California's death penalty ruled unconstitutional

[Bill the Cat]

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/16/justice/california-death-penalty/index.html?hpt=hp_t4

In ruling California's death penalty unconstitutional, a federal judge said Wednesday the system is so broken it unfairly leaves inmates with uncertain fates -- often for decades.

In his decision, Santa Ana-based Judge Cormac J. Carney vacated the 1995 death sentence of Ernest D. Jones, who petitioned the court to determine whether his death sentence was valid.

Carney wrote: "Allowing this system to continue to threaten Mr. Jones with the slight possibility of death, almost a generation after he was first sentenced, violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. "

© Copyright Original Source

Prohibit the death penalty because it isn't implemented enough??

[tabibito]

Given the nasty side effects on the people charged with the duty of enacting an execution order .... I'm all for any excuse being used to abandon the practice.

[Spartacus]

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/16/justice/california-death-penalty/index.html?hpt=hp_t4

In ruling California's death penalty unconstitutional, a federal judge said Wednesday the system is so broken it unfairly leaves inmates with uncertain fates -- often for decades.

In his decision, Santa Ana-based Judge Cormac J. Carney vacated the 1995 death sentence of Ernest D. Jones, who petitioned the court to determine whether his death sentence was valid.

Carney wrote: "Allowing this system to continue to threaten Mr. Jones with the slight possibility of death, almost a generation after he was first sentenced, violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. "

© Copyright Original Source

Prohibit the death penalty because it isn't implemented enough??

Isn't that what "unusual" means?

[Bill the Cat]

Isn't that what "unusual" means?

No. "Unusual" was included in the Bill of Rights as a redacted form of England's 1689 English Bill of Rights, and specifically the excessive bail clause. The American colonial understanding was that the ban applied to torturous punishments such as pillorying, disemboweling, decapitation, and drawing and quartering. Inasmuch as such punishments were virtually absent in colonial America, Justice Joseph Story in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States believed that "[t]he provision would seem wholly unnecessary in a free government, since it is scarcely possible, that any department of such government should authorize, or justify such atrocious conduct." In 1976, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger declared that the Framers meant to ban only punishments not prescribed by law as well as tortuous punishments, but subsequent decisions have strayed from the historic meaning of the term in what Chief Justice Warren termed "evolving standards of decency". (http://www.heritage.org/constitution...ual-punishment)

[Spartacus]

No. "Unusual" was included in the Bill of Rights as a redacted form of England's 1689 English Bill of Rights, and specifically the excessive bail clause. The American colonial understanding was that the ban applied to torturous punishments such as pillorying, disemboweling, decapitation, and drawing and quartering. Inasmuch as such punishments were virtually absent in colonial America, Justice Joseph Story in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States believed that "[t]he provision would seem wholly unnecessary in a free government, since it is scarcely possible, that any department of such government should authorize, or justify such atrocious conduct." In 1976, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger declared that the Framers meant to ban only punishments not prescribed by law as well as tortuous punishments, but subsequent decisions have strayed from the historic meaning of the term in what Chief Justice Warren termed "evolving standards of decency". (http://www.heritage.org/constitution...ual-punishment)

Fair enough.

[Teallaura]

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/16/justice/california-death-penalty/index.html?hpt=hp_t4

In ruling California's death penalty unconstitutional, a federal judge said Wednesday the system is so broken it unfairly leaves inmates with uncertain fates -- often for decades.

In his decision, Santa Ana-based Judge Cormac J. Carney vacated the 1995 death sentence of Ernest D. Jones, who petitioned the court to determine whether his death sentence was valid.

Carney wrote: "Allowing this system to continue to threaten Mr. Jones with the slight possibility of death, almost a generation after he was first sentenced, violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. "

© Copyright Original Source

Prohibit the death penalty because it isn't implemented enough??

Actually, he's right. If the state is inconsistent it does make the implementation arbitrary and therefore C&U.

I don't think his remedy is correct even though I actually oppose the DP. I can agree to the vacating but the constitutionality isn't really the issue. There were other options the judge should have taken.

[KingsGambit]

I think it's fairly inevitable that some years down the road, SCOTUS will rule it unconstitutional for the entire US, but not with the current court makeup. This course was set into action when the Court considered other nations' practices when prohibiting the execution of people who were 17 at the time of their crimes a few years ago. States that infrequently execute are starting to abandon the death penalty one by one as well. (There's only a few states that do consistently perform executions.)