in capital cases. . . is a mere "guideline". If inconvenient, the Constitution's 240 year old commands may be swept aside -- if GOP frothers decide. . . they'd like to do so, even on a blood-thirsty whim, despite a jury's clear and lawful instruction -- for mercy:
. . .By a vote of 11 to 1, the jury in Smith’s 1996 capital trial recommended that he be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The trial judge overrode that decision, however, and sentenced him to death. Alabama was the last state in the United States to permit judicial override in capital cases. It outlawed the practice in 2017, but not retroactively. Smith argued that his execution, greenlit by a practice that is no longer permitted anywhere in the country, would violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments. . . .
That the Supremes did not summarily overturn this travesty is proof of what Tangerine's hard right wing has wrought: fascism, in the face of a strict Constitutional command. Damn.
And that makes three, just this week -- from the "Putin/Xi/Taliban" wing of the Supremes (six justices, in all).
नमस्ते
1 comment:
...After Ohio had three botched executions in a four-year period, it changed its lethal injection protocol. But the state’s problems with lethal injection continued, and on January 16, 2014, Dennis McGuire struggled, made guttural noises, gasped for air, and choked for about 10 minutes before being declared dead after Ohio subjected him to an experimental, never-before-used combination of drugs. After that botched execution, Ohio Gov. John Kasich placed a moratorium on all executions.
Oklahoma paused executions for six years and launched a grand jury investigation after the botched executions of Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner in 2014 and 2015.
Arkansas has not executed anyone since April 27, 2017, when Kenneth Williams convulsed violently as he died on the gurney, the fourth person put to death in an 11-day execution spree during which at least two of the executions were botched.
Most recently, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced on May 2 that all scheduled executions in that state would be paused through the end of the year to allow for a third-party investigation to address “operational failures” in the state’s lethal injection protocol that led the governor to halt the execution of Oscar Smith on April 21....
This is barbarous -- there is no other word for this "practice" of death.
Out.
Post a Comment