Wednesday, August 14, 2002

Eleventh Circuit Today's output is just an order refusing, just for procedural and jurisdictional reasons under the statute designed to speed up death cases, even to get to the constitutional merits of whether the Court should stop an execution scheduled for tonight. The issue on the merits wasn't whether to vacate the death sentence; it was only whether to put it off long enough to make the State "take certain measures to minimize the risk of unnecessary pain, suffering and mutilation during the execution process". But, again, procedural rules get in the way of even talking about whether the Constitution requires that relief. I don't know whether the decision was "right" as a matter of the language of the statute and precedents; but it's outrageous to me, even if the decision is "right" in this sense, that we have a set of laws that demands that result.

posted by sam 9:12 PM 0 comments

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