Deciding to Revive the Electric Chair
The death penalty is a topic that is normally way outside my wheelhouse. But a general lack of media attention to a recent death penalty ruling by the United States Supreme Court has compelled me to speak out. In Nance v Ward, a five-Justice majority ruled that it is allowable for condemned prisoners to bring suit in federal courts alleging that a particular execution method violates the Eighth Amendment (which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment”).?This ruling will allow Michael Nance, a death row inmate in Georgia, to continue to contest in federal courts his sentence of death by lethal injection. If Nance is successful in his suit, the unintended consequences will likely be a mass revival of the electric chair as America's primary means of executing condemned prisoners. Is this a place that we, as a country, really want to go? I urge you to read my recent essay on this topic in Princeton's Ideas and decide for yourself.
Thomas O. Mann
2 年I read the Princeton article: it’s a good argument for the abolition of capital punishment. ??