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stella41b -> RE: Scalia and Thomas opine that executing innocent people is constitutional (8/18/2009 1:48:29 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Termyn8or
Equally appaling is the state government will actually fight all the way up to the supreme court to execute someone who is innocent.
Term hit the nail on the head here. Troy Anthony Davis was originally convicted in 1991.
I'm not a lawyer, not a judge, my interests are human rights activism. I have known of this case for over two years. It's right there, all over the Internet. It's not my tax dollars being spent here, I'm in the UK. It's your tax dollars, assuming that you're in one of the thirty odd states - no, let's make this more biased - the six or so states which actively carry out the death penalty - Texas, Virginia, Missouri, Florida, etc.
And yet we have two Supreme Court judges dissenting and fully prepared to send Mr Davis - who is possibly or rather arguably innocent, to his death.
Let's not forget the victim, a Georgia policeman who was shot dead nor the families of Mr MacPhail or the family of Mr Davis.
This is not justice by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe it once was, but times have changed and society has moved on and now the death penalty only serves one purpose and that is - in the field of human rights - to keep the United States apart from its Western counterparts but among those nations such as China, Iran, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia where human rights are, at best, somewhat dubious.
But this is not strictly true for one of the better symbols of human rights in the United States is indeed the US Supreme Court which in over two dozens cases - from Furman versus Georgia, Louisiana vs. Glass, Lockett vs. Ohio, Enmund vs. Coker, Ford vs. Wainwright, Roper vs. Simmons and rulings such as that in this case with Troy Anthony Davis further removes the death penalty as a concept of justice except for the unfortunate few meaning fewer executions and more modern, humane solutions when dealing with its worst criminals.
Like the flabby, overweight, wheezing heavyweight boxer the death penalty today finds itself on the ropes, gone are the days of the gas chamber, the electric chair, the smell of burning flesh and smoke, and we are only awaiting the knockout punch in the form of a challenge to lethal injection via the Eighth Amendment that it causes unnecessary suffering and pain, likely to come from one of the botched executions which take place every so often as prison staff with less and less cooperation from doctors struggle with execution protocols and IV 101 procedures.
The solution is there and has been since the 1970's at places like Angola, San Quentin and Varner Supermax where prisoners receive life, without parole, and do not reemerge back into society. All it needs is for state prosecutors to serve more the American people rather than their own self-interests of politics and profits from legal fees earned from up to nine appeals taking those deemed unfit for society from the courthouse to the execution chamber.
Other societies in the West manage quite well without the death penalty. So too can American society.
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