| Recent Posts | About the Author | Navigation |
|---|---|---|
|
|
David is an occasional blogger, software engineer, Nintendo fanboy, liberal, news magazine addict, voracious TiVo user, and bibliophile. He was born in St. Louis, grew up in southern Indiana, and returned to St. Louis to attend Washington University. He hasn't managed to escape yet. He's a fan of free wine tastings, too many tv shows to name, and eating out. David makes his living developing web applications used internally by his employer. He doesn't blog about work because he's heard too many stories about that causing workplace troubles. There's more on the about page. |
|
| Recent Comments | ||
|
|
||
| Recent Photos | ||
|
|
||
26 January 2004 - 2:23 pm
Today the Supreme Court announced that it will hear a case on whether the execution of juveniles is a form of "cruel and unusual" punishment and is therefore banned by the constitution. This comes on the heels of a recent ruling in which the high court banned the execution of the mentally retarded.
The court's four liberal members, John Paul Stevens; Ruth Bader Ginsburg; Steven Breyer; and David Souter, are on as record as opposing the death penalty for juveniles. If a considerable number of conservatives join them in opposing the death penalty, you may be seeing a move by the Rehnquist court to strengthen the argument for the death penalty. By whittling away the grey areas around the death penalty, the high court will be taking away a great deal of momentum from anti-death penalty groups.
On the other side of the coin, this might be the beginning of a process that culminates in the abolition of the death penalty, but I don't find that to be likely. By removing the most questionable aspects of this issue, the court will leave a majority of Americans who either strongly support the death penalty or are no longer outraged by the deaths of those who were either too young or too addled to comprehend their crimes. A final, and in my mind more important, step in this process would be to add more oversight to the death penalty process to ensure that the wrongly convicted are not executed.
Once such a system is in place, it will be very difficult for death penalty opponents to rally supporters to their cause, and the death penalty will be even more firmly entrenched in America than it already is.
So this is the conundrum that death penalty opponents find themselves in: embrace the victory in one battle or hold out for the whole war.
Posted by on 26 January 2004 at 2:23 PM
Comments
This has been quite a series of insightful, original posts. Perhaps too good for a mere blog?
Eventually, the US will abandon the death penalty, perhaps when the Bible Belt starts paying attention to that aspect of the Bible. Maybe not anytime soon, but hopefully in our lifetimes. Until that happens (and I don't think that the executions of the young, mentally ill, and innocent was softening any of those hearts), preventing as mant state-sanctioned deaths as possible sounds like the best possible situation.
Posted by Charlie on 27 January 2004 - 1:00 AM
"[T]oo good for a mere blog?" Nice of you to say so (and I thank you), but certainly not true. Besides, where else would I publish them?
Posted by david on 27 January 2004 - 7:07 PM