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posted by takyon on Sunday December 11 2016, @05:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the deathlock dept.

An Alabama inmate was put to death by lethal injection on Thursday after a deadlocked Supreme Court refused to stay his execution, The Associated Press reported. The inmate, Ronald B. Smith, had been sentenced to death by a judge despite a jury's recommendation of life without parole.

Mr. Smith was convicted in 1995 of murdering Casey Wilson, a convenience store clerk, the previous year. By a vote of 7 to 5, the jury rejected the death penalty and recommended a sentence of life without parole. The judge overrode that recommendation, sentencing Mr. Smith to death.

[...] In January, the Supreme Court struck down Florida's capital sentencing system, which also allowed judicial overrides of jury recommendations of life sentences. "The Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death,"

Should judges be allowed to overrule a jury's decision for sentencing?

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/08/us/politics/alabama-ronald-bert-smith-execution-supreme-court.html?0p19G=c&_r=0


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  • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday December 12 2016, @05:04PM

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Monday December 12 2016, @05:04PM (#440441) Journal

    I find the responses very, very revealing :) Let start with AC first:

    > Male ones are kind of funny, and I'm thankful for less competition, so I can't complain too much... but they are super-icky. Just trying to imagine male homo acts makes me nauseous. I can't think of anything worse actually.

    That right there speaks volumes to me (though not as much as the next one). You can't think of anything worse? Really? Torture, deliberately causing famine, dropping incendiary weapons on people, screwing an entire country's GDP for your own profit, the Holocaust, the Rwandan Genocide, Unit 731, the Rape of Nanjing? These aren't as bad, to you, as two guys making out? Jesus, your priorities are completely skewed.

    > Female ones make me really sad. It's women going to waste. What they do is demented and pointless, but hey, I can understand liking women! No, women going at each other is not a turn-on. It's gross, just not extremely gross.

    Now THIS is the really revealing bit. First of all, shithead, *women are not property.* We are not goods to be traded around, our genitals and reproductive systems are not commodities, and we are every bit the same caliber of moral and intellectual agents men are. In your case, I am quite certain I exceed you on both those qualities by a large margin.

    For Q.C.: Now that's interesting. And weird. I don't have too many straight women friends, but have heard things to this effect before. Won't lie, I'd rather not watch two guys making out either, but that's because I don't even want one, let alone two. On a moral level, of course, I'm with you exactly.

    So...what this tells me about AC (and likely Runaway) is the same thing that old study showing that the "conservative" brain is ruled by its amygdala and its fear/repellence mechanisms says. Notice how they jump *straight* to disgust right off the bat and, in AC's case, the horror at the violation of what they see as a normative paradigm of women as property, i.e., "women going to waste." Don't think I don't notice this daily, when I hear men speaking of "pussy" as some kind of fungible mass noun, as if it comes in bushel baskets at K-Mart or something.

    AC, you don't even think of women as full human beings, I would wager. Sad, but entirely predictable, and as common as empty burger boxes in the storm drain of life :(

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
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