Monday 7 December 2009

'Selective Mercy' at the United States Supreme Court

Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times has an interesting column on a very recent ruling by the United States Supreme Court: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/selective-empathy/?emc=eta1. The judges quashed a death sentence of a war veteran on the grounds of ineffective representation. Welcoming the decision, Greenhouse says only that she is concerned that such mercy seems to be selective.
The eternal optimist, I'm always looking for signs that the commitment to capital punishment in the United States is fracturing. Maybe this is one of them.
Thanks to Bill Hartzog.

1 comment:

Marco Perantuono said...

Unfortunately (I believe) the death penalty in the US it's traditionally a question of politics, related to the votes basin detectable in remarkable areas of that country. The unjustice value of the death penalty is in fact not a cross-shared cultural concept in the US, and as such it will always be a swinging matter of politics. Nevertheless I am optimistic as well.

Thank you for your kind attention.
Marco Perantuono
(from Bologna)