In a surprise to no one except Governor Tim Kaine, the Supreme Court today threw out the challenge to the constitutionality of lethal injection. It wasn’t even close! 7-2 vote, with former ACLU lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg standing in the lonely corner with David Souter. Kaine’s decision was even more foolish as the opinions are coming out.
Despite what some would have you think (cough Kaine cough), this was not about whether lethal injection itself was “cruel and unusual punishment.” It was about what might happen if one of the injections failed.
“The argument against the three-drug protocol is that if the initial anesthetic does not take hold, the other two drugs can cause excruciating pain. One of those drugs, a paralytic, would render the prisoner unable to express his discomfort.” FOXNEWS
Oh, the horror! Wouldn’t want a convicted cop-killer to feel any discomfort, now would we?
Chief Justice Roberts opinion “Because some risk of pain is inherent in even the most humane execution method, if only from the prospect of error in following the required procedure, the Constitution does not demand the avoidance of all risk of pain.”
The case came down to whether to used a 3-drug procedure or a single drug. The case was never about whether or not to have lethal injections at all!
Alito and Kennedy joined Roberts in the Majority opinion. Justice Stevens wrote a concurring opinion, but wondered if the “3 versus 1” drug debate is just starting. Alito wrote that “the Court should not produce a de facto ban on capital punishment by adopting method-of-execution rules that lead to litigation gridlock.”
Justice Scalia, whose opinions I personally love reading, takes foes of capital punishment head on.
“There is a risk that an innocent person might be convicted and sentenced to death—though not a risk that JUSTICE STEVENS can quantify, because he lacks a single example of a person executed for a crime he did not commit in the current American system.”
I’m still waiting for that one, too.
“But of all JUSTICE STEVENS’ criticisms of the death penalty, the hardest to take is his bemoaning of “the enormous costs that death penalty litigation imposes on society,” including the “burden on the courts and the lack of finality for victim’s families.” Those costs, those burdens, and that lack of finality are in large measure the creation of JUSTICE STEVENS and other Justices opposed to the death penalty, who have “encumber[ed] [it] . . . with unwarranted restrictions neither contained in the text of the Constitution nor reflected in two centuries of practice under it”—the product of their policy views “not shared by the vast majority of the American people.”
Wow! and this is a concurring opinion! Even Ginsburg in her dissent didn’t attack the death penalty, but wanted better procedures for ensuring that those being killed were unconscious during the final lethal injections.
And this is what Tim Kaine was waiting for?
Former cop Delegate Bobby Mathieson kept his mouth shut, too, avoiding comments on why a Democratic governor would protect the life of a cop killer contrary to Kaine’s public pronouncements during his election.
There was no reason, other than Kaine’s personal politics about the death penalty, that preserved that cop killers life. And there’s no reason to move forward with what should’ve been already done.
