"Horrific video footage has emerged of Taliban insurgents stoning a couple to death for alleged adultery in northern Afghanistan."

"Hundreds of villagers can be seen on the video standing around as the woman, Siddqa, is buried up to her waist in a four foot hole in the ground. Two mullahs pass sentence before the crowd begins to throw rocks at her head and body as she desperately tries to crawl free...."

"We've always said, you and I, that moral concepts of good and evil and right and wrong don't hold for the intellectually superior."

The teacher is confronted with the acting out of his philosophy in Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope":

Justice John Paul Stevens writes about the death penalty in the New York Review of Books.

The book under review is David Garland's "Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition." The review itself is much more of a straightforward summary of the book than the usual NYRB essay. Toward the end:

To be reasonable, legislative imposition of death eligibility must be rooted in benefits for at least one of the five classes of persons affected by capital offenses.

First, of course, are victims. By definition murder victims are no longer alive and so have no continuing interest.

That's all he says about the victims! They're already dead. As if making murder a heavily punished crime doesn't prevent some people from becoming victims. Recent research undermines the convenient old assumption that the death penalty has no deterrent effect.  Stevens says nothing about that because, I suspect, Garland doesn't.

A 45-year-old woman in Pakistan is sentenced to death for blasphemy.

This happened in the world we live in now:

[S]he had been working as a farmhand in fields with other women, when she was asked to fetch drinking water.

Some of the other women – all Muslims – refused to drink the water as it had been brought by a Christian and was therefore "unclean"...

The incident was forgotten until a few days later when [Asia] Bibi said she was set upon by a mob. The police were called and took her to a police station for her own safety.

Shahzad Kamran, of the Sharing Life Ministry Pakistan, said: "The police were under pressure from this Muslim mob, including clerics, asking for Asia to be killed because she had spoken ill of the Prophet Mohammed.

"So after the police saved her life they then registered a blasphemy case against her." He added that she had been held in isolation for more than a year before being sentenced to death on Monday.

"Tonight the death machine exterminated the beautiful childlike and loving spirit of Teresa Lewis."

Said Lewis's lawyer.

Lewis' life took a deadly turn after she married Julian, whom she met at a Danville textile factory in 2000. Two years later, his son Charles entered the U.S. Army Reserve. When he was called for active duty he obtained a $250,000 life insurance policy, naming his father the beneficiary and providing temptation for Teresa Lewis.

Both men would have to die for Lewis to receive the insurance payout....

On the night before Halloween in 2002, after she prayed with her husband, Lewis got out of bed, unlocked the door to their mobile home and put the couple's pit bull in a bedroom so the animal wouldn't interfere. Shallenberger and Fuller came in and shot both men several times with the shotguns Lewis had bought for them.

Rush Limbaugh thinks Obama is icy cold — like Michael Dukakis... and Buck Turgidson.

Don't let the horrible photo chosen by Media Matters here stop you from listening to the audio. It's an excellent performance by Rush, including his approximation of the George C. Scott performance:



The transcript — along with the Dukakis and "Dr. Strangelove" clips — is here. He's talking about the new Bob Woodward book:

Woodward asks about terrorism, terror attacks, and so forth. Obama says, "We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever, we absorbed it, and we're stronger." That, to me, is the equivalent of Dukakis being asked, "If your wife were raped and murdered, would you favor the death penalty?" So Woodward says, "What about terrorism?" Obama figures, "Ah, we can handle it. We can absorb it. We're even stronger." That's not cool. That is cold, and it reminded me of something. One of my all-time favorite movies is Dr. Strangelove. A Stanley Kubrick movie. And one of the characters in this movie is General Buck Turgidson....

And Buck Turgidson is one of these stereotypical generals. He just wants to nuke the world. He just loves war and hates the Russians, hates the commies. He just wants to nuke everything. And Buck Turgidson said, "Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching the moment of truth, both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always pleasant thing. But it's necessary now to make a choice: To choose between two admittedly regrettable but nevertheless distinguishable postwar environments, one where you get 20 million people killed, the other where you'd get 150 million people killed." Turgidson was saying, "Let's send more B-52s! Let's just wipe these people out while we're at it, since we can't call this one back. Let's just be rid of them. We'll kill 20 million of them and that's it. They can't kill any of ours. It's a livable situation, Mr. President."

Peter Sellers playing President Merkin Muffley says, "You're talking about mass murder, general, not war," and Turgidson replies, "Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed but I do say no more than ten to 20 million killed tops, depending on the breaks." Here's a guy totally cold and unaffected by the possibility of ten to 20 million people being killed in an accident and wants to say, "Let's go wipe 'em out even further." The president can't believe what he's hearing. You have Dukakis, "If your wife was raped and murdered, would you favor the death penalty?" "No, Bernard. As you know, I've long and consistently opposed the death penalty during all my life." Obama is asked, "Mr. President, what is your attitude on terrorism?"

"Well, we could absorb one of those, a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it but even a 9/11, but even the biggest attack ever we absorbed it and we're stronger. We can deal with it." All these examples are of leftists and they are cold, removed, unemotional, unaffected, uninvolved.

Did he just call Turgidson a leftist?

Anyway, you know how it must pain the average-citizen leftist to hear that Obama, like Dukakis, is cold and unemotional. It can't be true! Obama is about empathy.

[Click here for video of George Lakoff explaining Obama's "empathy campaign."]

Remember when Bill Clinton made us — some of us — think he feels our pain? Obama, aloof, observes that we have an excellent capacity to absorb pain. We're pain sponges, apparently, so there's nothing to get too worked up about.

I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops! Uh, depending on the breaks....

"State retribution for tiny thefts, such as stealing a potato, even by a child, would include being tied up and thrown into a pond..."

"... parents were forced to bury their children alive or were doused in excrement and urine, others were set alight, or had a nose or ear cut off. One record shows how a man was branded with hot metal. People were forced to work naked in the middle of winter; 80 per cent of all the villagers in one region of a quarter of a million Chinese were banned from the official canteen because they were too old or ill to be effective workers, so were deliberately starved to death."

New details from the Great Leap Forward, 1958-1962, in which 45 million people died.

"There was a big crowd of people... The Taliban made the women wear black clothes and the men were made to stand."

"The Taliban started throwing stones. We were also asked to throw stones. After a while, the Taliban left. The woman was dead but the man was still alive. Some Taliban then came and shot him three times. The Taliban warned villagers if anyone does anything un-Islamic, this will be their fate."

In Kunduz, Afghanistan.

"The answer is quite simple, it's because I'm a woman, it's because they think they can do anything to women in this country."

The woman is Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani. The country, Iran.

"It's because for them adultery is worse than murder – but not all kinds of adultery: an adulterous man might not even be imprisoned but an adulterous women is the end of the world for them. It's because I'm in a country where its women do not have the right to divorce their husbands and are deprived of their basic rights."...

"When the judge handed down my sentence, I even didn't realise I'm supposed to be stoned to death because I didn't know what 'rajam' means. They asked me to sign my sentence which I did, then I went back to the prison and my cellmates told me that I was going to be stoned to death and I instantly fainted."...

"They wanted to get rid of my lawyer so that they can easily accuse me of whatever they want without having him to speak out. If it was not for his attempts, I would have been stoned to death by now."

"Despite protests from the West, her sentence will be carried out if the judiciary decides to carry it out..."

Iran relents in spite of/because of our objections.

"She will be buried up to her chest, deeper than a man would be..."

"... and the stones that will be hurled at her will be large enough to cause pain but not so large as to kill her immediately..."

Death by stoning in Iran. The crime is adultery. The evidence was a confession obtained after 99 lashes.

"Death penalty scholars say that legislators tend to like lethal injection because it appears dignified and medical."

"When Utah officials were planning the state's most recent firing squad execution, they were met with interest from the international press, repeated comparisons to Old West justice, and a flurry of volunteers offering their services as executioners. Maybe firing squads get people going not just because they're unusual, but because they cater to a certain bloodthirstiness and obsession with guns. And because they seem like a more heroic way to die."

The Taliban put a 7-year-old boy on trial for spying.

He was found guilty and hanged.

Andre Thomas, sentenced to death for killing his wife and 2 children, plucked out his eyes and then argued that his blindness made the death penalty unconstitutional.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said that the question whether he is a continuing threat to society is to be answered at the time of conviction. 

"I would like the firing squad, please."

In Utah, one has a choice of execution method.

If you faced unavoidable execution and had a choice of lethal injection or firing squad, what would you pick?
	Firing squad if I believe I deserve the death penalty, but otherwise, lethal injection.
	Lethal injection if I believe I deserve the death penalty, but otherwise, firing squad.
	Whether I deserve the death penalty or not, I'd take the lethal injection.
	Whether I deserve the death penalty or not, I'd take the firing squad.
pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: Almost no one is going for the idea that your choice of method would depend on whether you deserved harsh punishment. I put those alternatives in there because I thought people would quibble about that. But no. Now, the 2 choices have been polling about equal, and I wonder if it's because there's a difference of opinion about which is actually less painful or if it's a preference about the sort of drama you'd feel best about.

"A North Korean factory worker has been executed by firing squad for sneaking news out of the country on his illicit mobile phone..."

"The armaments factory worker was accused of divulging the price of rice and other information on living conditions to a friend who had defected to South Korea years ago.... The man, surnamed Chong, made calls to the defector using an illegal Chinese mobile phone...."

Via Roger Ebert, who tweets it as a joke: "And we complain about our mobile phones." I try to understand the motivation toward comedy. Is it our great distance and alienation from North Korea? Or should I be charitable and say that was never meant to seem amusing?

"I am infinitely sorry that I killed Ralph Ablanedo... I stole from you and the world the precious and irreplaceable life of a good man."

David Lee Powell's apology for a murder that took place in 1978 comes on the eve of his execution.

Ablanedo had pulled over Powell's girlfriend, Sheila Meinert, near downtown Austin for not having a rear license tag. Powell, who was wanted at the time for misdemeanor theft and for passing more than 100 bad checks in Austin, was riding in the car.

Evidence showed Ablanedo was walking toward the vehicle when he was shot through the back window with the AK-47 in semiautomatic mode. The fallen officer tried to get up and Powell opened fire again, switching the weapon to full automatic mode.

Powell and Meinert were arrested at a nearby apartment complex parking lot following a shootout with other officers. Meinert later testified that Powell gave her a grenade and told her to remove tape from it. She said she became hysterical and shoved it back to him.
Officers testified that Powell threw it and started running away. The grenade was found about 10 feet from a police car but failed to explode because a safety clip hadn't been removed.

How can it take so long to carry out the death penalty? Powell has been tried — and sentenced to death — 3 times. He recently failed in an attempt to get a 4th trial. (You can read the case here: PDF.)

"Am I glad that a hapless 77-year-old man won’t be put to death by the State of Florida? Yes, I am."

"Am I concerned about a Supreme Court that dispenses empathy so selectively? Also yes."

Linda Greenhouse wants more evenly spread empathy.

"I was given the 'honor' to temporarily marry young girls before they were sentenced to death."

"In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a 'wedding' ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard - essentially raped by her 'husband.' 'I regret that, even though the marriages were legal,' he said. Why the regret, if the marriages were 'legal?' 'Because,' he went on, 'I could tell that the girls were more afraid of their "wedding" night than of the execution that awaited them in the morning. And they would always fight back, so we would have to put sleeping pills in their food. By morning the girls would have an empty expression; it seemed like they were ready or wanted to die. 'I remember hearing them cry and scream after [the rape] was over' he said. "I will never forget how this one girl clawed at her own face and neck with her finger nails afterwards. She had deep scratches all over her.'"

Mental retardation as a mitigating factor ≠ mental retardation constitutionally barring execution.

These are 2 different issues, the unanimous Supreme Court said today. And Justice Ginsburg, the author of the opinion, schools the Sixth Circuit in the law of issue preclusion:

[M]ental retardation for purposes of Atkins, and mental retardation as one mitigator to be weighed against aggravators, are discrete issues. Most grave among the Sixth Circuit’s misunderstandings, issue preclusion is a plea available to prevailing parties. The doctrine bars relitigation of determinations necessary to the ultimate outcome of a prior proceeding. The Ohio courts’ recognition of Bies’ mental state as a mitigating factor was hardly essential to the death sentence he received. On the contrary, the retardation evidence cut against the final judgment. Issue preclusion, in short, does not transform final judgment losers, in civil or criminal proceedings, into partially prevailing parties.

Ouch.