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Sotomayor's dissent in Glossip is a work of art. She just takes apart the District Court's finding of fact piece by piece and then hands it to the majority on their (strange) reliance on Baze (plurality) throughout the opinion. Just a thorough demolishing of the majority. And she has a quick hat-tip to the Breyer/Ginsburg dissent, so maybe there are 2.5 votes there or at the very least she's open to being convinced.
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Jun 29, 2015 17:17
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 Oh gently caress off, I hope you get bone cancer. DeusExMachinima posted:Is there seriously a brutal image of the firing squad here, especially compared to injection screw-ups lately? Americans loving love guns. I loving love me some guns. If I had to choose how to be executed, it'd be a carbon monoxide/nitrogen chamber followed by the honorable Samuel Colt. Keep that electricity and needle poo poo far away from me. There have been research into it, yes, the idea that execution is a "medical procedure" does a lot to make it more publicly palatable instead of seeming barbaric. Three Olives fucked around with this message at 17:27 on Jun 29, 2015 |
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Jun 29, 2015 17:20
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Sub Par posted:Sotomayor's dissent in Glossip is a work of art. She just takes apart the District Court's finding of fact piece by piece and then hands it to the majority on their (strange) reliance on Baze (plurality) throughout the opinion. Just a thorough demolishing of the majority. And she has a quick hat-tip to the Breyer/Ginsburg dissent, so maybe there are 2.5 votes there or at the very least she's open to being convinced. Justice Sotomayor is also, I believe, the only sitting Justice with trial court bench experience (and also the only former prosecutor, if I'm not mistaken). For all of Justice Scalia's talk about a homogenous Court, it's actually very interesting what diverse and pertinent experience many Justices have.
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Jun 29, 2015 17:30
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The sanitizing of executions as a "medical procedure" has always left a bad taste in my mouth, like how the Aktion T4-related stuff painted their executions as therapeutic, or how that magazine spread from ISIS showed how sanitary and medically sound their amputation punishment was.
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Jun 29, 2015 17:33
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I pretty much agree with the death penalty decision, I guess. If we are going to have a death penalty at all, then I don't believe it has to be painless, and its funny to me that there is a way of killing someone that is or is not "cruel and unusual". I don't really have a moral problem with the death penalty either, I oppose it because I do not trust the government to never kill an innocent person and I do not believe there is an effective way to set up a law or procedure to ensure that only guilty people are executed.
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Jun 29, 2015 17:47
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Northjayhawk posted:I pretty much agree with the death penalty decision, I guess. If we are going to have a death penalty at all, then I don't believe it has to be painless, and its funny to me that there is a way of killing someone that is or is not "cruel and unusual". It's confuses me that a person can believe in the concept of "cruel and unusual" at all if they think death somehow cancels it out. Do you really think there's nothing that can intentionally end in death that couldn't be considered cruel?
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Jun 29, 2015 17:56
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GlyphGryph posted:It's confuses me that a person can believe in the concept of "cruel and unusual" at all if they think death somehow cancels it out. The death penalty is constitutional, full stop. In this particular case, that was assumed from the jump (except for Breyer and RBG, I guess), and then you proceed to evaluating whether midazolam is cruel and unusual. Well, OK. I guess if the death penalty is on the table at all, then I don't see how one method or the other is cruel and unusual unless we are talking about something absurd like burning someone to death.
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Jun 29, 2015 18:00
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Northjayhawk posted:The death penalty is constitutional, full stop. In this particular case, that was assumed from the jump (except for Breyer and RBG, I guess), and then you proceed to evaluating whether midazolam is cruel and unusual. It's cruel and unusual because the use of midazolam is likely to succeed at rendering the inmate unconscious but fail at keeping them unconscious after the administration of the next two drugs. The second drug paralyzes the inmate, leaving them unable to indicate that they are no longer under sedation, and the third drug causes searing pain throughout the body for several minutes before inducing death. It's not a requirement that the method of execution be painless, and nobody seriously suggests that it must be. But it can't be unduly painful which this method clearly risks being, especially when compared to other methods that are proven to not suffer from this problem. That the state can't or won't get their hands on the appropriate drugs/methods is plainly not the inmates problem. If a state wants to implement a death penalty system, its is their burden to operate that system in a way that isn't unreasonably cruel. And anyway, this case wasn't even about whether it was cruel per se, it was about whether there was a sufficient finding of fact that it may be unconstitutionally cruel for injunctive relief. They didn't even have to say "it's unconstitutional", just that they had a decent chance to prevail on the merits at trial, which, when you read about the scientific evidence introduced in the District Court, it seems they had a pretty good chance imo. Edit: It's critical to note that the court has previously found that the use of drugs number 2 and 3 on their own without drug number 1 is on its face unconstitutionally cruel. So what we're trying to show here is that using midazolam is tantamout to risking not using drug number 1 at all, rendering the method unconstitutional. Quoting from Sotomayor's dissent: quote:In Baze, it was undisputed that absent a “proper dose of Sub Par fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Jun 29, 2015 |
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Jun 29, 2015 18:11
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Northjayhawk posted:I pretty much agree with the death penalty decision, I guess. If we are going to have a death penalty at all, then I don't believe it has to be painless, and its funny to me that there is a way of killing someone that is or is not "cruel and unusual". Assisted suicide?
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Jun 29, 2015 18:16
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So are the drugs that companies are refusing to provide known to be actually painless, and the lovely stuff we're stuck with now just isn't? If that's the case, there should be legislative solutions.
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Jun 29, 2015 18:20
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Northjayhawk posted:The death penalty is constitutional, full stop. In this particular case, that was assumed from the jump (except for Breyer and RBG, I guess), and then you proceed to evaluating whether midazolam is cruel and unusual. Okay, so you're completely walking back your statement, that's good. You were sounding a bit sociopathic there for a minute! You agree that burning someone to death is likely to constitute a cruel method of execution. Why is that? Is it the pain? If it turned out the pain from a drug cocktail was likely to be just as significant if not moreso than burning someone to death, would you say that said drug cocktail would be "cruel and unusual"? Roughly where do you draw the line - is execution by fire it? Please note that you're actually talking to someone who supports the death penalty, but thinks that you're original statement that there isn't any such thing as a cruel or unusual execution was pretty messed up.
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Jun 29, 2015 18:22
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Javid posted:So are the drugs that companies are refusing to provide known to be actually painless, and the lovely stuff we're stuck with now just isn't? If that's the case, there should be legislative solutions. Basically, yes. The other drugs were specifically created to render a person unconscious and unable to sense pain (and, critically, unconscious enough that they would not regain consciousness in response to extreme stimuli), in the same state that is achieved for medical surgery. The drug in question was not designed for that purpose, and evidence exists that the use of the drug as planned will fail to keep someone unconscious upon the administration of the powerful toxic agents that are actually used to kill the person. To me, it seems the state should produce the drugs on their own if they want to kill someone and they can't buy them on the open market. It will cost a lot of money, which is why they won't do it, but again, I don't see how that's the inmate's problem. Sub Par fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Jun 29, 2015 |
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Jun 29, 2015 18:26
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Sub Par posted:
I think you sum it up nicely. Wish the court had agreed with you. I saw some folks posting about a nitrogen gas chamber. Seriously - why isn't that option used?
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Jun 29, 2015 18:31
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errad posted:I think you sum it up nicely. Wish the court had agreed with you. Oklahoma passed a law allowing nitrogen gas chambers as a backup method, but I think they mostly did that as insurance if this case went against them.
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Jun 29, 2015 18:34
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Yeah I don't get it, i can't imagine you need more than just a mask for N2 asphyxiation. It's not toxic so you don't need to seal it up or anything. Is it "too humane" for people who like the death penalty? Or is it legislative inertia?
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Jun 29, 2015 18:35
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alnilam posted:Yeah I don't get it, i can't imagine you need more than just a mask for N2 asphyxiation. It's not toxic so you don't need to seal it up or anything. Is it "too humane" for people who like the death penalty? Or is it legislative inertia? The legislature authorized "nitrogen hypoxia" as a backup. The use of the term "Gas chamber" was just Huffpo being Huffpo
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Jun 29, 2015 18:39
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The opposition to N2-induced hypoxia is pretty much: 1) It hasn't been tested and so doing it constitutes testing on humans. I think that's a pretty lovely argument. And 2) it is a PR problem (  Goodwin ) to associate ourselves with a "gas chamber", even though this would be nothing like a true "gas chamber". I believe the death penalty should be abolished, but in the event that it cannot be, I think N2-induced hypoxia is probably the best method to implement. Sub Par fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Jun 29, 2015 |
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Jun 29, 2015 18:42
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I think what's usually said about this country's death penalty methods is that they're designed to be humane to the executioner, not the executed.
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Jun 29, 2015 18:50
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There's always the Euthanasia Coaster,
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Jun 29, 2015 18:55
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GlyphGryph posted:you're original statement that there isn't any such thing as a cruel or unusual execution was pretty messed up. Uhhh, no. I did not say that, nor do I see how my words could have been understood that way.
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Jun 29, 2015 18:57
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Sub Par posted:The opposition to N2-induced hypoxia is pretty much: 1) It hasn't been tested and so doing it constitutes testing on humans. I think that's a pretty lovely argument. And 2) it is a PR problem ( The sources directly promoting nitrogen are also suspect (surprise, That One Documentary You Saw with the British MP wasn't any better than other political documentaries). The testing barrier is also a substantial one, and difficult to justify given that there are known, easier to manage drugs. It's difficult for any one state to manage the cost of implementing the testing sufficient to really evaluate the efficacy of nitrogen. Javid posted:So are the drugs that companies are refusing to provide known to be actually painless, and the lovely stuff we're stuck with now just isn't? If that's the case, there should be legislative solutions. The unstated part of that is that the drug companies are "refusing to provide" the drugs due to pressure from anti-death penalty groups. The reason that these botched, horrific capital punishments occur is because the anti-death penalty people stand to benefit in their cause from publicizing them. Talk about realpolitik in action. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Jun 29, 2015 |
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Jun 29, 2015 18:58
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Northjayhawk posted:Uhhh, no. I did not say that, nor do I see how my words could have been understood that way. Northjayhawk posted:If we are going to have a death penalty at all, then I don't believe it has to be painless, and its funny to me that there is a way of killing someone that is or is not "cruel and unusual". I don't honestly know of another way to interpret that, it seems be a denial that there is a cruel and unusual way to execute someone, since you find the concept "funny". I'm sorry if I misunderstood you here, but I still don't know another way to read this. Also, please: GlyphGryph posted:You agree that burning someone to death is likely to constitute a cruel method of execution. Why is that? Is it the pain? If it turned out the pain from a drug cocktail was likely to be just as significant if not moreso than burning someone to death, would you say that said drug cocktail would be "cruel and unusual"?
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Jun 29, 2015 19:01
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Sub Par posted:Basically, yes. The other drugs were specifically created to render a person unconscious and unable to sense pain (and, critically, unconscious enough that they would not regain consciousness in response to extreme stimuli), in the same state that is achieved for medical surgery. Not knowing anything about medicine, why can you not simply drastically up the dosage of Midazolam to increase the state of unconcsiousness?
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Jun 29, 2015 19:03
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The dynamic duo's idea that all capital punishment violates the 8th's prohibition on cruelty is a very politicized joke. Does anyone seriously think a good hangman snapping your neck at the end of the fall or N2 gassing or if we really want to get out there, a rifle caliber headshot, inflict pain? It's like the two justices were looking for a way to say they don't like the death penalty but were pissy the Constitution doesn't care about their personal dislike.
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Jun 29, 2015 19:03
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This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!
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GlyphGryph posted:So am I right in thinking the execution decision is pretty much squarely on the lawyers pushing the case not actually caring about the case in question (regarding the specific drugs and their cruelty) and just using it as an excuse to try and ban executions completely? Their lawyers are trying to save the lives of their clients. Their best avenue to do that was to avoid conceding an execution method and hope that the state's inability to supply one that satisfies the 8th Amendment would do that. Their clients are almost certainly much more into not getting executed and willing to risk a worse execution method in the hopes of not getting executed. alnilam posted:Yeah I don't get it, i can't imagine you need more than just a mask for N2 asphyxiation. It's not toxic so you don't need to seal it up or anything. Is it "too humane" for people who like the death penalty? Or is it legislative inertia? Gas chambers have what might be described as a bit of a bad vibe after the Holocaust, regardless of how humane it is. It's not used because it will be characterized as a gas chamber and people will react to that name.
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Jun 29, 2015 19:04
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Sub Par posted:That the state can't or won't get their hands on the appropriate drugs/methods is plainly not the inmates problem. If a state wants to implement a death penalty system, its is their burden to operate that system in a way that isn't unreasonably cruel. In this case the justices spent quite a bit of time during arguments flat-out saying that they are not going to ignore the fact that the anti-death penalty activists were trying to make it difficult to get more effective drugs and pretend that better drugs are available when they effectively aren't. So, until the effort to withhold those drugs from the states for execution purposes stops, the courts are going to presume for legal purposes that we live a world where they don't exist and this is the best anesthetic.
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Jun 29, 2015 19:05
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DeusExMachinima posted:The dynamic duo's idea that all capital punishment violates the 8th's prohibition on cruelty is a very politicized joke. Does anyone seriously think a good hangman snapping your neck at the end of the fall or N2 gassing or if we really want to get out there, a rifle caliber headshot, inflict pain? Without having read their reasoning, I would venture that they may be thinking of death itself as the cruelty. At least that's what I'd argue if I wanted to claim that capital punishment was unconstitutional.
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Jun 29, 2015 19:05
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DeusExMachinima posted:The dynamic duo's idea that all capital punishment violates the 8th's prohibition on cruelty is a very politicized joke. Does anyone seriously think a good hangman snapping your neck at the end of the fall or N2 gassing or if we really want to get out there, a rifle caliber headshot, inflict pain? I believe 2 of the 3 examples you cite do inflict pain during administration. Nevertheless - is direct physical pain during administration the only measure of cruelty? I don't think so.
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Jun 29, 2015 19:06
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Northjayhawk posted:Probably the same reason why we don't make flu vaccines in America anymore, I assume. The real money is in making the latest and greatest wonder-drug, not wasting time with boring necessary medicine with very small profit margins and no patent protection. If the EU execution ban created a very large demand maybe it would be worth it, but its not like we have hundreds of thousands of prisoners waiting to die. We absolutely make flu vaccine in the US now. After the bird flu pandemic and European government kept all the vaccines overseas, Bush and Congress gave a lot of money to start production plants here. I think HHS still gives money for plants to be flu pandemic ready.
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Jun 29, 2015 19:07
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Northjayhawk posted:In this case the justices spent quite a bit of time during arguments flat-out saying that they are not going to ignore the fact that the anti-death penalty activists were trying to make it difficult to get more effective drugs and pretend that better drugs are available when they effectively aren't. This logic sort of fails when you consider that none of the inmates themselves makes it harder for the state to get the drugs. What makes it hard for the state to get the drugs is the public scorn that attaches to any company that supplies the drugs to the states.
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Jun 29, 2015 19:07
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GlyphGryph posted:I don't honestly know of another way to interpret that, it seems be a denial that there is a cruel and unusual way to execute someone, since you find the concept "funny". I'm sorry if I misunderstood you here, but I still don't know another way to read this. Its just "funny" that we are debating which method of killing a human being is the least cruel. If we have to do that, then obviously there's probably a way to analyze the various available execution methods, but it is still funny. I will say though, that once we cross into being OK with killing someone, then I am more tolerant of pain and discomfort than I would if the question were, say, the best way for police to arrest or detain someone. I might care a great deal about a bruise or an incidental fracture caused by unnecessarily violent arrest of suspect, but if you are strapped down waiting for us to legally kill you, well then hell, gently caress it then, just make sure the pain and suffering isn't too grotesque.
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Jun 29, 2015 19:10
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mdemone posted:Without having read their reasoning, I would venture that they may be thinking of death itself as the cruelty. At least that's what I'd argue if I wanted to claim that capital punishment was unconstitutional. That would be a bad argument (see: all punishment systems developed during the relevant textual period starting from 1689 and going forward, all the SCOTUS cases saying, "um, what? no"). Northjayhawk posted:I will say though, that once we cross into being OK with killing someone, then I am more tolerant of pain and discomfort than I would if the question were, say, the best way for police to arrest or detain someone. I might care a great deal about a bruise or an incidental fracture caused by unnecessarily violent arrest of suspect, but if you are strapped down waiting for us to legally kill you, well then hell, gently caress it then, just make sure the pain and suffering isn't too grotesque. This is de facto effectively expressing a consequentialist perspective on harms or ethics of capital punishment (they're dying, so the concern is harmful externalities), which is now standing in opposition to the anti-death-penalty camp, which consists of a few different flavors of deontological justification (e.g. basic moral principlist (death is wrong, this directly causes death, it is wrong) a half-framed structural consequentialism, (A single innocent being hung is too many because I don't understand Blackstone/abstract numbers), Libertarian (STATE KILLINGS/GENOCIDE IS WRONG, BUY DUCT TAPE)) Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Jun 29, 2015 |
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Jun 29, 2015 19:10
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GlyphGryph posted:Okay, so you're completely walking back your statement, that's good. You were sounding a bit sociopathic there for a minute! This is trivial to answer: execution by fire was specifically created to be a more cruel method of killing someone than the accepted humane methods of the time (hanging, beheading). There's no issue in believing that if execution is permitted then the least cruel method is permitted while also refusing to countenance methods of execution designed to be cruel. I do not agree with the premise - that if executions are constitutional in a certain sense it must be possible to carry them out without it being cruel - but your argument does nothing to attack it.
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Jun 29, 2015 19:11
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Discendo Vox posted:The sources directly promoting nitrogen are also suspect (surprise, That One Documentary You Saw with the British MP wasn't any better than other political documentaries). The testing barrier is also a substantial one, and difficult to justify given that there are known, easier to manage drugs. It's difficult for any one state to manage the cost of implementing the testing sufficient to really evaluate the efficacy of nitrogen. No - anti-death penalty groups are not responsible for using cruel methods to kill somebody. Only the executions are.
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Jun 29, 2015 19:13
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Discendo Vox posted:That would be a bad argument (see: all punishment systems developed during the relevant textual period starting from 1689 and going forward, all the SCOTUS cases saying, "um, what? no"). Welp, that's all I got. So what are Breyer/Ginsburg saying re: 8th amendment?
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Jun 29, 2015 19:14
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evilweasel posted:This is trivial to answer: execution by fire was specifically created to be a more cruel method of killing someone than the accepted humane methods of the time (hanging, beheading). There's no issue in believing that if execution is permitted then the least cruel method is permitted while also refusing to countenance methods of execution designed to be cruel. My argument is that the particular drug cocktail is cruel because it was chosen explicitly over other less cruel methods such as guillotine or nitrous, and against the concept that any form of execution is "not cruel" by virtue of execution itself already being so bad. I think the comparison between burning and particular drug cocktails is useful for this purpose for the exact reasons you just stated, and I'm not entirely sure why you feel the argument is invalid.
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Jun 29, 2015 19:14
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mdemone posted:Welp, that's all I got. This was a bit of a surprise. I think we all suspected there were some justices willing to hear the bigger question, but now we know explicitly that 2 justices want to revisit the underlying issue of whether the death penalty is constitutional. Maybe they have said this before and I hadn't noticed, but I don't remember a recent dissenting opinion saying that executions by any method are probably cruel and unusual.
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Jun 29, 2015 19:16
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DeusExMachinima posted:The dynamic duo's idea that all capital punishment violates the 8th's prohibition on cruelty is a very politicized joke. Does anyone seriously think a good hangman snapping your neck at the end of the fall or N2 gassing or if we really want to get out there, a rifle caliber headshot, inflict pain? "cruel" and "unusual" are culturally relative terms. When the Constitution was written, flogging was acceptable as a punishment and execution was acceptable for non-homicide crimes. Neither of those have been considered constitutional for quite some time now. Cultural norms change.
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Jun 29, 2015 19:16
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GlyphGryph posted:My argument is that the particular drug cocktail is cruel because it was chosen explicitly over other less cruel methods such as guillotine or nitrous, and against the concept that any form of execution is "not cruel" by virtue of execution itself already being so bad. I don't think they have to choose the one method that is somehow determined to be the very least cruel. I suspect there are a few methods of varying pain or cruelty that are all going to be determined by the court to be "good enough". Where that line is exactly is hard to say, but I guess Midazolam is for now "good enough".
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Jun 29, 2015 19:18
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captainblastum posted:No - anti-death penalty groups are not responsible for using cruel methods to kill somebody. Only the executions are. You don't understand causality then.
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Jun 29, 2015 19:19
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