@Anja Geitz There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy, hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny.
Frederick William Robertson

I cannot fathom the mindset of someone capable of legalizing the act of killing another human being, much less justifying that by saying fellow human beings are not "entitled" to a painless death.

Only the unconscionable can rationalize this kind of obscenity and call it reasoned Law.

@Pluto's Republic

the second highest is among prison guards. Humans cannot really survive exposure to such moral filth.

I remember from history learning that back in the day in Merry Old England, if you were sentenced to have your head cut off, you'd make damn sure to get enough money together to tip your executioner so that his aim was sharp and his swing was clean. Meaning he'd make an effort to make sure the blade sliced through your neck bone the first time he swung his axe.

...is already so unspeakably obscene and barbaric, that it is difficult to draw distinctions within such depravity.

The purpose of incarceration is to remove the criminal from free society, for the protection and correction of that society. The length of that term is the punishment.

But in the US, the punishment only begins after the criminal is behind bars. Then, punishment is heaped upon punishment. People are maimed and die. They are denied health care. Dentistry consists of teeth pulling only. I won't recite the atrocities here. If citizens were interested in such matters, their reality is not a secret. Few have such concerns. While the highest rate of suicide in the nation — perhaps the world — is among those who have been deployed in a recent US war (one per hour), the second highest is among prison guards. Humans cannot really survive exposure to such moral filth.

I think that says all we need to know about the United States and the kind of outcomes it promotes for its citizens. It is the poisoned tree.

@Pluto's Republic .

The guillotine was an historic technological achievement of the day, right up there with Facebook and the iPhone.

High near the top of the suicide list are small farmers in America. What did they see, I wonder.

...is already so unspeakably obscene and barbaric, that it is difficult to draw distinctions within such depravity.

The purpose of incarceration is to remove the criminal from free society, for the protection and correction of that society. The length of that term is the punishment.

But in the US, the punishment only begins after the criminal is behind bars. Then, punishment is heaped upon punishment. People are maimed and die. They are denied health care. Dentistry consists of teeth pulling only. I won't recite the atrocities here. If citizens were interested in such matters, their reality is not a secret. Few have such concerns. While the highest rate of suicide in the nation — perhaps the world — is among those who have been deployed in a recent US war (one per hour), the second highest is among prison guards. Humans cannot really survive exposure to such moral filth.

I think that says all we need to know about the United States and the kind of outcomes it promotes for its citizens. It is the poisoned tree.

@UntimelyRippd

Kant's categorical imperative?

jurisprudential reasoning.

By the "logic" involved, it would be perfectly constitutional to "execute" a prisoner by simply locking him up in a cell and forgetting about him until he died of either thirst (if water was not available) or starvation.

@UntimelyRippd

Another perfect example of epistemologically void jurisprudential reasoning.

By the "logic" involved, it would be perfectly constitutional to "execute" a prisoner by simply locking him up in a cell and forgetting about him until he died of either thirst (if water was not available) or starvation.

It is my understanding that one method actually under consideration is to gradually remove the oxygen in the room of the condemned one, who would simply fall asleep and die, at which point his organs could be harvested and re-oxygenated for transplants.

Can I have a eewwwww??

jurisprudential reasoning.

By the "logic" involved, it would be perfectly constitutional to "execute" a prisoner by simply locking him up in a cell and forgetting about him until he died of either thirst (if water was not available) or starvation.

@wendy davis
to warn people that he was: a man without a conscience.

at wsws.org have provided a hella lot more to the barbaric ruling, so many details that it's hard to know what to bring, including detailed horrors of his extremely rare cancer (four known cases?).

but their long section beginning w/ this is horrifying in its sociopathy:

"The Gorsuch opinion bristles with resentment over the legal campaign waged by Missouri death row inmates and opponents of the death penalty over many years, claiming they have challenged the methods employed by the state to carry out executions in an effort to block executions altogether.

The language of the opinion is revealing: “After a decade of litigation, Mr. Bucklew was seemingly out of legal options.” But “Bucklew’s case soon became caught up in a wave of litigation over lethal injection procedures,” which “severely constrained states’ ability to carry out executions.”

After losing one appeal, “that was still not the end of it,” Gorsuch writes, venting his impatience at the refusal of Bucklew and his attorneys to accept his fate. “Next, Mr. Bucklew and other inmates unsuccessfully challenged Missouri’s protocol in state court.” Then the prisoner “sought to intervene in yet another lawsuit…”

The corporation that manufactured sodium thiopental stopped supplying it for use in executions after a campaign by death penalty opponents, Gorsuch notes. “As a result, the State was unable to proceed with executions until it could change its lethal injection protocol again.” [snip]

The vindictiveness is palpable, as is the determination to clear away all obstacles to the functioning of the American death machine. Gorsuch concludes: “Courts should police carefully against attempts to use such challenges as tools to interpose unjustified delay. Last-minute stays should be the extreme exception, not the norm …”

"The five-member majority essentially ignored the evidence of Bucklew’s medical condition, while dismissing his suggestion of nitrogen gas—approved as a method of execution in three states—on particularly ludicrous grounds, namely, that he did not submit a full plan of operation for his own execution, including such details as what kind of protective gear his executioners should wear when they gassed him.

A noteworthy aspect of the Gorsuch opinion is his extensive and graphic discussion of the methods of execution that prevailed at the time of the adoption of the Eighth Amendment in 1791, when the ten amendments known collectively as the Bill of Rights were added to the Constitution.

He writes that the methods of execution deemed “cruel and unusual” by the Founding Fathers were such things as hanging, drawing and quartering, death by dragging through the streets, and burning at the stake. Hanging in and of itself was not considered cruel, he writes, because “The force of the drop could break the neck and sever the spinal cord, making death almost instantaneous.” He continues: “But that was hardly assured given the techniques that prevailed at the time. More often it seems the prisoner would die from loss of blood flow to the brain, which could produce unconsciousness usually within seconds, or suffocation, which could take several minutes.”

#DeathPenaltyExecutionPorn, jeebus you fuquewad.

"The legal significance of this discussion is that the Supreme Court has, for more than half a century, moved away from “originalism” in its Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. Chief Justice Earl Warren set the tone in a 1958 opinion holding that the Eighth Amendment prohibited not merely what was regarded as barbaric in the 18th century, but any punishment that defied “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.”

This is the basis for such relatively recent decisions as the finding that capital punishment is “cruel and unusual” as applied to any child or juvenile, or to the intellectually disabled, or to those suffering from mental illness such that they cannot comprehend either their crime or their punishment. Kennedy had adhered to the Warren view, but Kavanaugh evidently does not, suggesting that the recent decisions limiting capital punishment could be reversed."

"As noted by several legal commentators, Gorsuch embraces Thomas’s language in previous dissents on death penalty cases, finding that a method of execution is prohibited only when “the State is cruelly super-adding pain”—in other words, where the state intentionally chooses a method of execution calculated to cause more pain than “necessary” to end a human life.

u
thanks for bringing this evil news, snoopy. of course there should never be death penalty executions, including due to the fact that so many people of color are disproportionately executed, so many barriers to re-opening cases with exculpatory evidence, and the need for 'the innocence project'.

@on the cusp
excruciating is something else.

Constitutionally, is accurate, strictly according to that damn piece of paper. (George Bush).
What just sends me up the wall, makes me cling to the ceiling, is the sudden wipe out of "unusual".
A person with a physical condition that makes the customary method of killing them an unusual way of killing them should have stopped the execution.
People commenting have mentioned the trauma suffered by the executioners.
I was friends with the son of the man who pulled the lever on "Sparky" in Hunstville, Texas. His son said the State supplied him with whiskey and that he never pulled the lever when sober.
Since then, I have known 2 prison guards who did that escort to the death chamber. The first one has gone nuts, is homeless. The second one is a current client that I monitor often. He needs the medical insurance, and has not gone crazy so far.