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"Cruel and Unusual" To Kill Guy on Death Row After 30 Years?
The Supreme Court turned down an appeal Monday from an Arizona man, first sentenced to death in 1977, who says he has been on death row too long to be executed."Yeah, I finally got this cell to just the way I like it....remodeling is a bitch when you have to order all your tiles and grout from the prison canteen!" Joe Clarence Smith Jr. has been sentenced to die three times for his crimes. Smith picked up two teen-age hitchhikers in the Arizona desert, a month apart, and killed them by stuffing their throats with dirt and taping their mouths. He also stabbed them repeatedly. Which, in the warped world view of Mr. Smith and his scumbag lawyers, is not cruel and unusual punishment.... The justices rejected Smith's latest plea to escape Arizona's execution chamber in which he argued that executing him now after so much time on death row would violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Alone among his colleagues, Justice Stephen Breyer said he would have agreed to hear Smith's case. "In my view, Smith can reasonably claim that his execution at this late date would be 'unusual,' " Breyer wrote, explaining his vote. "And whether it is 'cruel' to keep an individual for decades on death row ... raises a serious constitutional question." I thought that the fact that we don't rush to kill someone on death row, but have a long, drawn out, mandated appeals process, was supposed to guarantee their constitutional rights?? I'm so confused.... Smith's first death sentence was thrown out because of a change in Arizona's death penalty statutes. A federal appeals court tossed out second sentence after finding that his lawyers did a poor job at the second sentencing proceeding. In 2004, an Arizona trial court then rejected his claim that he has been on death row too long and sentenced him to death again, a decision upheld by the state Supreme Court. I will give him props for not even bothering with the usual "Ima changed man! I believe in God now!" horsesh*t....but they still need to hook him up..... Posted by: Swamp Blondie 2007-10-16 |
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