05 NOV 07 / "Cruel and Unusual?"

The Supreme Court of the United States has decided to stay the execution of a Mississippi man and hear a death penalty appeal from Kentucky contending lethal injection constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

On 30 OCT, the high court issued a last minute stay of execution for Earl W. Berry, who is on death row in Mississippi for the murder of a woman 20 years ago. All states are now expected to stay their scheduled executions until the Supreme Court decides the matter in the spring.

At issue is whether the ingredients in the lethal injection provide for a painless death. hundreds of inmates currently on death row believe the lethal injection is not painless.

At the time the Constitution was ratified, hanging was a means of carrying out capital punishment. If that wasn't considered cruel and unusual, lethal injection shouldn't be.

The liberal media are not surprisingly playing the news up for all it's worth with no mention of victims' rights. It's simply irresponsible journalism to not reference the cruel and unusual treatment the murdered people received from their killers. For first degree, cold blooded murders who torture and rape their victims, nothing can be considered cruel and unusual.

In states like California, murderers often wait more than 20 years - a generation - on death row before they are executed. Indeed, some die of natural causes while they are waiting. Executions should almost always be carried out within several years of conviction.

Opponents of the death penalty seek to enact measures to retard the process of carrying out executions. They say that it is not a deterrent to crime. So what? The point of our justice system is not to deter but to punish with imprisonment or death - to ensure it does not happen again. Coddling terrorists and murderers, the United States cannot survive.