Opinions: Logic loses

 published on Thursday, April 17, 2008

As a general rule, death is not something we're fans of. It makes people sad on a heart-breaking level, it is often untimely, it often purges age and wisdom from our world, and it is, in some cases, painful.

To us, viewpoints don't get more logical than that.

They do, however, get much less logical. Case in point, John Paul Stevens' findings on the Supreme Court case Hill v. Crosby — a case involving a particular three-chemical method of lethal injection in Kentucky and whether it qualifies under the Eight Amendment's label of "cruel and unusual punishment" — that was decided Wednesday afternoon.

Stevens is an associate justice on the Supreme Court. The 87-year-old has been on the bench since 1975, and he will be there until his death or his retirement. When it comes to the death penalty, the often-liberal Stevens found it permissible in the Gregg v. Georgia case in 1976, but opposed the usage of the penalty in certain situations — Roper v. Simmons, which rejected death for juvenile lawbreakers, and Atkins v. Virginia, which rejected death for a mentally retarded man.

However, the Gregg case remained his standard — until the Court, including Stevens in the majority decision, ruled 7-2 to uphold the state of Kentucky's utilization of lethal injection on death row inmates.

The odd part of Stevens' decision is that, according to The New York Times, "Stevens, while concurring reluctantly with the judgment of the court, wrote that he now believed capital punishment itself is unconstitutional."

We don't mean to state the obvious, but a rather large part of the job description for Supreme Court justices happens to be disallowing unconstitutional things.

So, um, excuse you, John Paul. What's going on?

Sure, Stevens' changing wouldn't have shifted the decision, but it still would've softened the blow to death penalty opponents — something that is much needed today.

Now, in the wake of this decision that effectively lifts a moratorium on execution, some states are chomping at the bit to get some inmates given their due justice — for a few, Kentucky, Virginia, Texas (of course), Florida, Mississippi and Oklahoma are aboard and poised to inject and, according to Governor Arnold, California will be back, too.

As fans of not death, naturally we're not pleased with the decision either, or capital punishment in general — we mean, come on, not even Russia does it.

But at the very least, even if the penalty must continue, we hope that if someone on the court thinks something is not constitutional, we sure as hell would like him or her to go against that very something, no matter what precedent says.

Because speaking of precedents, ignoring the part of your justice brain that's screaming "unconstitutional" happens to set a very poor one.