Most of you probably saw CNN’s article Tuesday about Dr. Jay Chapman’s having second thoughts about the lethal injection formula he helped develop some 30 years ago which is now used by most all of the states having capital punishment and the death sentence.
That article mentions the University of Miami study last month that indicated lethal injections aren’t always working the way they’re intended, and that the procedure has been ruled unconstitutional in two states-- with another 11 having stopped using it and halting executions. Yesterday, there were articles about New Jersey’s possibly scrapping the death penalty, and North Carolina having filed suit against its medical board for barring doctors from participating in executions on ethical grounds
New Jersey’s judiciary committee, today, will actually be looking at four bills to abolish the death penalty in that state; one that would have the attorney general, rather than county prosecutors, decide whether to seek the death penalty in capital cases; another one which would amend the rules of evidence to bar the death penalty in cases bearing heavily on in-custody informant or single eyewitness testimony; and one which would amend the state’s constitution providing that the “legislature shall not pass any law repealing the death penalty.”
The death penalty itself, though, has never been held to be unconstitutional, and has never been addressed in that determination, apparently. In Furman v. Georgia, back in 1972, separate opinions by Justices Brennan and Marshall called the death penalty unconstitutional, but the overall holding was that specific state statutes were arbitrary and capricious, and therefore unconstitutional.
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