What's cruel & unusual is US.
So what does cruel and unusual mean?
I once asked that of a law professor. The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, but I figured there had to be some technical definition I, as a layperson, was missing. I mean, from where I sit, its pretty cruel and unusual to execute someone, but to judge from the 1,392 executions of the last 38 years, that isnt the case.
Scott Panetti almost became number 1,393 last week ... In a rational place, it would not be news that Panetti was not killed. In a rational place, they would understand that state-sanctioned execution is a relic of frontier barbarism that leaves us all wet with the blood of the damned. In a rational place, they would say theres something especially repugnant about applying that grisly sanction to the mentally ill, like Panetti.
But Panetti doesnt live in a rational place. He lives in America. Worse, he lives in Texas.
......we are debating whether to kill a man so addled he tried to subpoena Jesus. And that leads to a conclusion as painful as it is unavoidable:
Whats cruel and unusual, is us.
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article4300843.html