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Article: Death penalty polemic scorns rule of law. (US Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun's opposition to the death penalty) (Column)
- Article from:
- Insight on the News
- Article date:
- April 4, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 News World Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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"From this day forward, I shall no longer tinker with the machinery of death." wrote Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun in February in Callins vs. Collins, a death penalty case. "I feel morally and intellectually obligated to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed."
Blackmun's death penalty polemic, however, betrays a worrisome conflation of what the Constitution forbids and what a judge finds morally or personally distasteful. It epitomizes a triumph of the heart over the head, which the rule of law deplores.
Blackmuns opens his dissent with a grim description of the impending execution of Callins, a convicted murderer, worthy of a ...