Executing Berry a violation of int’l lawEditorial
In 1972, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that “the imposition and carrying out of the death penalty constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eight and Fourteenth Amendments” (Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238). The Court based its majority ruling on the manner in which death-penalty laws were being applied, calling the end result, among other things, “harsh, freakish, and arbitrary.” Accordingly, state capital punishment laws across the nation – including Ohio’s – were found to be unconstitutional and were summarily overturned by the Court.Attempting to find death penalty laws which would pass the Constitutional litmus test, state legislatures across the country scrambled to rewrite their statutes, taking into consideration the criticisms the Court had offered of their previous systems.So it was that just four years later the Supreme Court reversed itself, stating that “the punishment of death does not invariably violate the Constitution” (Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153). And although Ohio’s death penalty law was again ruled unconstitutional in 1978, the current law, enacted in 1981, has been allowed to stand.Keep in mind that all of the legal and political maneuverings associated with the death penalty have been, for the State of Ohio, largely academic. For all of the fuss over keeping a capital punishment statute on the books, we haven’t seemed particularly interested in using it; Ohio’s last execution was in 1963.Enter Wilford Berry, a.k.a. “the volunteer.”Demanding that all his legal appeals be waived, Berry has been resolute in his desire to die rather than spend the rest of his life in a jail cell. And the State of Ohio, in the form of Attorney General Betty Montgomery, has been only too happy to comply with his wishes.Of course, there’s the sticky question of whether or not Berry, who has had a lifelong history of mental problems, really comprehends the enormity of the decision he has made. It’s a nagging question which was given substance last week by U.S. District Court Judge Algenon L. Marbley, who ruled that the Ohio Supreme Court had erred in their evaluation of Berry’s mental competency. His ruling has effectively blocked Berry’s execution, and barring intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court, has spared his life.Finally, someone with a modicum of intelligence and humanity has recognized what a farce Betty Montgomery’s righteous indignation really is. For our part, we’ve been watching this case get navigated through the courts by a bumbling, incoherent, and vengeful attorney general’s office with nothing less than stark disbelief. That some people think resurrecting Ohio’s dormant death penalty law is a good idea is sad. That still others believe that the appropriate test case is a mental defective is just plain sick.In accordance with international standards on human rights, those nations which have chosen not to follow the 1977 United Nations goal of abolishing the practice of execution must follow certain standards. One of these guiding tenets reads, “the death penalty is not used against people who are not of sound mind.” Berry, like it or not, is clearly not “of sound mind.” The death penalty is barbaric enough. Executing Berry would only exacerbate an already immoral practice.
