When it comes to the death penalty in the United
States of America did you know that if you’re a murderer it pays dividends to
be stupid?
That’s right. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that
subjecting an intellectually disabled murderer to the death penalty amounts to
cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment in the Bill
of Rights. Frying an intellectually abled murderer to death is OK, no problem,
but the lives of stupid murderers must be spared.
“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
This precedent from the
high court doesn’t make any logical legal sense to me. That’s what I concluded
2 ½ years ago in my post: Too Smart to Live;
Too Dumb to Die. There I observed that if
a convicted baby rapist murderer is slightly more intelligent than an imbecile,
it’s perfectly OK to put him to death. He’s too smart to live. But
if he’s somewhat less intelligent, then putting him to death is cruel and
unusual punishment. He’s too dumb to die.
In my humble legal
opinion, the somewhat smarter baby rapist murder is denied equal protection of
the law under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Eighth Amendment doesn’t protect
smart murders, only the dumb ones. Killing the smarter murder is not cruel and
unusual punishment.
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? Nowhere! This is one of the better arguments I can
think of for abolition of the death penalty altogether – it’s way too arbitrarily
applied. There is no remedy for any wrongful execution. Death is final.
Now the high court is poised to reaffirm the very same illogical rule. A majority of the justices last week
appeared ready to side with a man sentenced to death for a 1980 murder who is
challenging how Texas gauges whether a defendant has intellectual disabilities
that would preclude execution. His lawyers argued that a lower court which
upheld his sentence wrongly used an “outdated” 24-year-old definition used in
Texas when it determined he was not intellectually disabled.
The issue is focused on how judges should weigh medical evidence
of intellectual disability. His lawyers said that a lower court found that
Moore’s IQ of 70 was “within the range of mild mental retardation.”
So it looks like the United States Supreme Court once again is going to decide a
serious question of life or death based on something as arbitrary and amorphous
as an IQ score.
When
the death penalty is in question, stupid is definitely an advantage.
I oppose the death penalty because a killing not in self-defense or by accident is murder in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteI disagree, however, because as long as America has the death penalty, it makes no sense to kill someone so "stupid" that they aren't really responsible for their actions. That is why children are murdered when they commit bad acts that an adult who did the same thing would fry on the electric chair.
So, I agree that the death penalty be abolished for all. After all, the "stupid" people and "not so stupid" are still both going to receive the same life sentences.