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stella41b -> RE: Contradictory Dogma (3/16/2008 6:41:39 PM)
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Okay.. let me try here.
I see a difference here between principle and law. It can be argued for example that the state should not take the life of any person, and this is a principle. Law is based on principles. However in some states the principle is the state can take the life of someone under special circumstances, and in other states the principle is different.
However as US law is based on English legal tradition, wherein the Bill of Rights was inspired by the Magna Carta, it is also based on what is known as case law.
Case law is is having a 'higher' judicial system, in the American case that of the Supreme Court, both at state and federal level, which serves the same function as the High Court in London. This allows for the law, and principle behind any law, to be changed if a Supreme Court judge decides, on the basis of the specific circumstances of an individual case, whether to make a ruling which changes both the law and principle.
It is having this case law which has changed and shaped the nature of the death penalty in the United States since the early 1970's when many states decided to reinstate the death penalty. There was the temporary abolition of the death penalty in the United States as a result of Furman vs. Georgia 408 US 238 (1972) which ruled on the requirement for a degree of consistency in the application of the death penalty. The US Supreme Court consolidated Jackson vs. Georgia and Branch vs. Texas together with the Furman decision to decide that applying the death penalty for rape was a 'cruel and unusual punishment' under the Eighth Amendment. This started a moratorium on the death penalty in the United States.
This lasted until 1976 and the ruling arising from Gregg vs. Georgia 428 US 153 (1976) which also consolidated Proffitt vs. Florida, Jurek vs. Texas, Woodson vs. North Carolina, and Roberts vs. Louisiana which ruled that the death penalty does not automatically violate the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. But what Gregg vs. Georgia failed to include was mandatory death sentences for offences and this is something that the pro-death penalty supporters remain by and large blissfully unaware of - there is no mandatory death penalty in the US because it is unconstitutional.
There have been a series of American Supreme Court decisions which have limited the use of the death penalty, for example Lockett vs. Ohio with regard to mental illness and mental retardation, Enmund vs. Florida over mitigating and aggravating circumstances, and more recently Provenzano vs. Florida in 2000 which effectively declared that death by electrocution was a cruel and unusual punishment which contravened the Eighth Amendment.
It would be unfair to label the United States as an uncivilized country simply because it has the death penalty (federal) and shows a lack of understanding of the nature of the death penalty in the United States.
To date since 1976 there have been 1,099 executions carried out in the US and all three scheduled executions for this year have been stayed. States such as New Jersey, Illinois, and New York have moved towards abolition. Most of the 1,099 executions carried out have been in the states of Texas, Virginia, Missouri, Florida, and Ohio whereas states such as Nebraska, Mississippi, and Nevada have only executed a couple of dozen prisoners.
However the US justice system is by and large arbitrary and unfair, especially so when it comes to the death penalty and since 1976 over 130 prisoners have been released from Death Row and many more have been executed without their guilt being established 'beyond all reasonable doubt'.
The death penalty is routinely called for by state prosecutors only in three counties in the whole of the United States - in Philadelphia and in both Houston and Harris County in Texas, and overall nationally is only sought in less than 1% of all the 200,000 or so trials involving homicide in the US each year, so it is hardly any sort of deterrent.
What is killing the death penalty is the contradictory requirements of doctors required to attend state executions where the AMA is reminding them that they are required to preserve life. Standing by and witnessing someone being executed and then examining them to ensure that they are dead contradicts this requirement, and states with the death penalty are finding it harder to find doctors prepared to attend executions.
I am against both the death penalty and abortion but legislating for abortion is not as simple as for the death penalty.
I mean, at what point does the fetus cease to become part of its mother's body and in itself become a separate, living human being?
After the moment of conception? Are we then to believe that several cells joined together is a person? Do we adjudge the fetus to be a person only after formation of the brain?
I personally view a fetus as a person on the basis of my belief that a Soul enters the fetus after 8-9 weeks of pregnancy. Therefore although I am against abortion on principle I accept that there can be justified reasons for termination within the first six weeks of pregnancy.
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