On strict constitutional interpretation. Cliffnotes: Unusual only by 1788 standards Cruel only if the intent is to be so, doesn't matter if you're burnt alive chemically, if the intent was not cruel, it's cool. https://www.latimes.com/politics/la...xecution-lethal-injection-20190401-story.html Supreme Court says the Constitution does not ensure a ‘painless’ execution The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Constitution does not guarantee a “painless death” for condemned murderers, deciding that a Missouri inmate may be executed by a lethal injection despite a rare, severe condition that could cause him to suffocate. By a 5-4 vote, the court rejected Russell Bucklew’s claim it would be cruel and unusual punishment to inject him because it could trigger a hemorrhage and choking. He maintained the state must seek out another method of execution, such as lethal gas, to carry out his execution. The Constitution allows capital punishment. In fact, death was “the standard penalty for all serious crimes” at the time of the founding. Nor did the later addition of the Eighth Amendment outlaw the practice. On the contrary—the Fifth Amendment, added to the Constitution at the same time as the Eighth, expressly contemplates that a defendant may be tried for a “capital” crime and “deprived of life” as a penalty, so long as proper procedures are followed. While the Eighth Amendment doesn’t forbid capital punishment, it does speak to how States may carry out that punishment, prohibiting methods that are “cruel and unusual.” What does this term mean? At the time of the framing, English law still formally tolerated certain punishments even though they had largely fallen into disuse—punishments in which “terror, pain, or disgrace [were] superadded” to the penalty of death. 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 370 (1769). These included such “[d]isgusting” practices as dragging the prisoner to the place of execution, disemboweling, quarter- ing, public dissection, and burning alive, all of which Blackstone observed “savor[ed] of torture or cruelty.”... What does all this tell us about how the Eighth Amendment applies to methods of execution? For one thing, it tells us that the Eighth Amendment does not guarantee a prisoner a painless death—something that, of course, isn’t guaranteed to many people, including most victims of capital crimes...Instead, what unites the punishments the Eighth Amendment was understood to forbid, and distinguishes them from those it was understood to allow, is that the former were long disused (unusual) forms of punishment that intensified the sentence of death with a (cruel) “‘superadd[ition]’” of “‘terror, pain, or disgrace.'"
Poor guy. I feel bad for him. ....Bucklew waited, then entered and shot and killed Sanders and fired at Sanders' six-year-old son. He kidnapped and raped Ray. The Missouri highway patrol chased and caught Bucklew, who precipitated a gunfight that wounded Bucklew and a trooper.
Insane that it was just a 5-4 opinion. "Justice Sonia Sotomayor rebutted those comments. “There are higher values than ensuring executions run on time,” she wrote in one of two dissents filed by liberals. “If a death sentence or the manner in which it is carried out violates the Constitution, that stain can never come out.” Yeh okay. Nice grandstanding there and waving the lib flag. Don't ya think though that maybe eighteen years of bullshit appeals is not exactly a rush to judgement? No. Didnt think so. Thinkin of ya Ruthie......just sayin.
lacesout has a 35 percent chance of being atheist because he is Canadian. if you add his Max E. Williams face then oh 70 percent sure he don't know that passage real well?