ACLU Says Lethal Injection Violates 1st Ammendment

Posted on March 9, 2006

Hat tip: Conservative Dialysis
The cruel practice of partial birth abortion, where the baby’s skull is punctured and the brains sucked out, is a cause the ACLU find worthy. Just mark it down as a woman’s reproductive rights. Injecting a crtically ill person with deadly chemicals in the cause of euthaniasia is another cause the ACLU champion. But to lethally inject a heinous criminal? Well, of course that violates the First Amendment.

The American Civil Liberties Union claims in a federal lawsuit today that California’s lethal injection protocol violates the First Amendment.

The ACLU says the injection protocol violates the rights of execution witnesses by not allowing them to see if the inmate is experiencing pain before death.

The group says the only reason San Quentin State Prison officials inject a paralyzing agent is to sanitize the execution and prevent witnesses from perhaps seeing convulsions.

The paralyzing drug, according to the lawsuit, “makes it impossible for witnesses to determine whether death row inmates in California are being subjected to substantial and unnecessary pain before dying.”

Surely we could circumvent much of the pain these murderers and rapists feel with a good old fashioned hanging, or perhaps a firing squad? But we all know that is not the motive behind the ACLU’s actions. This is just one step in an agenda to make all executions illegal.

However, someone at Free Republic has posted the First Amendment. Ha, it looks as if it is an open and shut slam dunk for the ACLU.

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or prohibiting execution witnesses from seeing whether the condemned experience pain immediately prior to death, as by administering a sedative-based lethal injection to the latter; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to petition the Government for redress of grievences.

Another commenter suggests that we could starve them to death, which the same leftist idiots claimed sends one into a state of euphoria when Terri Schaivo was the one being killed.

The State of California is going to fight the lawsuit:

In response to Wednesday’s filing, Nathan Barankin, spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer, said: “The ACLU does not have a right to determine what method the state of California should use in carrying out the death penalty.” He said the “paralyzing agent effectively stops inmate breathing.”

Under California’s protocol, a sedative, then the paralyzing agent and finally heart-stopping drugs are injected. The state is seeking court permission to drip the sedative continually to ensure unconsciousness.