Sound the alarm!! It is matter of great concern!! Our country is being taken from us!!
What? The death penalty unconstitutional? The Dickens you say?
“A state district judge in Houston has granted a portion of a pretrial motion declaring the death penalty unconstitutional, a decision the Texas attorney general called “an act of unabashed judicial activism.”
“Judicial activism” is code the compassionate conservative religiosities use to mean anyone not hateful, not mean-spirited, not racist, not homophobic---you know in other words, “liberal.”
In the case at bar, defendant John Edward Green, Jr. is accused of “fatally shooting a Houston woman and wounding her sister on June 16, 2008.”
The facts in death penalty cases are seldom pretty or pleasant. If we become wrapped around that axel we do not get to the question at bar nor the issue raised by the defense.
The question is as Green’s attorneys argue whether or not the “law providing for the procedures surrounding instructions to a jury in the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure violate the Eighth and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment and guaranteeing the right of due process.” If illegal then it violates the constitution.
Judge Kevin Fine found the statute in question violates due process guaranteed by the Constitution.
Not to put too fine a point on it the judge stated in his ruling that “it is safe to assume innocent people have been executed.”
In Texas Red that is both an understatement and a given.
The state’s “official” Inquisition Team immediately went into sound bite mode.
“Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott offered to help the district attorney appeal Fine’s decision, which Abbott said ignored U.S. Supreme Court precedent.” Adding, “We regret that the court’s legally baseless order unnecessarily delays justice and closure for the victim’s family including her two children, who witnessed their mother’s brutal murder,”
“Gov. Rick Perry joined Abbott and District Attorney Patricia Lykos in slamming Fine’s ruling. “Like the vast majority of Texans, I support the death penalty as a fitting and constitutional punishment for the most heinous crimes,” Perry said. “This is a clear violation of public trust and I fully support the Harris County District Attorney’s decision to pursue all remedies.”
Of course Perry being a paragon of all that is good and right would be unlikely to say anything else. (See: Willingham)
We all know that without killing someone in reaction to a violent crime means there can be no justice or closure. If I’m not mistaken it is one of Christianity’s central themes. Lest the compassionate conservative religiosities send out a hit squad as religiosities of all stripes like to do I’m being facetious about collective murder being Christ-like. Of course going by what we see and hear the religiosities say we’d never know it.
The gist of the issue is that when people say the death penalty is legal and that all they want is justice they are not speaking accurately. What those people really want is not justice they want “revenge.”
The history of the death penalty in the world (and this republic as well) is as tempestuous as the history of nature and this planet---that is to say violent, unpredictable and extremely outrageous.
Don't forget that in 1972 (Furman vs Georgia) the supremes ruled the death penalty to be "cruel and unusual punishment." The high court found the "statutes" as written in that case were unconstitutional. So the compassionate, conservative religiosities around the country immediately began looking for ways to constitutionally kill as a state and nation. It didn't take long.
In 1977 not quite five years after Furman vs Georgia a case made it to the supremes that was found legally sufficient. Compassionate conservative religiosities around the nation breathed a sigh of relief, rejoiced---they could legally kill again! Just as god intended!!! In 1982 ten years after Furman the first lethal injection murder was committed by the nation---and yes you guessed it---in Texas.
The majority in Texas Red are a hateful lot. Our prisons are little more than an extension of our apartheid education system. No one in prison is rehabilitated.
When a person is released from prison they are almost always worse people than when they went in.
Our core systems fail the most vulnerable of our citizens.
When the Green case is appealed by the state, the supremes as presently constituted---that is rightwing, goper activists aka majority compassionate conservative religiosities who want nothing more than to allow compassionate conservatives to collectively kill someone---almost anyone---and culpability is of little consideration they will likely rule in favor of the death penalty regardless of the Constitutionality of the law in question.
Once again this calls to mind the writings of James Madison in the Federalist Papers in which he stated that majority rule is tyranny by majority.
In the history of this nation the majority population have believed slavery a good thing, a good public education for “whites only” (that goes for lunch counters, drinking fountains, restrooms and etc).
Ours is likely an unmendable misfortune.
More: Houston judge declares death penalty unconstitutional
History of the death penalty
George Carlin: Prisons
Innocence Project
Trial by Fire: Did Texas Execute an Innocent Man?
America's Apartheid Public Education System
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