SCOTUS denies challenge to lethal injection as cruel and unusual punishment
August 18, 2009
In a 5-4 decision on Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States denied a stay to Ohio death-row inmate Jason Getsy. Justices John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy–all Roman Catholics–constituted the majority.
Getsy had asked the nation’s high court Monday to allow him to challenge Ohio’s lethal injection system as cruel and unusual punishment.
Getsy, 33, was sentenced to die for shooting 66-year-old Ann Serafino in 1995 in Hubbard, Ohio, near Youngstown.
In her first SC decision, Judge Sonia Sotamayor voted along with the court’s liberal bloc – Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer – to stop the execution of Getsy, which is to take place today.
Advertisement
7 Comments
Comments are closed.
I’ve got a question that more or less relates to this post. I am essentially opposed to the death penalty in the U.S. It obviously isn’t necessary in the vast majority of cases, and this position seems to be most consistent with recent encyclicals. However, I don’t think that lethal injection is cruel insofar as the death penalty may be warranted. While it should certainly be unusual in the sense of happening rarely if at all, I don’t think that it falls under the status of “cruel and unusual punishment” as intended by the Constitution. As Getsy should not be put to death, I’m not sure where to lean towards in this scenario. Should one vote to prevent the execution on a flimsy basis, or should one vote that the incident in this case is not an example of cruel and unusual punishment, knowing that it will end in someone’s (in my mind) unjustified death?
One problem, of course, is that the terms “Cruel and Unusual Punishment” ought to be defined by the intention of the authors who wrote those words.
But those authors had in mind intentionally gruesome punishments that maim or malnourish or drive to insanity. To the extent that they had in mind execution, they wanted to avoid drawing and quartering and the kind of honey-and-ants nightmares that occupy the darker parts of adolescent boys’ imaginations about torture.
Hanging, in their view, was a perfectly decent form of execution provided it wasn’t botched and therefore killed quickly. Firing squad was also certainly reasonable in the eyes of the authors of the phrase.
How then to transport that understanding to modern times without dishonestly re-interpreting the “framers’ intent” in an anachronistic way?
In general I think the intention was: Quick, Physically Painless or only briefly Physically Painful, and of course without adding Unnecessary Suffering. After that, secondarily, some considerations for leaving the body reasonably intact exist.
In all these areas, I think lethal injection does relatively well.
Excelsior
The intent of the *authors* is actually not terribly relevant. The intent of the *ratifiers* is more relevant, but not verifiable, and the intent of the authors is not a viable proxy therefor. The authors by and large did not employ a drafting process designed to produce lapidary self-evident meanings. The text was treated opportunistically from the get-go.
Well, it’s also true that there have been recent data that indicate that the pain IS excruciating between the first and second injections, but that the victim is not able to say anything to describe it, because he’s been deprived of speech.
Actually why debate any of this as a Catholic? Seems pretty clear that in the CCC whether it’s cruel and unusual that it is nearly impossible to support the death penalty.
David: Exactly.
Thanks Sam… that’s something I wish more Catholics would do on this site… quote the CCC, quote the Encyclicals, quote Social Teaching… lots of great stuff there…