Surely this…
… will be summarily ignored by a mob claiming that he had it coming anyway and that the appeals process is a liberal waste of time and money?
Is this one of those cases where the appeals court pretty much never reverses the lower court decision? I see this as a message to the state supreme court that they are irrelevant because they’ve been a rubber stamp for decades.
Take that, Texas!
Sometimes you see news about your state and you are just filled with pride. I mean, we’re really good at killing people. Possible innocence, trial errors or evidence shouldn’t get in the way. We can sort that out later. Why should we let some stupid legal process get in our way of executing someone? His rights? Bah. He gave up his rights when (insert whatever shit people say at this point to play upon someone’s fear nodule). Missouri is pro-life and pro-death at the same time. That’s not a dichotomy. Rep. Richard Martin says it best.
Missouri Fuck Yeah! We won’t let dubious sourcing of our execution drugs get in the way either. I wonder if someone just drove down to Oklahoma to pick them up, or maybe they took the governor’s plane…?
Yeah, they should have just thrown the body on the supreme courthouse or on the bed of one of the judges, that really sends a message!
FYI, Both the Governor and Attorney General of Missouri are Democrats.
So this is premeditated murder [of course all executions, wars, etc. are but these ones are illegal], deprivation of rights [to an appeal] under color of law, and contempt of court. Is this felony murder?
Certainly what I would call an “extrajudicial killing” which qualifies as murder in my book. I don’t know that a Missouri judge or prosecutor would see in the same way, but maybe the DOJ will, though that’s a bit complicated because homicide is generally a state crime, not a federal one. For someone to be charged with federal murder, there are a very limited set of circumstances that apply - on federal land, killing of a federal official, as part of an applicable interstate crime i.e. bank robbery or kidnapping… I’m not sure what federal statute could be brought to bear under these circumstances. It’s an interesting question though…
Is this felony murder?
You beat me to it. Yes, why haven’t the officials involved been arrested and charged with homicide under Federal law?
So let’s write Governor Jay Nixon and Attorney General Chris Koster to see if we can get them to investigate what happened and prevent it from happening again.
The article said US Supreme Court.
Shouldn’t they be charged with murder?
So that’s murder then, yes? The state murdered these people.
How is this not being prosecuted as murder? Death sentence or no, these are unlawful killings, not executions.
My understanding was always that if you were to kill a condemned prisoner ten minutes before his scheduled execution, you would be a murderer. So how is this different?
Smulls had a valid execution warrant for that day and technically there was no stay at the the time of the execution. However, the execution started about ten minutes after he applied for a new stay with the Supreme Court, which I would say is at the least a Dick Move.
It would have to be a seriously crazy case for the US Supreme Court to take it. They’re extremely selective on what cases they hear each year.
