Let me see if I’ve got this right:
If a convicted baby rapist murderer is sentenced to the
penalty of death for his crime, and he is slightly more intelligent than an imbecile,
then it is not considered cruel and unusual punishment, and is therefore perfectly
fitting and proper to snuff out his life.
He’s too smart to live.
But if the same baby rapist murderer is slightly less or
just about as intelligent as an ordinary imbecile, then it should be considered
cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment of the Bill of Rights,
and therefore not proper to put him to death.
He’s too dumb to die.
That’s the bizarre conclusion and holding of a 5-4
majority of the nine Justices on the United States Supreme Court this week in
the case of Hall v. Florida.
Actually, they were merely reaffirming their earlier 2002 decision in a similar
case that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments forbid the execution of persons
with intellectual disability.
In other words, if a baby rapist murderer scores higher
on a standard IQ test than a common moron; he doesn’t deserve equal protection
of the law, i.e. the same protections accorded to a dumber baby rapist murderer
by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which forbid
cruel and unusual punishment.
“No legitimate penological purpose is served by executing
the intellectually disabled,” reasoned
the majority. Furthermore, such individuals face “a special risk of wrongful
execution,” said the Court.
But where in the United States Constitution does it say
that dumb defendants must be considered differently than smart defendants when
it comes to punishment for precisely the same criminal conduct?
No where!
If executing dumb people is cruel and unusual punishment
violative of the Eighth Amendment, (and I think it surely is), why isn’t the
same just as true for smarter people?
I think it is. Relative intelligence has nothing to do with
it.
The Court’s reasoning here is plainly manufactured out of
thin air. If intellectually deficient defendants should not be put to death because
it’s cruel and unusual punishment, it only stands to reason that intellectually
sufficient defendants should also be spared the death penalty. After all, every
defendant sentenced to death faces the real risk of wrongful execution.
There is no remedy for a wrongful execution. Death is
final. But our Supreme Court has decided, quite arbitrarily I think, that some of
us are just too smart to live and others too dumb to die.
If a human is too dumb to be executed, then why is the standard punishment for a pet, that habitually bites, death? Surely a dog is less smart than a retarded human.
ReplyDeleteOur judicial system (and government as a whole) is being run by intellectual children, who are driven almost purely by emotion.