No, a man is about to be punished for committing horrific crimes.
But really, his crimes are somewhat immaterial to this issue, beyond as I pointed out, suggesting that he was in fact not a pious Muslim at all.
Why should we assume that Muslim murderers arenât really Muslims but that Christian murders are really Christians? Why should the state assume that?
If we start letting the state sort out whoâs pious and who isnâtâŚshould be a scary thought for about 90%+ of Christians! Letâs start with the politiciansâŚ
Only Christians are allowed their come-to-Jesus moment. It says it right there in the Constitution. /s
Time was people were drawn and quartered in public for their crimes. Then they were just decapitated. Then hanged. Now theyâre just given lethal injection.
Maybe eventually the US will join the rest of the civilized world and realize that capital punishment is nothing more than vengeance. I get it, I do, if a loved one or even one of my pets was a victim Iâd want the fucker to hang, but the state should rise above those emotions (and please donât start with the spreadsheet excuse, a just and sane society is more than a balance sheet.)
The same way as everyone else. Discovery, deposition, subpoena.
Both of them asserted their rights after following the accepted court procedures. If either of them had failed to file their complaints in time, then they would have lost as well.
I think a lot of these arguments hinge on the fact that execution is different than paying a penalty under the ACA or being fined for not baking a cake. You can always reverse the fine, but you canât reverse an execution.
So I understand why people are arguing that we should make exceptions in this case and waive normal deadlines. When we execute the guy, we want to feel good about ourselves, so we should give him accommodations that nobody else normally gets.
But thatâs BS. We make and enforce court rules because they are fair to everyone. If we feel guilty about following the usual rules when we execute someone, the problem isnât the usual rules. The problem is that the death penalty is inherently wrong. The solution is not to ignore the legal procedures that work fine in every other case. The solution is to join the civilized world and abolish the death penalty.
I donât think those people are pious Christians either.
If you rape and murder a child, you arenât doing the Lordâs work.
It doesnât mean we shouldnât respect your rights of course. But it did suggest that in this case, the lack of a religious man of the cloth present next to him likely didnât really matter.
How can he do those things if he doesnât know he needs to?
You see the massive flaw in your argument right? Cause itâs driving me insane and why I tried to get out of this conversation.
They could be after being in prison for 20 years, which most of them probably would be before being executed.
He knew he needed to file a complaint to the court. This is obvious, because he did file a complaint. Having done so, he can get access to whatever he reasonably needs.
But the state thinks they might be. Else why employ a Christian minister to comfort them in the execution chamber? Thatâs kind of the point here, that the state offers something that is a clear preference for one religious group.
Youâre not really offering this as a serious response, are you? Otherwise I canât make any sense of your argument. You say that his complaint was late, so it doesnât count; and that he must / have could have known earlier because he knew at the time of his late complaint?
Like I said, this isnât about whether the state should respect your rights or whatever. His piousness is immaterial to what the state should do.
It only has an impact on whether I feel pity for this guy. I donât really. I think he was just trying to delay his execution.
Ray had the basis to make a complaint, but it wasnât a slam dunk. As I mentioned, out of >500 inmates, only 8-10 attend the imamâs monthly service. And the prison is unable to pay for full guard staffing. So there is a reasonable case to be made that hiring a Muslim chaplain is not worth the expense. For similar reasons, when you walk into (say) a VA hospital, you might find a Christian chaplain but not necessarily a Sikh chaplain.
Iâm saying that if his request was made in November, then his complaint might not have been late. Somebody dropped the ball.
This should be easy. The State employs a christian minister for its christian inmates. It doesnât employ an imam for its islamic prisoners. The State allows the christian minister to be with inmates it executes but excludes non-employees from the chamber. To avoid an appearance of religious preference, unconstitutional under the Establishment Clause, the State should have a policy allowing non-christian inmates access to their respective clergy during execution. The Stateâs employee policy does not override its duty to avoid favoring one religion over another,. The State failed to provide this access, no matter when it was requested, no matter why it was requested, but would have accomodated a christianâs request.
Can you really not see the problem?
I donât know what the courts were thinking, but here is a guess:
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The state says that non-employees in the chamber are a security threat. The courts almost always defer to the executive on this sort of assessment.
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The state could probably argue that it does not have the resources to hire a Muslim chaplain. Remember, it doesnât even have the resources to hire the guards it needs.
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So how to avoid the problem of religious preference? Either
(a) ban the Christian chaplain from the chamber, or
(b) point out that a state-employed chaplain is expected to provide cross-faith spiritual support to people of all faiths, not just their own. Their personal faith is irrelevant, just like the personal faith of every other employee is irrelevant. -
But regardless of whether you end up with (a) or (b), Rayâs imam still wouldnât make it into the chamber. Therefore, his request is not particularly likely to succeed. But at this point in time, he needs to be very likely to succeed to get a stay of execution. Therefore, no stay of execution.
I donât think they typically defer to the executive over the establishment clause, though, do they? Iâm certainly not a SC justice, but given the vast deference given to religious expression over government power in past SC decisions, the decision to ignore that in this case is troubling.
They defer to the state assessment of security interests. In other words, the courts are very unlikely to contradict the executive and declare that non-employees actually pose no security threat. And the establishment clause is balanced against security and other interests.
The very existence of government chaplains is an example of balancing the establishment clause against other interests. I mean, if the establishment clause automatically trumped all other interests then there would be no chaplains at all.
Furthermore, a law that appears to favor a religion does not violate the establishment clause if the government provides a secular reason for it. So December 25 is a federal holiday, because we need federal holidays and December 25 is as good a day as any other. This does not violate the EC. Likewise âblue lawsâ that force businesses to close on Sundays. In contrast, there isnât really a secular rationale for a nativity creche, so itâs not allowed.
Wait, isnât âLimboâ still a thing in Roman Catholic theology? Iâm very much a lapsed, agnostic/almost atheist âculturalâ Catholic, but as a kid around 50 years ago or a bit less, that was always the explanation about where unbaptized babies go when they die.
Limbo is in limbo.
Just kidding, itâs dead.
Over ten years ago no less! Thanks.