In the final months of his administration President Trump authorized 13 executions of prisoners on the federal death row. This triggered last minute appeals to the United States Supreme Court that allowed the executions to proceed without comment.
United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a fiery dissent accusing the United States Supreme Court of complicity in President Trump’s “killing spree.” Sotomayor believed there were “extensive unresolved legal problems” in each of these cases.
Sotomayor writes, “This is not justice. After waiting almost two decades to resume federal executions the Government should have proceeded with some measure of restraint to ensure it did so lawfully. When it did not, this Court should have. It did not.”
According to Sotomayor’s own words there have been “almost two decades” of restraint. Why have these “extensive unresolved legal problems” not been addressed for the last twenty years? The reason they have not been addressed is because each one was permitted the due process of law and each one was convicted of a capital offense. The “legal problems” did not have any bearing on whether each of the condemned were guilty or innocent.
Our Constitution was not written in a moral vacuum; it was patterned on biblical truth. God instituted capital punishment.
The news media would have us all believe the Supreme Court sat back and rubber-stamped these rushed executions, but nothing was rushed. And execution is rarely the cause of death for those convicted of murder. Gary Alvord was on Florida’s death row for over 39 years, before, at the age of 66, he died from brain cancer.
I suppose he languished on death for over 39 years because his case had “extensive unresolved legal problems.” Those condemned to die more often die of old age or disease.
I am sure it is to Sotomayor’s chagrin that the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution reads that no person shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The death penalty is enshrined in the supreme law of our land. Sotomayor’s obstinance in applying it is a failure to fulfill her oath of office.
Our Constitution was not written in a moral vacuum; it was patterned on biblical truth. God instituted capital punishment.
Emerging from the ark Noah and his family were tasked with repopulating the earth and restoring the civilization that had succumbed to anarchy. To do that God gave mankind its first law, “Whoever shed’s man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man,” Genesis 9:6.
If mankind were to survive as a civilized society, it would only be possible established on a sense of right and wrong, a principle of justice. God took the most serious of human offenses, murder, to lay a foundation of justice from which all other lesser offenses could be patterned (a just penalty for each crime).
Sotomayor’s squeamishness over executing convicted murderers is not matched by her concern for the unborn. When she stands before the real Supreme Court she will have innocent blood on her hands.
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