Merry Christmas. God Bless America.
By Brad Friedman on 12/15/2006, 6:23pm PT  

Good news. It's getting a little harder, at least for the moment, for our government to kill our own citizens. From the AP coverage...

OCALA, Fla. - Gov. Jeb Bush suspended all executions in Florida after a medical examiner said Friday that prison officials botched the insertion of the needles when a convicted killer was put to death earlier this week.
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In Florida, medical examiner Dr. William Hamilton said Wednesday's execution of Angel Nieves Diaz took 34 minutes — twice as long as usual — and required a rare second dose of lethal chemicals because the needles were inserted clear through his veins and into the flesh in his arms. The chemicals are supposed to go into the veins.
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The governor said he wants to ensure the process does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment, as some death penalty foes argued bitterly after Diaz's execution.

No. It's not cruel and unusual. It's very kind and thoughtful. Idiot.

The government in the state of Florida can't seem to get anything right. According to one of the anti-Death Penalty advocates quoted in the story, "Florida has certainly deservedly earned a reputation for being a state that conducts botched executions."

Go ahead and replace "executions" with "elections" (as you probably already have) and the sentence is equally true. Although, as far as we know, nobody's head has caught fire while voting in Florida, as apparently occurred twice during electric-chair executions in the state during the 90's. Lovely.

Meanwhile, good news on the Government Not Murdering Its Own Citizens front in both California, and even Missouri...

Separately, a federal judge in California extended a moratorium on executions in the nation's most populous state, declaring that the state's method of lethal injection violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
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California has been under a capital punishment moratorium since February when [U.S. District Judge Jeremy] Fogel called off the execution of rapist and murderer Michael Morales amid concerns that condemned inmates might suffer excruciating deaths.
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Last month, a federal judge declared unconstitutional Missouri's injection method, which is similar to California's.

Gosh. Perhaps if the state didn't carry out the murder of its own citizens, we wouldn't have to find all these fresh new ways to "constitutionally" put our own people to death. But that's just me. Crazy talk, I guess.

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Article Categories: Florida, California, Missouri, Death Penalty