Debra J. Saunders at the San Francisco Chronicle has a piece on the case before the Supreme Court arguing that execution by lethal injection is "cruel and unusual" based on the contention that these convicted murderers might feel some pain as they meet justice.
Saunders sheds some scientific light on these thin arguments:
Start with the bogus medical argument that the three-drug protocol may cause "excruciating pain" - and hence violates the Eighth Amendment protection against "cruel and unusual punishment." In that the Kentucky protocol starts with the administration of 10 times the amount of sodium pentothal needed to start invasive surgery, there is no chance that the other two drugs will cause pain for a convicted killer during execution. And no one has proven that an executed inmate has felt any pain from the three-drug cocktail.
Yes, some politicized medical journals have been willing to publish alleged research that supports the bogus pain argument, but they do so to their own discredit. In 2005, the British medical journal, The Lancet, ran a piece that reported that blood samples taken from executed prisons showed concentrations of the sodium pentothal that "were lower than that required for surgery in 43 of 49 executed inmates." It turns out the samples were taken as long as two days after death, which allowed the drug to dissipate.
Death penalty expert Dudley Sharp also pointed out in a Dakota Voice article in 2006 that the drug quickly dissipates in the body...but not before the lethal cocktail has a chance to do it's job.
Judge Scalia also helps put the matter in better judicial perspective:
Justice Antonin Scalia seemed to get it when he commented, "This is an execution, not surgery." As the Washington Post reported, Scalia also asked where the Constitution says that "in the execution of a person, who has been convicted of killing people, we must choose the least painful method possible?"
The death penalty--including the method of lethal injection--are completely Constitutional and Biblical, both from an Old Testament and New Testament perspective.
Only an uncivilized people would fail to place the proper value on innocent human life by refusing to demand commensurate payment for the innocent life wrongfully taken.
HT to Free Republic.
4 comments:
Why don't you just leave it up to God? It's not like a murderer can somehow avoid meeting his maker. Why do you feel the need to take it into your own hands?
What I want to see in the public discussion is that this is exactly the same drug injected into babies to kill them in late abortions, in far greater numbers than it's administered to killers, and with no appeals or due process.
We need to talk about this and ask, "If the Supreme Court is weighing whether or not it's cruel to do this to an adult who has chosen to murder, why are we not even discussing whether or not it's cruel to do it to a child whose only crime is being in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Will, the death penalty is not one citizen taking it into his own hands to end somebody else's life. That's abortion. The death penalty is about the government taking on the task of protecing innocent citizens from those who would prey on them.
You may well oppose it, and I can respect that, but don't treat it as if it's just optional killing on Joe Six-Pack's part. The condemned gets due process after having committed a heinous crime. He chose to do something he knew could put him on Death Row.
Will, it is up to God, and He delegated the duty of administering the death penalty to murderers in Genesis 9:6: "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man."
And affirmed again in Matthew 26:52 when he said "all who draw the sword will die by the sword."
And again in Romans 13 when he said government "does not bear the sword for nothing."
That's not taking it into my hands or any individuals hands. It is a duty that God has commanded human government to perform. By requiring the ultimate price for the wrongful taking of innocent human life, God is making a statement to us that human life is sacred.
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