Lethal Injection Is Legal Under Term Paper

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Like many other of the court's death penalty cases, Roper was a close 5-4 decision of the nine justices (p. 58)."

It is interesting to note that this decision by the Supreme Court concerning the death penalty and individuals under the age of 18 would be consistent with the public opinion today that would find outrageous taking the life of a teenager. In this matter, the Court takes away the right of the state to decide the punishment, saying that the language of the Eighth Amendment as decided by the Court in the case cited above applies to young people who have erred in a horribly bad way, but should not be subjected to death.

Conclusion

It is the Supreme Court that is the final interpretation of the Constitution. To date, it holds that death by lethal injection is not contrary to the language of the Eighth Amendment, and that it rests with the states to impose or not to impose the death penalty. However, the court makes a distinction as to young offenders, whose crimes as adults might result in the imposition of the death by lethal injection penalty. This suggests that the Supreme Court holds out the punishment of adolescents as cruel and unusual when considering a punishment by death, lethal injection or otherwise.

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It does not hold out the same level of repulsion when considering women faced with the death penalty (O'Shea, 1999). The Supreme Court has not acted against executing women as it has with adolescents.

There are many arguments, pros and con, surrounding the death penalty, and as far as the history of penalties goes, perhaps death by lethal injection is the most humane way in which to institutionally destroy a human being. Finally, just because the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the states as concerns the death penalty and lethal injections, does mean that the individual justices all concur or do not have thoughts above and beyond the legalese.

The calculated killing of a human being by the state involves, by its very nature, an absolute denial of the executed person's humanity. The vilest murder does not, in my view, release the state from constitutional restraint on the destruction of human dignity (O'Shea, 1999, p. 1)."

U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan

As a society we might find death by lethal injection legal, but that does not mean that we find it morally comprehensible......

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