Discussion for article #222254
“…cruel…”
Conservatives don’t care. To them, it is impossible to be “too cruel” to a convicted killer. Face it, we know the issue is morals and values, but we don’t have a strong hand on religious principles in this current political makeup.
The leverage we do have, however, is over the principle of “unusual”.
In my opinion, we have an extremely compelling argument that it is inherently incompatible with our basic legal definitions to tolerate the State killing people with drugs purposely kept secret from the public. There is no justification for that. One can claim the State has a legitimate right to keep a security apparatus secret from the public. It can keep nuclear plant plans secret.
But keeping secret the exact method the State will use to kill a trapped human being? That’s more than odd.
Without knowing the method, we can’t begin to address the issue of cruel. If we know the method, we can personalize the effect of it, and we can come to a considered judgment about what we will permit the State to do to us.
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Okies blow a double header. Governor pissed to lose her conservative cred trophy.
We should go back to the tried and true methods of execution like the firing squad. That’s far more humane than killing innocents with missiles fired from drones.
The key isn’t the word “cruel” or the word “unusual.” The key is the word and. The Constitution permits cruel punishment. It also permits unusual punishment. What it doesn’t permit is a form of punishment that is both cruel and unusual.
The Republicans, of course, don’t care, as long as the guy ends up dead.
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While having no sympathy for these criminals and wishing Warner had been the subject of the “botched” attempt for his child rape, I’m stunned by the incompetence of the state officials…people who worry that Bibles aren’t everywhere yet approach state-mandated death with a casual, pinch-pennied indifference…I marvel at the ugliness of the soul hiding behind Gov. Fallin’s pastel tailoring.
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A bullet to the head is the safest and quicker method of executing anything.
This botched execution is the hallmark of an uncivilized society. There is no reason for any US citizen to be proud of how it punishes the most dangerous people in this country. The punishment that we impose on individuals like this dead man must be measured and merciful.
Toward that end, we must require that all executions are conducted in public. Remove them from behind the concrete walls, the thick glass viewing panels that border the execution chamber, and the curtains and blinds that offer nothing but false modesty. We have every reason to be proud of our system of justice, and this tragedy illustrates how we have taken a regrettable turn.
There’s nothing immoral or wrong about the death penalty, provided that it is administered in a frenzy of passion by the victims themselves. As an act of passion and personal vengeance, murder has a long tradition of being regarded as a moral act. Administered by bureaucracies, however, it is a deeply sinister tool wielded to preserve power and mechanize control. The Constitution has ceased to provide a useful metric for understanding many things, capital punishment being one of them. As a society, we should permit ourselves to be cruel and unusual—but we should never permit our power to be usurped by the industrialization of retributive justice.
Actually, if the issue is morality – eye for an eye, and all that – I think we should legislate that executions must be performed by a recognized religious cleric. Who better to kill morally than a priest, minister, preacher, rabbi?
I guess the question is: can conservatives play pro-life and pro-murder at the same time, especially when a Catholic priest executes an innocent person? Let me put it another way, if a religious cleric won’t perform an execution, why would conservatives allow anyone else to?
Perhaps their religious leaders are wrong in their moral beliefs. Thanks for the reply.