What's the point of committing suicide...

... when you're going to be executed in 3 days?

I could understand if a painful or degrading execution lay ahead, but this was a man in Cleveland, and he chose hanging himself over the state's fairly compassionate injection method.

Read More

Death penalty for killing an unborn child?

We won't find out in the Ariel Castro case whether it's legal to impose the death penalty for causing the death of a fetus, because he's pleaded guilty and received the sentence of life in prison plus 1,000 years.

After Castro was apprehended, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty said his office intended to seek charges not only for the sexual assaults endured by the victims, but also “each act of aggravated murder he committed by terminating pregnancies.”... Two counts of the indictment are for aggravated murder in the deaths of two unborn babies.

The prosecutor had noted that Ohio law provides for the death penalty for the "most depraved criminals who commit aggravated murder during the course of a kidnapping."

Here's the 2008 U.S. Supreme Court case, Kennedy v. Louisiana, which found the death penalty for rape (even rape of a child) to be unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. No one has been executed in the U.S. for a crime other than murder since the 1960s, though the Kennedy case leaves open the possibility of capital punishment "for other non-homicide crimes, ranging from drug-trafficking to treason."

Also in the news today:

The U.S. Justice Department will not seek the death penalty for U.S. intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, Attorney General Eric Holder wrote to Russian authorities in a letter dated July 23.

That's part of the argument for extradition (and against asylum). None of the current charges against Snowden carry the death penalty, but espionage and treason do.

I suspect we'll never see another case in this country where someone receives the death penalty for anything other than murder (and not including fetal homicide where the mother doesn't also die).

Read More