Alito beaks the tie for the death penalty and it's constitutionality
Now, I am not hear to argue the death penalty with any or all of you, however, if that is what comes to be as a result of this post, then so be it. What I find interesting, and the reason I post this, is the article and the phrasing itself.
"By a 5-to-4 vote, the justices said the Kansas Supreme Court incorrectly interpreted the Eighth Amendment's protection against cruel and unusual punishment to strike down the state's death penalty statute.
The dissenters, the four liberal members of the high court, bitterly complained about the decision."
and...
"Fifteen states filed friend-of-the-court briefs, predicting that a ruling in convicted murderer Michael Lee Marsh's favor would have required states with capital punishment to set up systems for juries to weigh evidence at sentencing.
But Justice David H. Souter, writing one of two dissents, said that "in the face of evidence of the hazards of capital prosecution," maintaining a system like the one in Kansas "is obtuse by any moral or social measure."
Now, I know the whole case for letting states decide certain things, not letting the feds make all of our laws, federalism doesn't take into account the different ways different people of different localities handle things, yada yada yada. We see this in many areas, like gun control, gay marriage, alcohol sales on Sunday, etc, etc. But imo, if there is ONE THING we should start getting streamlined over and applying the same rules and regs toward, it is the taking of a human life by another human. We are making huge decisions here in regards to the preservation of human beings and we are "the deciders" in many instances. How many cases are coming out of the woodwork as being wrongfully decided due to new evidence? How do we give a man/woman years back after they were put in prison wrongly? How do we tell a woman whose husband was put to death for a crime that "Oops, sorry! We fucked up! Better luck next time!"
Just some thoughts for this rainy Monday morning...
The Court overturned the Kansas Supreme Court on technical grounds. Not on the merits of the dealth penalty.
However, Justice Scalia opined in a concurring opinion that "[t]he American people have determined that the good to be derived from capital punishment — in deterrence, and perhaps most of all in the meting out of condign justice for horrible crimes — outweighs the risk of error. It is no proper part of the business of this court, or of its justices, to second-guess that judgment, much less to impugn it before the world ...,"
But I do agree, it was technical.