The Supreme Court Allowed A Man To Be Executed, Then They Took His Case

[Kelvin Mace]

Source: Think Progress

Just over a week ago, the Supreme Court denied a stay of execution to an Oklahoma inmate named Charles Warner over the dissent of the Court’s four more liberal members. According to Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent, the drug cocktail that Oklahoma planned to use on Warner was too likely to result in the “needless infliction of severe pain” to be permissible under the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments. Sotomayor, however, only garnered four votes for her position, and she needed five to halt the execution.

Nevertheless, on Friday, just over a week after Warner received a fatal dose of the poisonous cocktail Sotomayor criticized in her opinion, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear Warner’s case after all.

Under normal circumstances, Warner’s death would moot his case. Subject only to narrow exceptions, the Supreme Court only has jurisdiction over cases where a decision in a particularly party’s favor is likely to redress an injury that party experienced. And the justices only have the power to destroy life. They do not have the power to resurrect the dead.

Warner, however, is one of four death row inmates who challenged the use of a potentially unreliable sedative that may allow inmates to experience considerable pain during their executions. The other three, at least as of this writing, are still alive.

Read more: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/01/26/3615214/supreme-court-allows-oklahoma-execute-man-decide-take-case/

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Just a note to the Pope: If ever some Catholics needed excommunication...

This is evil AND malicious.

[Fearless]

1. I wonder if the conservative justices realize

That they are each directly responsible for someone dying. Guilty or not guilty, they have killed a person for political reasons.

Is this a quality we want in justices?

[edhopper]

9. They know

they just don't care.

[Grins]

12. All executions are political N/M

[Jack Rabbit]

2. They took the case?

Do you mean it isn't moot, as least as far as the late Mr. Warner is concerned?

[former9thward]

4. There are three other cases making the same challenge.

So it is not moot for them.

[herding cats]

13. It only takes four justices to accept hearing a case.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan all are on record as dissenting, so I'm going to bet they brought it forward. Our five radical conservative justices will probably vote it down, though.

[mahannah]

3. “Needless infliction of severe pain” ...is there ever a need?

[NutmegYankee]

17. Sometimes in medical care there is. nt

[JDDavis]

5. For a time in the 1900's the Supremes had ruled death penalty was "cruel and unusual"

Can anyone fill me in on the details? My mind isn't as sharp as it used to be.

When was that? Who was on the Supreme Court then?

How and why was that overrulled by a later court?

I could and might Google all this if there's not some learned person out there who will answer this, but I'm just really curious how the USA Supreme Court could reverse itself on issues of life and death.

I lived for a few years in two countries that have no death penalty. Of course, they don't have many guns there either, but no one seems to be campaigning there for the reinstatement of the death penalty.

[Kelvin Mace]

6. Here you go

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_United_States#Suspension_by_the_Supreme_Court

[JDDavis]

11. Thanks, so it was just "suspended"

Capital punishment was suspended in the United States from 1972 through 1976 primarily as a result of the Supreme Court's decision in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972). The last pre-Furman execution was that of Luis Monge on June 2, 1967. In this case, the court found that the death penalty was being imposed in an unconstitutional manner, on the grounds of cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Supreme Court has never ruled the death penalty to be per se unconstitutional.
In Furman, the Supreme Court considered a group of consolidated cases. The lead case involved an individual convicted under Georgia's death penalty statute, which featured a "unitary trial" procedure in which the jury was asked to return a verdict of guilt or innocence and, simultaneously, determine whether the defendant would be punished by death or life imprisonment.
In a five-to-four decision, the Supreme Court struck down the impositions of the death penalty in each of the consolidated cases as unconstitutional. The five justices in the majority did not produce a common opinion or rationale for their decision, however, and agreed only on a short statement announcing the result. The narrowest opinions, those of Byron White and Potter Stewart, expressed generalized concerns about the inconsistent application of the death penalty across a variety of cases but did not exclude the possibility of a constitutional death penalty law. Stewart and William O. Douglas worried explicitly about racial discrimination in enforcement of the death penalty. Thurgood Marshall and William J. Brennan, Jr. expressed the opinion that the death penalty was proscribed absolutely by the Eighth Amendment as "cruel and unusual" punishment.

[happyslug]

7. Some Comments on Excommunications

Last edited Mon Jan 26, 2015, 09:34 PM - Edit history (1)

First, it is only done if it can do some good. For example, in 1937 Pope Pius XI sent a letter to the German Catholic priest to be read in mass. The letter attack Nazism, but avoided using the world Nazi, Hitler, National Socialism etc. The reason for this was the Vatican still had to deal with the Nazis and you can NOT deal with someone you will NOT listen to you at all, thus a bridge was left up so that the evils that the Nazis were embracing could be addressed IF AND WHEN the people of Germany demanded them to be embraced.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mit_brennender_Sorge

8. Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community - however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things - whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.”

11. None but superficial minds could stumble into concepts of a national God, of a national religion; or attempt to lock within the frontiers of a single people, within the narrow limits of a single race, God, the Creator of the universe, King and Legislator of all nations before whose immensity they are "as a drop of a bucket

http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_14031937_mit-brennender-sorge.html

Thus Pius Xi decided NOT to excommunicate Hitler (Who had been raised Catholic) but to show his opposition in the form of a letter. The letter was to show and support growing opposition to Hitler from 1936-1939 (The main reason Hitler went to war in 1939, was he was losing support among the German people).
http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_14031937_mit-brennender-sorge.html

[Kelvin Mace]

15. The Catholic Church has been quite vocal

directly, and through surrogates, about denying sacraments to "pro-abortion" Catholics. People like Bill Donohue of the Catholic League has been quite vocal defending pedophiles and blaming victims for being molested and raped.

Why aren't Catholics on the Supreme Court held to the same standard on the death penalty that politicians are routinely held to on abortion?

I would like to see just 1/10 of the rage the Church musters against abortion and euthanasia directed at the death penalty and horrible people like Antonin Scalia.

[project_bluebook]

8. And justice for all

if you have a big enough bankroll that is.

[mountain grammy]

10. Would that be the "pro life Catholic" members on the court

who allow the death penalty? Just wanted to clear that up. Hope you're listening, Pope Francis.

[Kelvin Mace]

14. Yep

including "The Constitution is silent on Torture" Scalia.

[Jeff Murdoch]

16. Only "pro life" until you are born,

then you are on your own.

[blkmusclmachine]

18. Sick