Opinion - News Analysis   

Dreaded attachment

The Bush presidency is ending its days with a flurry of fresh controversy about the death penalty, a punishment for which Bush has always shown a creepy degree of enthusiasm. Two new cases illustrate again how ghoulish and judicially flawed death sentences in America can be.

On Tuesday, Richard Cooey, 41, who had spent more than 20 years on death row, was executed in Ohio after the supreme court rejected his plea that he was too obese (at more than 125 kg) to be painlessly put to death by lethal injection. On Wednesday, the same court, in effect, gave the go-ahead for another execution when it refused to hear an appeal by Troy Davis, a 40-year-old Georgia man, after seven of nine witnesses who helped to convict him in 1991 of killing a police officer had subsequently recanted their testimony or changed their statements.

America’s dogged attachment to the death penalty in even the most dubious of circumstances is a hideous blot on its reputation for fairness and humanity that, alas, even Barack Obama has no plans to eradicate.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Sri Lanka: what needs to be done
Between survival and disintegration
Global financial crisis: reflections on its impact on India
In Pakistan, the fog refuses to clear
Dreaded attachment
Corrections and clarifications
Condemnable attacks
Aviation crisis
Incorrect

Copyright © 2008, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu