The recent lawsuit before the Supreme Court challenging
the constitutionality of lethal injection as cruel and
unusual punishment is outright ludicrous. The suit,
filed by Kentucky death row inmates Ralph Baze and
Thomas Clyde Bowling, Jr., has already been rejected
by the Kentucky Supreme Court, but opponents of capital
punishment are determined to render the death penalty
illegal using ever more indirect, sophistical, and
bizarre approaches. It would be cruel and unusual
punishment for the American people if it were not so
outrageously funny.
One could only hope that the Supreme Court justices are
sane enough to decisively rule against the plaintiffs --
whose entire case against lethal injection in general is
based on the fear that a particular mix of drugs used in
Kentucky lethal injections might, if administered
improperly, result in pain experienced by the subject,
which the subject cannot express due to paralyzed
muscles. So let’s get this straight: Because one
particular mode of lethal injection might possibly be
more painful than anticipated, if wrongly applied, this
justifies abolishing all forms of lethal injection, even
if they are applied in accordance with proper protocol!
What spectacular feat of sophistry is this?
Moreover, is it even conceivable for lethal injection to
be cruel and unusual? It is certainly not unusual, for
it is used in the majority of executions today. Can it
possibly be cruel and if so, cruel compared to what? Is
shooting the convicted murderer less cruel? What about
hanging him? Or putting him in the chair and
electrocuting him? How about using poison gas? Is that
less cruel than lethal injection? It seems that lethal
injection inflicts the least pain on the murderer before
he dies, compared to any other existing mode of
punishment.
Furthermore, consider the range of means of execution
available in 1791, when the Bill of Rights -- including
the Eighth Amendment -- was ratified. Back then, lethal
injection did not even exist. The options for killing a
convicted murderer were beheading, drowning, burning,
hanging, or the firing squad. The latter two in
particular were widespread at the time, and the framers
of the Constitution found nothing objectionable in this.
What they perceived to be cruel and unusual punishment
was probably closer to medieval torture devices than it
was to lethal injection. So if a noose around the neck
or the pain caused by a bullet are not cruel and
unusual, then how could lethal injection be?
But behind the inanity lies an ulterior motive. After
all, the Supreme Court decided unambiguously in its 1976
Gregg v. Georgia ruling that capital punishment
itself is constitutional. So how could opponents of the
death penalty manage to prohibit it nonetheless? Well,
they could try to get the least painful and least cruel
possible form of execution classified as cruel and
unusual punishment, from which it would follow by
implication that all the other even more painful ways of
execution are cruel and unusual as well. Despite
repeated court rulings at the state and federal levels
-- and despite overwhelming support by Americans for the
death penalty for murder -- opponents of capital
punishment will go to ridiculous lengths to enshrine
their objections into law.
Continued efforts to end the executions of brutal
killers -- who inflict the cruelest possible punishments
on peaceful, innocent people -- should not be
accommodated, in whatever guise they might appear.
