On Tuesday morning, Tennessee plans to execute Byron Black for the March 1988 murders of Angela Clay and her two children. The killings were motivated by Black’s anger and jealousy over the prospect that Clay, whom he had dated, was going to reconcile with her husband.
A Justia/Verdict essay helps me out by discussing the latest execution. Toss in my time-old opposition to executing people decades (20+ years is a sound dividing line) as Justice Breyer (with Ginsburg; Stevens did so earlier) explained.
Many horrible crimes are motivated by personal grievances. They also provide fewer reasons to execute the offenders. Deterrence is harder, and personal grievance is an emotional impulse that is less aggravating than some other things.
Black is allegedly intellectually disabled (that is, enough to make execution unwarranted), is suffering from many serious ailments, including dementia (another de facto euthanasia execution), and there is evidence that this specific execution would cause a special degree of pain and suffering.
All of those health problems are aggravated by executing someone almost forty years later. I'm not saying we should execute people, but do so sooner. OTOH, we do have something of the worst of both worlds now. This is more euthanasia than execution.
I guess some will say "okay?" Arbitrary euthanasia is a problem, however, even if you support euthanasia.
Black had some final Hail Mary claims, and SCOTUS disposed of them [8/4] all without comment. I continue, especially in cases like this, with notable facts, I am bothered by the Supreme Court saying nothing when they open up the path to taking a life.
ETA: There is clear evidence that the execution was botched. It was quite likely preventable. And, no justice said a bloody word. F that.
Farmer was the first transgender plaintiff known to have a case heard by the Supreme Court, and her lawsuit was the first time that the court addressed the issue of sexual assault in prison. And it laid the groundwork for the landmark Prison Rape Elimination Act in 2003.
A recent article provides an interesting discussion of this 1990s case. For instance, she was a pro se litigant who won the SCOTUS cert lottery. Years after she sort of won her case, she lost on the merits, though key records were "lost," tainting the results.
It is also appreciated that the Supreme Court as a whole respectfully treated a trans person. The majority did not use pronouns, though two concurring opinions (including Blackmun's, who provided the most liberal support of protecting prisoner rights) did use masculine pronouns.
Another issue, which in a better world would have been another Eighth Amendment violation, is her sentence for non-violent offenses:
In 1985, she was arrested and charged in state and federal courts with separate crimes related to the scheme: theft, burglary, and passing bad checks in state court; credit card fraud in federal court. She pleaded guilty, thinking the judge would order her various sentences to run at the same time. He did not. At 21, Farmer was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison, to be followed by 30 years in Maryland state prison.
That's obscene.