October 05, 2007
Cruel and unusual punishment
With the U.S. Supreme Court ready to weigh in (yet again) on the latest challenge to the death penalty, one of the guys at Patterico's blog says that every appellate brief on a capital case should begin with the facts of this crime:
A judge sentenced Julian Beltran to death for slitting the throats of his girlfriend and two young daughters.
The estranged boyfriend and father had slain each family member in a fit of rage at their Sun Valley home in 2002. He then fled from the nearly decapitated remains, dialed 911 in a cry of remorse and begged to end his life in a “suicide by cop.”
It was on Jan. 23, 2002, that 200-pound Beltran, upset over the breakup of his family, returned home after a three-month separation.
Prosecutors argued that he’d bought a knife, beat Barahona and slashed her throat as she watched TV, nearly cutting off her head. Then, they said, he marched into the bedroom to kill his daughters.
Marissa, who was awake, suffered 14 knife wounds and four 9-inch cuts to her neck.
Her 22-pound sister likely died in her sleep, her throat sliced from ear to ear, two weeks before her 2nd birthday.
A bloody handprint, left by Marissa, hung on the wall above her bed.
Deputy District Attorney Andrea Thompson said it was because of the heinous stabbing of the children that Beltran deserved the death penalty.
“Nothing can overcome what that child went through, nothing,” co-prosecutor Rose de Mattia told the judge. “The kid fought for her life against her father - the man who loved her, who was supposed to protect her.
“He murdered her, and she knew it.”
Death penalty opponents want us to halt executions because the condemned killers experience some fear and pain.
Well, I hope they do -- a prelude to an eternity of agony, if one believes in the concept of Hell.
These impassioned pleas for mercy on behalf of cold-blooded murderers who have shown no such concern for their victims betrays an appalling lack of compassion for the actual victims, those who have no voice -- perhaps because scum like Beltran slit their throats or nearly cut their heads off.
In the comments on Patterico's site comes this brilliant suggestion, already vetted by liberal opponents to the death penalty:
We have, from the Teri Schiavo case, testimony that dying of dehydration is painless.
Indeed. We could humanely starve and dehydrate death row prisoners. Humanely because liberals assure us this is painless. Brilliant.
It's all bullshit, this concern over lethal injection being "cruel and unusual." Know how I know this? Ask anyone raising the issue as a justification for halting executions, "What method would you find acceptable?"
There isn't one, which makes this line of attack disingenuous in the extreme.
If we wanted to make it quick, painless and foolproof, we'd give the condemned a Quaalude and send him to the guillotine, or take a lesson from that workers' paradise, Communist China, where they spend less than 10 cents and put a bullet in the back of the corrupt politician's head.
Too bloody? It's still a better death than the one Marissa got.
Posted by Mike Lief at October 5, 2007 08:53 AM
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Comments
When the Constitution was authored, death by hanging (and I believe the firing squad) were common forms of execution. Clearly, both are Constitutional for any strict constructionist. The Constitution is no more than a negotiated agreement, a contract between various jurisdictional entities. Rights were negotiated, delineated and ratified by vote. Our forefathers were also wise enough to leave us a set of instructions by which the Constitution could be amended. The very notion of judicial activism would have been repulsive to them.
The lethal injection argument highlights the dangers that judicial activists pose to a Republic. If something doesn't feel right to them, they merely reinterpret the Constitution and discover a binding principle of law that the rest of us must live by. In no uncertain terms, this is a form of tyranny and a blatant subversion of representative government.
Let's give Beltran a Constitutional death by hanging him upon the 'morrow.
Posted by: Bill H. at October 6, 2007 06:26 AM
What I find ironic is that everyone who dies from natural causes will experience more pain than these idiots on death row will ever feel even if the sodium thiopental didn't work (and it does).
Posted by: sam at October 6, 2007 04:52 PM