Arkansas judge halts 8 executions as inmates challenge law
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — An Arkansas judge on Friday halted the upcoming executions of eight death row inmates, dealing a blow to the state’s efforts to begin putting prisoners to death for the first time in a decade…
Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge Wendell Griffen issued a stay for all eight of the state’s scheduled executions, the first two of which were set for Oct. 21. In a separate filing, he denied most of the state’s request to dismiss the case and said within a few days he would schedule a hearing in the inmates’ ongoing case.
The inmates are challenging a new Arkansas law that allows the state to withhold any information that could publicly identify the manufacturers or sellers of its execution drugs…
READ MORE > Arkansas judge halts 8 executions as inmates challenge law – Yahoo News
COMMENTARY: Keeping secret the drugs used to kill people at executions is an affront to the rights of all citizens worldwide. This issue has nothing to do with the rights of the victims of crime and their grieving families. It has to do with governments keeping secret that which they don’t want the populace to know.
Keeping secret the drugs used to kill people at executions puts the USA in the category of dictator countries. The grieving families gain nothing from this knowledge being withheld from the public. It is a purely political ploy meant to deceive, when transparency in all matters regarding an execution needs to rule.
Although executions by their nature are a cruel and inhumane form of premeditated murder that serve no useful purpose, except revenge, when governments decide to keep secret the process of murder, they are in fact saying that we the people don’t have a right to know. They might as well be chopping heads off in secret, or torturing people to death in secret.
As a free society, if we want the rest of the world to conform to our moral standards, then how does keeping the process of government sanctioned murder a secret square with that?
Secret prisons, secret torture chambers, secret executions – they’re all on the table here.
And why is Arkansas in such a hurry to execute these prisoners anyway? And where did they get these new drugs, when the old drugs caused so many botched executions, resulting in several states banning them?
And why should pharmaceutical companies be in the doctor death business? I find it interesting that these same people who support the death penalty also oppose assisted suicide for people with debilitating diseases in debilitating pain. The pharmaceuticals aren’t developing death drugs for them. Why not?
It seems in both cases that people want other people to suffer, whether it’s by putting those to death who commit heinous crimes, or by making somebody live a torturous life in debilitating pain.
Add to that the many people on death row who were exonerated for their crimes based on DNA evidence proving them innocent, and there should never be a reason to put anybody to death as punishment – especially given that prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges are all agenda oriented, and many corrupt, regardless of whether that’s the policy of the courts or not.
Better to halt all executions than to execute one innocent person.
It’s common knowledge that studies have shown that any satisfaction gleaned from putting somebody to death is fleeting. It’s over, but it’s never truly over. The families grieve forever in one way or another – many ways. Their lives are changed forever. Murdering somebody because they murdered your family isn’t a remedy. All it does is put the murderer label on the government and the murderer label on the families who push for it. You now become like the person who committed the heinous crime – only your process was premediated, calculated and cold-blooded.
That’s not something I would want to live with and I believe that people worldwide are seeing it that way. The USA needs to lead the way, but they’re not doing that. It seems we’re stuck in the Dark Ages and can’t get ourselves out of the age of barbarism. We need to do that. We need to be transparent and we need to question our morality and ethics, and question further what makes us want to make other people suffer – even those who commit no crime, those who only want to die to relieve their unbearable suffering.
HAPPY WHITE HORSE™ 