HomeschoolrsRUs
12-20-2006, 11:28 AM
Death penalty decision a bad first step::By Debra J. Saunders (http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/DebraJSaunders/2006/12/19/death_penalty_decision_a_bad_first_step)
The latest federal judge to rule against the constitutionality of a state's death penalty is U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel, who issued a ruling Friday that found California's lethal injection protocol to be "intolerable under the Constitution." Chalk up the ruling as a victory for Michael Morales, who was sentenced to death for raping and murdering 17-year-old Terri Winchell of Lodi, Calif., in 1981.
Time is on his side. The decision was not your standard slam-dunk ruling against the death penalty. Fogel was careful to note that capital punishment is constitutional and that California's three-drug execution protocol "when properly administered will provide for a constitutionally adequate level of anesthesia."
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Sounds reasonable. But in the meantime, Fogel has demonstrated to Americans that any attack on the death penalty -- no matter how bogus -- will result in years of delays, consume countless tax dollars and make a mockery of the legal system.* The safest man in America is a death-row inmate with a pending appeal. The lamest arguments work.
* And THAT is why the death penalty system is so costly -- has nothing to do with the fact that it WORKS (i.e. those that kill, will NEVER kill again).
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The latest federal judge to rule against the constitutionality of a state's death penalty is U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel, who issued a ruling Friday that found California's lethal injection protocol to be "intolerable under the Constitution." Chalk up the ruling as a victory for Michael Morales, who was sentenced to death for raping and murdering 17-year-old Terri Winchell of Lodi, Calif., in 1981.
Time is on his side. The decision was not your standard slam-dunk ruling against the death penalty. Fogel was careful to note that capital punishment is constitutional and that California's three-drug execution protocol "when properly administered will provide for a constitutionally adequate level of anesthesia."
< snip , snip >
Sounds reasonable. But in the meantime, Fogel has demonstrated to Americans that any attack on the death penalty -- no matter how bogus -- will result in years of delays, consume countless tax dollars and make a mockery of the legal system.* The safest man in America is a death-row inmate with a pending appeal. The lamest arguments work.
* And THAT is why the death penalty system is so costly -- has nothing to do with the fact that it WORKS (i.e. those that kill, will NEVER kill again).
<LINK href="http://www.townhall.com/styles/TownHall.css" type=text/css rel=Stylesheet>