Death Row Inmate's Appeal By Adam Lipptak Summary

Why? In “Chronicle of an American Execution”, the author, Dan Barry, describes how a man by the name of Daryl Holton ruthlessly murders his four young children. Why would anyone murder their children? As hard as it is to comprehend, there is a cause, a reason as to why this man killed his kids but there is also an effect, a consequence.

Although inmates are being put to death, their death does not have to be stressful and painful. The inmate serving death-row and facing death may deserve death for their actions, However, a painful death is a cruel punishment and inhumane. The lethal injection drugs should be carefully evaluated by Drug Enforcement Administration and be free of cruelty when being administered to the inmate. Just because someone is going to die anyway, the lethal injection matters on what will be administered. Off market drugs is illegal to obtain when there is not a prescription, therefore, off market drugs should not be allowed for use in a correctional center for death

After reading" Life Sentence" by Christopher Shea, I totally agree with what he is trying to reveal. In the beginning of the reading, Shea mentioned all these “What if” questions to get you thinking before he starts explaining his claim. His claim in this article was that prisons have a greater impact than most people think it does. Prisons don’t just punish criminals during their time, they still punish them even after they’ve paid their time.

The use of midazolam does not violate the 8th amendment. There have only been a few cases that have failed, and we have improved our strategy. Even if the execution takes more than the estimated amount of time, there is not a substantial amount of pain that would be consisered as cruel and unusual punishment. In addition, those being given capital punishment are deprived of life for taking away the lives of others. Opinion of the Court (Justice Samuel A Alito Jr.)

But the Arkansas court issued a death sentence against him and force him medication before the time of his execution on January 2004. Arkansas court puts doctors in dilemma, adhere to their medical oath or criminal law. Regarding to the medical oath, doctors are not allowed to participate in the execution or use of drugs to take people life. Duty’s doctors are helping and treatment of patients not killing the patient. (Eisenberg, 2004).

The issue in this case is whether the imposition of the sentence of death for the crime of murder under the law of Georgia violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. Gregg argued that the sentencing procedure allows for arbitrary grants of mercy that reflects a misinterpretation and ignores the reviewing authority of the Georgia Supreme Court to determine whether each death sentence is proportional to other sentencing for similar crimes. Gregg was pleading for a life sentence instead of death. Georgia argued that the statute did not constitute a cruel and unusual punishment and did not violate the Eighth and Fourteenth amendments. Georgia also argued and proved that there must be specific jury findings as to the circumstances of the crime to determine whether the death sentence was fair for the case.

The most important issue that must be addressed in this case is the principle of the “evolving standards of decency” and the uses of a national consensus. The “evolving standards of decency” were developed by Trop v. Dulles and have been implemented in one way or another in all of the precedents dealing with “cruel and unusual” punishment. It is important to treat these principles as an important aspect of “cruel and unusual” punishment jurisprudence, therefore turning from these set of principles would be foolish and a disregard for every precedent. However, it is important to acknowledge that each case satisfies the standards by using a different method; some use the presence or lack of state legislature as a judgment of consensus while others look at foreign countries.

Texas holds the title for the state with most executions in the United States gaining heavy scrutiny for the use of death penalty. Many are concerned that the death penalty is in direct violation of the 8th amendment of the constitution which forbids the act of cruel and unusual punishment as well as being wrong on a moral level. This becomes a hot button issue when mental illness comes into play as 30% of Texas's incarcerated inmates, have been clients of the state’s mental health system (“Texas Death Penalty”). Andre Lee Thomas is one of those inmates, sentenced to death, but also deemed mentally unstable.

The 8th amendment states that “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted”. Justice Samuel and four other justices conclude that the lethal injection does not cause harm and does not violate the 8th amendment according to this article. “ Testimony from both sides supports the District Court’s conclusion that midazolam(medicine) can render a person insensate to pain” says Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. Justice

On February 14, 2006, a United States district court issued an unprecedented ruling in the execution of murderer Michael Morales. In order to uphold the Constitutions Eighth Amendment against cruel and unusual punishment California was ordered to have a physician, specifically an anesthesiologist, personally supervise the execution by lethal injection to determine the prisoner’s state of consciousness (p101). The American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) strongly opposed this ruling stating that “Physicians are healers not

In that case, the Supreme Court held that prison staff (whether doctors or officers or any others) violated the Eighth Amendment if they were deliberately indifferent to the serious medical needs of prisoners.

The 8th Amendment is stated as simply as this: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fins imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” We do know some things about the history of the phrase “cruel and unusual punishments”. In 169, a full century before the ratification of the United States Constitution, England adopted the Bill of Rights that prohibited “cruell and unusuall punishments”. In 1776, George Mason included a prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments in the Declaration of Rights he drafted for he Commonwealth of Virginia. In 1791, the same prohibition became the central component of the 8th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Transformed: Question #1 Thomas Cahill writes in his book, A Saint on Death Row, about a man that was given the death penalty. Dominique Green was given lethal injection after being convicted of first degree murder. Green had a rough life growing up, and Cahill calls him a “saint” towards the end of his life.

But are we in the future to be prevented from inflicting these punishments because they are cruel? If a more lenient mode of correcting vice and deterring others from the commission of it would be invented, it would be very prudent in the Legislature to adopt it; but until we have some security that this will be done, we ought not to be restrained from making necessary laws by any declaration of this kind’ “ (Bomboy). In other words, Livermore was arguing that all citizens who commit horrible crime do deserve severe punishments for the crimes that they commit, and until the government figures out a way to place restrictions and guidelines on the penalties that we believe are morally proper to give, then they cannot hold back from reprimanding those citizens. Consequently, The Founding Fathers created the Eighth Amendment to be intended for further generations to interpret the meaning of “cruel” and “unusual” over time (Donnell). The amendment was then ratified in 1791 nevertheless, the Eighth Amendment and the death penalty is still highly debated today because the differences in interpretations

This line from the article explains that the court didn’t think it was right to execute minors, but still did it in certain cases. In addition, the court found it unconstitutional to execute other categories of people. The article states,”(The Court had also, in 2002, held it to be a violation of the Eighth Amendment to execute mentally retarded persons.) " This excerpt points out that it is illegal to execute people with mental disabilities. Lastly, the court had to decide whether this case violated the Eighth Amendment.