The process, not just the execution methods, are a violation to humanity; both to the person we are sentencing to Death, and to ourselves.
As citizens approving of capital punishment we diminish human life's value and we diminish our own personal humanity by participating in a very cruel process and the unnecessary taking of a life. We become the predator.
That may sound too harsh to some, but what do you call it when a captured person who has been rendered defenseless is ceremoniously killed?
What is your definition of confined captivity for years on end facing the promise to be executed?
It doesn't even sound like something we would participate in.
We were all guilty of just such acts when Joseph Wood, Clayton Lockett, Dennis McGuire were killed over the last several months. We are guilty either by agreeing with and upholding the present Death Penalty system, or we are guilty if we stand by in silence as this continues.
There are about 3,200 more human beings living on U.S.A. death rows.
What will you do about it today?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/21/opinion/A-Lifetime-on-Californias-Death-Row.html?_r=0
"The state’s death-penalty system is “so
plagued by inordinate and unpredictable delay,” wrote United States District
Judge Cormac Carney, that it violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and
unusual punishment."
"States including Florida, Alabama and North Carolina have
responded to similar delays by moving to streamline death-row appeals. But
speed is not the point if it comes at the expense of accuracy. As Judge Carney
said, “death is a punishment different in kind from any other,” and so requires
more careful scrutiny than any other.
"That extra scrutiny is “vitally important,” the
judge pointed out: Half of California’s death sentences that were reviewed by a
federal court were eventually vacated."
The cost is too high and a waste of our dollars:
"Capital punishment was ruled unconstitutional by
the state's Supreme Court in 1976, but was reinstated by the state legislature
the following year. Since then, 13 inmates have been executed in California,
most recently Clarence Ray Allen in 2006. An analysis by the Los Angeles Times
found that the state spent $308 million on each execution."
Recent California Ruling Document:
http://www.cacd.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Jones%20v.%20Chappell.pdf
Case No.: CV 09-02158-CJC
ORDER DECLARING
CALIFORNIA’S DEATH PENALTY
SYSTEM UNCONSTITUTIONAL
AND VACATING PETITIONER’S
DEATH SENTENCE
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE: CORMAC J. CARNEY July 16,2014
On April 7, 1995, Petitioner Ernest Dewayne Jones was condemned to death by the
State of California. Nearly two decades later, Mr. Jones remains on California’s Death
Row, awaiting his execution, but with complete uncertainty as to when, or even whether,
it will ever come. Mr. Jones is not alone. Since 1978, when the current death penalty
system was adopted by California voters, over 900 people have been sentenced to death
for their crimes.
p. 1
Of course, the Court’s conclusion should not be understood
to suggest that the
post-conviction review process should be curtailed in favor
of speed over accuracy.
Indeed, it bears noting that in more than half of all cases
in which the federal courts have
reviewed a California inmate’s death sentence on habeas
review, the inmate has been
granted relief from the death sentence. See Appendix A. The
post-conviction review
process is, therefore, vitally important. It serves both the
inmate’s interest in not being
improperly executed, as well as the State’s interest in
ensuring that it does not improperly
execute any individual. Nevertheless, the Court holds that
where the State permits the
post-conviction review process to become so inordinately and
unnecessarily delayed that
only an arbitrarily selected few of those sentenced to death
are executed, the State’s
process violates the Eight Amendment. Fundamental principles
of due process and just
punishment demand that any punishment, let alone the
ultimate one of execution, be
timely and rationally carried out.
p. 26
It has resulted in a system in which arbitrary factors,
rather than legitimate ones
like the nature of the crime or the date of the death
sentence, determine whether an
individual will actually be executed. And it has resulted in
a system that serves no
penological purpose. Such a system is unconstitutional.
Accordingly, the Court hereby
VACATES Mr. Jones’s death sentence.
DATED: July 16, 2014
__________________________________
CORMAC J. CARNEY
UNITED
STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
p.29
Not a partisan issue:
"The George W. Bush-appointed judge disagreed with the common perception that executions have been thwarted by death penalty opponents outside the system, pointing out that the average inmate on Death Row waits three and a half years to get a court-appointed lawyer."
http://www.allgov.com/usa/ca/news/top-stories/federal-judge-strikes-down-already-stalled-california-death-penalty-140717?news=853712
