Retired Supreme Court judge John Paul Stevens is now making explicit his belief the death penalty should be abolished. In his new book Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution, he writes that the Eighth Amendment should be amended to read: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments such as the death penalty inflicted.”
Stevens words run contrary to his own behavior on the Supreme Court, in which he upheld the capital punishment sentences for hundreds of inmates and also supported looser lethal injection standards. Read more at The Atlantic.
{Andy Heller-Matzav.com Newscenter}
Applaudable: refusing to legislate from the bench even when contrary to one’s political beliefs.
I agree! Death penalty has not been a deterrent and has nothing to do with the Jewish view of the death penalty which is almost impossible to carry. Some Judges in the American legal system want to look strong on crime and will do what is politically convenient instead of Justice.
Interrsting to see that the article links to a rabid liberal site. On worthy of Charlie Hall. It prides itself on its self constructed alternate reality.
Goyim don’t have to adhere to the rules of the sanhedrin to carry out capital punishment. According to the Rambam, for a goy to execute another goy for violating one of the sheva mizvos b’nei noach, all you need is one judge and one witness. Not only that, but he says that if a goy sees another goy violate one of the sheva mitzvos, and fails to execute him, that goy is chayav misah because he violate the mitzva of dinim.
“Some Judges in the American legal system want to look strong on crime and will do what is politically convenient instead of Justice.”
In some cases the judges have their hands tied because of the sentencing system enacted in the 1980s under Reagan. Rubashkin’s 27 year sentence was one product of those guidelines.
Nevertheless it should be noted that the last President to appoint federal judges who were sympathetic to the rights of criminal defendants was Jimmy Carter. One product of this packing of the courts by Law and Order Presidents Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, and Obama is that Jonathan Pollard can’t appeal his sentence because his lawyer at the time committed an error by not filing a notice of appeal on time. I had hoped that Obama would change things but he has not, and now he can’t get any appointments through the Senate anyway.