Death Row hypocrisy

[asterroc]

Having suffered a heart attack back in September, Allen had asked prison authorities to let him die if he went into cardiac arrest before his execution, a request prison officials said they would not honor.

"At no point are we not going to value the sanctity of life," said prison spokesman Vernell Crittendon. "We would resuscitate him," then execute him.
(CNN/AP)

It took two shots of lethal injection to kill Clarence Ray Allen.

Comments

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

It's like the Texas penal motto: "Respect life or we'll kill you."

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Or the colonial/Puritanical New England law that attempted suicide was to be punished by hanging.

[iresprite.livejournal.com]

I'm glad someone else caught that... honestly, I wonder how much flack the spokesman caught for that.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I guess he could get out on two technicalities: (1) he didn't say the "then execute him" part, that was the AP, and (2) he personally may respect the sanctity of life as it was the jury's decision to execute, not his, and not the jail's.

I have traditionally sat on the fence about the death penalty, but I'm (unLiberally) starting to edge into the anti- camp. Part of it is just how much it costs the state/country to do so, part of it is how the justice system is biased against blacks and Hispanics and the poor, and part is that the few (other) countries in the world that still practice the death penalty are generally pretty poor on human rights.