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| Death Penalty by whatever name |
Edited by Carolyn Bennett
“The question does the system accurately, consistently
determine which defendants ‘deserve’ to die can … [never] be answered in the
affirmative.”
Capital Punishment USA
“
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| Brennan |
Death is not only an unusually severe punishment, unusual in
its pain, in its finality and in its enormity; but it serves no penal purpose
more effectively than a less severe punishment. Therefore, the principle
inherent in the clause that prohibits pointless infliction of excessive
punishment when less severe punishment can adequately achieve the same purposes
invalidates the punishment” [William J. Brennan]
Justice Brennan
William Joseph Brennan Jr. (b. April 25, 1906 – d. July 24,
1997), appointed by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, served on the Supreme
Court of the United States from 1956 until 1990. He was known for “outspoken
progressive views.” Justice Brennan authored
landmark case opinions including “Baker v. Carr establishing the ‘one person,
one vote’ principle; New York Times Co. v. Sullivan that required ‘actual
malice’ in a libel suit against those deemed ‘public figures.’ He has been described
as historically one of the Court’s “most influential members.”
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| US Constitution a Work in Progress |
“
|
The government … devised [by the drafters of the
Constitution of the United States] was defective from the start, requiring
several amendments, a civil war, and major social transformations to attain the
system of constitutional government and its respect for the freedoms and
individual rights we hold as fundamental today.…
“Some may more quietly commemorate the suffering, struggle,
and sacrifice that triumphed over much of what was wrong with the original
document, and observe the anniversary with hopes not realized and promises not
fulfilled.
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| Supreme Court of the United States |
“I plan to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution as
a living document, including the Bill of Rights and the other amendments
protecting individual freedoms and human rights.” [Thurgood Marshall on the
occasion of U.S. Constitution’s bicentennial (1987)]
Justice
Marshall
Marshall had a long record of strong support for U.S. Constitutional
protection of human rights and the two justices, Marshall and Brennan, were allies on the High Court
in opposing the death penalty.
Brennan and Marshall concluded in Furman v. Georgia that the
death penalty was, in all circumstances, unconstitutional, and never accepted
the legitimacy of Gregg v. Georgia, which ruled four years later that the death
penalty was constitutional in some circumstances.
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| Marshall |
Thurgood Marshall (b. July 2, 1908 – d. January 24, 1993),
appointed by US President Lyndon Baines Johnson, served on the Supreme Court of
the United States from October 1967 until October 1991. Before coming to the high Court Marshall was a
lawyer who was best known for his high success rate in arguing before the
Supreme Court and for the victory in Brown v. Board of Education, a decision
that desegregated public schools. He served on the United States Court of
Appeals for the Second Circuit (appointed by President John F. Kennedy) and
then as U.S. Solicitor General (appointed by President Johnson)
“
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Those who wrote the Eighth Amendment knew what price their
forebears had paid for a system based, not on equal justice, but on
discrimination.
“In those days the target was not the blacks or the poor,
but the dissenters, those who opposed absolutism in government, who struggled
for a parliamentary regime, and who opposed governments’ recurring efforts to
foist a particular religion on the people. Id., at 155-163.
“But the tool of capital punishment was used with vengeance
against the opposition and those unpopular with the regime. One cannot read
this history without realizing that the desire for equality was reflected in
the ban against ‘cruel and unusual punishments’ contained in the Eighth Amendment.
“In a Nation committed to equal protection of the laws,
there is no permissible ‘caste’ aspect of law enforcement. Yet we know that the
discretion of judges and juries in imposing the death penalty enables the
penalty to be selectively applied, feeding prejudices against the accused if he
is poor and despised, and lacking political clout, or if he is a member of a
suspect or unpopular minority, and saving those who by social position may be
in a more protected position.
“In ancient Hindu law, a Brahman was exempt from capital
punishment, and under that law, ‘generally, in the law books, punishment
increased in severity as social status diminished.’ We have, I fear, taken in
practice the same position, partially as a result of making the death penalty discretionary
and partially as a result of the ability of the rich to purchase the services
of the most respected and most resourceful legal talent in the Nation.
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| White |
“The high service rendered by the ‘cruel and unusual’ punishment
clause of the Eighth Amendment is to require legislatures to write penal laws
that are evenhanded, non-selective, and non-arbitrary, and to require judges to
see to it that general laws are not applied sparsely, selectively, and spottily
to unpopular groups.” [U.S. Supreme Court FURMAN v. GEORGIA, 408 U.S. 238
(1972) 408 U.S. 238
Justice
White
Byron Raymond White (b. June 8, 1917 – d. April 15, 2002), appointed
by US President John F. Kennedy, served on the Supreme Court of the United
States from 1962 until 1993. White took a middle course on the issue of the death
penalty – though he was not against the death penalty in all forms – and “was
one of five justices who voted in Furman v. Georgia (1972) to strike down
several state capital punishment statutes, voicing concern over the arbitrary
nature in which the death penalty was administered. The Furman decision ended
capital punishment in the United States until 1977.”
“
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I think this country would be much better off if we did not
have capital punishment.”
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| Stevens |
“Arbitrariness in the imposition of the death penalty is
exactly the type of thing the Constitution prohibits, as Justice Lewis Powell,
Justice Potter Stewart, and I explained in our joint opinion in Gregg v.
Georgia (1976). … Today one of the sources of such arbitrariness is the
decision of state prosecutors—which is not subject to review—to seek a sentence
of death. It is a discretionary call that may be influenced by the prosecutor’s
estimate of the impact of his decision on his chances for reelection or for
election to higher office.” [Justice John Paul Stevens]
Justice
Stevens
John Paul Stevens (b. April 20, 1920), appointed by US
President Gerald Ford, served on the Supreme Court of the United States from
December 19, 1975, until June 29, 2010. During his tenure, Stevens served with
three Chief Justices: Warren E. Burger, William Rehnquist, and John G. Roberts.
“
|
I yield to no one in the depth of my distaste, antipathy,
and, indeed, abhorrence, for the death penalty, with all its aspects of
physical distress and fear and of moral judgment exercised by finite minds.
“… Even if we can feel confident that these actors will
fulfill their roles to the best of their human ability, our collective
conscience will remain uneasy. Twenty years have passed since this Court
declared that the death penalty must be imposed fairly, and with reasonable
consistency, or not at all, […] and despite the effort of the States and courts
to devise legal formulas and procedural rules to meet this daunting challenge,
the death penalty remains fraught with arbitrariness, discrimination, caprice,
and mistake.”
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| Blackmun |
[After many years’ trying] “…to develop procedural and
substantive rules that would lend more than the mere appearance of fairness to
the death penalty endeavor,” he resolves, “From this day forward, I no longer
shall tinker with the machinery of death.…
It
is virtually self-evident to me now that no combination of procedural rules or
substantive regulations ever can save the death penalty from its inherent
constitutional deficiencies.
The
basic question—does the system accurately and consistently determine which
defendants ‘deserve’ to die?—cannot be answered in the affirmative.
Justice
Blackmun
Harold Andrew Blackmun (b. November 12, 1908 – d. March 4,
1999), appointed by US President Richard Nixon, served on the Supreme Court of
the United States from 1970 until 1994.
Sources and notes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Brennan,_Jr.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=408&invol=238#f158
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurgood_Marshall
FURMAN v. GEORGIA CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF GEORGIA
No. 69-5003 Argued January 17, 1972, Decided June 29, 1972: Mr. Justice
Douglas, Mr. Justice Brennan, Mr. Justice Stewart, Mr. Justice White, and Mr.
Justice Marshall have filed separate opinions in support of the judgments.]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_White
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paul_Stevens
“Tinkering with the Machinery of Death: The Evolving
Jurisprudence of Justice Harry Blackmun” – Justice Harry Blackmun’s long
struggle to reconcile his concern for the individual, his respect for
legislative and judicial process, and his awareness of the fallibility of
individuals and institutions formed a jurisprudence that continues to instruct”
by Melissa M. Weldon and Paul M. Shapiro, article posted February 7, 2013, http://mnbenchbar.com/2013/02/tinkering-with-the-machinery-of-death/
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES No. 93-7054 BRUCE EDWIN
CALLINS, PETITIONER v. JAMES A. COLLINS, DIRECTOR, TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF CRIMINAL
JUSTICE, INSTITUTIONAL DIVISION on petition for writ of certiorari to the
united states court of appeals for the fifth circuit [February 22, 1994] Justice
Blackmun , dissenting.
“On February 23, 1994, at approximately 1:00 a.m., Bruce
Edwin Callins will be executed by the State of Texas. Intravenous tubes
attached to his arms will carry the instrument of death, a toxic fluid designed
specifically for the purpose of killing human beings. The witnesses, standing a
few feet away, will behold Callins, no longer a defendant, an appellant, or a
petitioner, but a man, strapped to a gurney, and seconds away from extinction.”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/93-7054.ZA1.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Blackmun
______________________________________________________A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora
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