Thursday, November 17, 2005

The Other Shoe Drops

Our enlightened statesmen, you may remember, recently and overwhelmingly agreed to suspend habeus corpus - at least when it comes to dangfurriners and 'terrists' - in order to prevent any more of our misdeeds from coming to light. If you thought that was a dangerous precedent, pat yourself on the back. It turns out the rest of us are next.

This spring, several members of Congress have introduced legislation designed to eliminate federal review of criminal cases for the stated purpose of speeding up executions. The legislation, known as the Streamlined Procedures Act, would effectively kill the writ of habeas corpus by stripping federal courts of jurisdiction to consider cases in which a prisoner's constitutional rights may have been violated. The legislation would apply to all criminal cases, including capital cases.

All our problems will be solved if we make it easier to put those people to death, evidently.. See the full text of the measure here(.PDF).

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home