Gorsuch just handed down the most bloodthirsty and cruel death penalty opinion of the modern era
Bucklew lost any realistic chance of prevailing in 2015, when a 5-4 Supreme Court handed down its decision in Glossip v. Gross. That decision held that the death penalty enjoys a kind of super-legal status that protects it even from private citizens who refuse to be complicit in executions.
Glossip arose after manufacturers of drugs commonly used in executions refused to sell those drugs to states that wished to use them to kill someone. As a result, many states turned to painkillers of questionable reliability which, in Justice Elena Kagan’s words, left death row inmates with “the feeling of being burned alive.” The inmates behind Glossip alleged that such a torturous death amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.
This argument, however, garnered no sympathy from the Supreme Court’s conservative majority. Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the Glossip opinion, dismissed the drug companies’ refusal to be complicit in executions as a “guerrilla war against the death penalty.” His opinion held that “because it is settled that capital punishment is constitutional, ‘[i]t necessarily follows that there must be a [constitutional] means of carrying it out.’” And thus the mere fact that an inmate would experience excruciating pain during his execution was not enough to prevent that execution.
The burden, instead, fell upon the inmate to propose a different method of execution that would be less painful. Thus, death row inmates and their lawyers were conscripted into the task of determining how they would be killed — and failure to do so could be punished with torture.
Much of Gorsuch’s opinion in Bucklew fleshes out the burden these inmates face, often in gruesome detail. Bucklew’s proposed alternative method of execution — asphyxiation by nitrogen gas — is insufficient, according to the opinion.
Dammit, I try to lay off the guillotine jokes but for this I gotta ask Is the guillotine too kind for these people?
My empathy muscles were working to make me understand the logic of the majority and not be too outraged… until I got to the part about “ The burden, instead, fell upon the inmate to propose a different method of execution that would be less painful. “
Even Kafka could not imagine the majesty of the current Supreme Court.
His opinion held that “because it is settled that capital punishment is constitutional, ‘[i]t necessarily follows that there must be a [constitutional] means of carrying it out.’”
that’s, uh, quite a principle and i’m a little bit terrified to see where it will be applied next
Like I guess that’s technically true alone, but his corollary to his argument is essentially that ANYTHING is a constitutional means.
I mean solving the halting problem is definitely constitutional, therefore it follows that there must be a means of carrying it out
I mean, sure. There’s a constitutional means of carrying it out. Just summon Laplace’s Demon and bind it to tell you whether the thing halts or not.
Any difficulty you have doing this is unrelated to the constitutionality of the exercise.