And He’s a Hypocrite, Besides

From the Washington Post Web site this morning:
Calif. Inmate, 76, Faces Execution Tonight

“By DAVID KRAVETS
“The Associated Press
“Monday, January 16, 2006; 2:23 PM

“SAN FRANCISCO -- A 76-year-old convicted killer - legally blind, nearly deaf and in a wheelchair - tried to stave off execution early Tuesday by arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court that it would be cruel and unusual punishment to put a feeble old man to death.

“Clarence Ray Allen, whose birthday was Monday, was set to die by lethal injection just after midnight. He stood to become the oldest person executed in California - and the second-oldest put to death nationally - since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976.

“Allen raised two claims never before endorsed by the high court: that executing a frail old man would violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and that the 23 years he spent on death row were unconstitutionally cruel as well.

“He was condemned in 1982 for ordering a hit from prison that left three people dead.…”

He was in prison in the first place for having had his son’s girlfriend murdered, just in case she might tell police about a grocery store robbery.

“…The Supreme Court has never set an upper age limit for executions or created an exception for physical illness. But some justices have expressed interest in deciding whether a long stay on death row is indeed unconstitutionally cruel.

“In 20002, Justice Stephen Breyer said in the case of a Florida inmate who spent 27 years in prison: ‘It is fairly asked whether such punishment is both unusual and cruel.’

“Justice Clarence Thomas disagreed, writing that the inmate ‘could long ago have ended his anxieties and uncertainties by submitting to what the people of Florida have deemed him to deserve: execution.…’”

How is execution more cruel and unusual for an old man than for a younger person? And this piece of logic coming from someone whose extended stay on death row was certainly, as is the case in most death row residents, due to his, and his lawyers’, own efforts to obtain just that result.

You can’t have it both ways, Clarence Ray; it’s time to reap the benefits of all of your past efforts. You did ask for it, after all.