It is a matter of dismay that the Supreme Court of one of the world's greatest democracies should still find itself comfortable with ruling that the use of lethal injection on someone doesn't constitute cruel and unusual punishment. It's high time that that august body re-examined its own legal concepts in light of the meanings of words available to ordinary people, which I take it the members of the Supreme Court also are, their membership of it notwithstanding.
When he takes up the ordinary-language challenge with respect to 'cruel' he writes:
As for the cruelty of it, how can any civilized person look squarely at the procedure of doing someone to death before their time by administering an injection, and fail to see any cruelty in it? (italics mine)
The answer, I think, is that Norm's ordinary-language approach is slipping between meanings of 'cruelty.' Or, to answer his question: of course any human being is capable of seeing some cruelty in lethal injection; but incarceration also has a level of cruelty to it. So also the seizure of assets in, e.g., the case of tax evasion. Any punishment or sanction will, taken from the proper perspective, have an element of cruelty; the ordinary-language approach won't do here. This is not to say one couldn't make the case that lethal injection is cruel in a way both different and worse from the regular sanctions arising from the police and law-enforcement functions of the state, it's just that the case must be at least slightly more complicated than Norm presents it.
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