Unit 1012 awards the Rayner Goddard Act of Courage Award to Judge
Roy Moore for defending the death penalty.
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Chief Justice Roy
Moore
(Photo: File)
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INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.wnd.com/2007/10/43823/
No right to a painless death penalty
Posted By Judge
Roy Moore On 10/03/2007 @ 1:00 am
When Michael Anthony Taylor kidnapped 15-year-old Ann Harrison while she was waiting for her school
bus, then raped and brutally murdered her,
he didn’t seem to care about the pain and agony she suffered at his hand. But
now that Taylor has been convicted and sentenced to capital punishment by
lethal injection, he’s suddenly concerned with how much pain he might
feel at his deserved death.
Taylor
claims that Missouri’s triple-chemical process of lethal injection exposes him
to a risk that if he is not sufficiently unconscious he could feel pain but be
unable to indicate so. (If this is where I am supposed to feel sorry for
Taylor, I’m sorry, but I don’t.) Taylor argued to the federal courts, and will
soon argue to the Supreme Court, that this chance of pain constitutes “cruel
and unusual punishment” in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
But Taylor obviously knows what it means to inflict cruel and unusual
punishment, and a mere chance of pain is not enough for him to avoid an
immediate execution.
The Supreme
Court’s decision to hear Taylor’s case is already causing other states to
scramble. In Alabama, Gov. Bob Riley, in a knee-jerk reaction, stayed the
execution of Thomas Douglas Arthur, who was supposed to die on Sept. 27 for a
1982 murder-for-hire. Arthur was convicted of shooting Troy Wicker through the
eye as his victim slept. While we will never know whether Wicker suffered pain
in his death, Gov. Riley is changing Alabama’s execution protocol to make sure
murderers like Arthur slip peacefully and painlessly away under the watchful
and monitoring eyes of state doctors and officials.
The Eighth
Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment” was never meant to
preclude the death penalty or pain associated therewith. Hanging, electrocution
and death by firing squad have all been used in our country to carry out capital
punishment. Anti-death penalty activists have successfully convinced
legislatures in recent years to reject such forms of capital punishment in
favor of the seemingly more “humane” method of lethal injection. Now their
latest attack on the death penalty is to oppose even lethal injection on the
basis that the procedure might possibly cause pain.
This slow
and steady march away from capital punishment began when the U.S. Supreme Court
stated in Trop v. Dulles (1958) that the meaning of “cruel and unusual
punishment” can change with “the evolving standards of decency that mark the
progress of a maturing society.” These so-called “evolving standards”
conveniently serve as the beginning of the end of the death penalty for
liberals who feel that “progress” in a “maturing society” is only achieved when
the country is forced to adopt their views (and those of the United Nations)
that capital punishment must be abolished altogether.
The basis
for capital punishment in our law was clearly stated by Sir William Blackstone
in his “Commentaries on the Laws of England” in 1765:
With regard to offences mala in se [inherently wrong], capital punishments are in some instances inflicted by the immediate command of God himself to all mankind; as, in the case of murder, by the precept delivered to Noah … “whoso sheddeth man’s blood … by man shall his blood be shed.”
Our
Founding Fathers recognized in the Fifth Amendment to our Constitution,
ratified with the Eighth Amendment in 1791, that a person may be “deprived of
life” provided they receive “due process of law.” Today, courts in every state
must provide ample safeguards in criminal trials to those charged with a
capital offense.
Unfortunately,
there are some in high places who would like to do away with capital punishment
completely. One of the most outspoken critics of the death penalty is currently
on the U.S. Supreme Court. Senior Associate Justice John Paul Stevens recently
admitted in a New York Times article that, rather than apply the law as it is,
he has tried to narrow the category of offenders who are eligible for the death
penalty. What he and many other judges refuse to admit, however, is that it is
the job of the legislature, and not the courts, to determine how and when
capital punishment ought to be administered.
Because the
nature of man does not change, we will continue to experience man’s inhumanity
to his fellow man. For acts such as those committed by Michael Anthony Taylor
in Missouri and Thomas Douglas Arthur in Alabama, we will continue to need the
death penalty not only as a matter of justice but also as a deterrent to crime.
Those who inflict cruel and painful deaths on their helpless victims have no
right – in the Eighth Amendment or anywhere else in our Constitution – to
demand pain-free punishments for their horrendous crimes.
