Re: death penalty 8th Amendment

[robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>]

 > From: Noelle <noelle>
 > Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2019 14:44:45 -0700 (PDT)
 >
 > https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/04/supreme-court-neil-gorsuch-eighth-amendment-death-penalty-torture.html
 > 
 > originalists.

 “[B]ecause some risk of pain is inherent in any method of execution,”

Where does this assumption come from?  Are there animal studies?  Seems
rather arbitrary.

 In 2008’s Baze and 2015’s Glossip, Thomas and Scalia went further. In both cases, they argued that, as originally understood, the Eighth Amendment only prohibited states from intentionally making executions more painful than they had to be. As Thomas wrote in Baze, an execution only infringes upon the Constitution when “terror, pain, or disgrace” are “superadded.” So long as a state does not “superadd” pain to an execution, it has complied with the Eighth Amendment. Thomas’ theory would effectively shut down challenges to every method of execution unless an inmate had (impossible to obtain) evidence that the state was sadistically and gratuitously increasing the pain of his death.

How does one prove intent?  What if the victim's family wants the
perpetrator to be tortured to death?  Who is the subject of intent in that
case?

 Welcome to our post-Kennedy death penalty jurisprudence, where legalized torture is back on the table.

This just reinforces my belief that Americans are stupid.  Or, at least, a
majority of them.