The Supreme Court's Conservatives Just Legalized Torture

[Judi Lynn]

The Supreme Court’s Conservatives Just Legalized Torture
In an appalling death penalty opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch just overturned 60 years of precedent.
By MARK JOSEPH STERN

APRIL 01, 20191:14 PM

On Monday, five justices of the Supreme Court authorized Missouri to torture a man to death. In the process, they appear to have overruled decades of Eighth Amendment precedents in a quest to let states impose barbaric punishments, including excruciating executions, on prisoners. The court’s conservative majority has converted a once-fringe view into the law of the land, imperiling dozens of decisions protecting the rights of death row inmates, as well as juvenile offenders. Its ruling signals the end of an Eighth Amendment jurisprudence governed by “civilized standards”—and the beginning of a new, brutal era in American capital punishment.

Russell Bucklew is a death row inmate in Missouri who suffers from a rare medical condition called cavernous hemangioma. Due to this disorder, his body is covered with tumors filled with blood vessels. Tumors in Bucklew’s neck and throat, his lips and uvula, which make it difficult for him to breathe. They are highly sensitive and frequently squirt blood. A medical expert, Dr. Joel Zivot, has testified that if Missouri administers a lethal injection to Bucklew, he will die a slow, agonizing death. His tumors will rupture and fill his mouth with blood, and he will suffocate to death in unbearable pain, choking and convulsing on the gurney as he dies.

To forestall this fate, Bucklew sought to block his execution by lethal injection, arguing that it would violate the Eighth Amendment’s bar against “cruel and unusual punishments.” Under two Supreme Court precedents, Baze v. Rees and Glossip v. Gross, an inmate challenging his method of execution must provide an “available alternative” that will cause less pain.
Bucklew asked to be killed with nitrogen gas so that he can die from “hypoxia,” a lack of oxygen, because his death from hypoxia would be faster than his death from lethal injection.

In Monday’s Bucklew v. Precythe, the court rejected his claim by a 5–4 vote. Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion for the court, however, does much more than condemn Bucklew to a harrowing demise. It also quietly overrules, or at least erodes, more than 60 years of precedents, including several written by Justice Anthony Kennedy. Gorsuch embraced a vision of the Eighth Amendment supported by Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia that has consistently been rejected as dangerously extreme by a majority of the court.

More:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/04/supreme-court-neil-gorsuch-eighth-amendment-death-penalty-torture.html

[zipplewrath]

1. actually, Bush did that

Or more specifically, his AG. People died, and no one went to prison, or even court. The SC is just on board now.

[Freethinker65]

2. They said the death penalty did not need to be painless

Face it, many conservatives enjoy knowing others are suffering. It makes them feel better about their own situations.

They also believe in "an eye for an eye" justice, as long as it is not one of their friends or family.

[customerserviceguy]

3. Fuck him

This piece of shit actually fired a gun at a six-year old child, after killing his father, who was shielding a woman who Bucklew had already assaulted. He then kidnapped and raped the woman.

If Bucklew's medical "condition" has worsened in the twenty-three years since the crime, his case is an argument for applying the death penalty sooner after conviction.