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  • From: "Common Sense Foundation" <david@common-sense.org>
  • To: <common-sense@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Consider This: Cruel and Unusual Punishment
  • Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2006 16:59:17 -0400

Title: Cruel and Unusual Punishment

The COMMON SENSE Foundation

Consider This…

CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT

The national death-penalty debate is focused on North Carolina now. Its a good time to reflect on the moral issues of capital punishment.

The latest stage of the debate centers on pain and suffering. The Constitution forbids cruel and unusual punishment, no matter how we may feel emotionally toward the one being punished.

This fundamental principle has guided Western governments mostly away from hangings and firing squads and toward methods that some call more humane, including gas chambers and lethal injections. The idea all along has been to avoid imposing great pain upon the person being killed.

Yet attorneys have been questioning the gentleness of lethal injections for years, and now the world is finally paying attention. Research shows that it is likely that at least some of those who have been executed have suffered mightily before dying.

The pressure is on the medical profession: Will doctors obey the state law that requires a medical professional present at an execution to ensure unconsciousness and then death, or will they heed their own professional code of ethics that explicitly forbids them from participating?

Barring a last-minute shocker, Willie Brown will be executed at 2am tonight, under the cover of thick darkness, with a doctor and a nurse standing by and pretending that they are not facilitating Browns murder. Its so inhumane youd think it came from a science fiction novel.


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  • Consider This: Cruel and Unusual Punishment, Common Sense Foundation, 04/20/2006

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