[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----PENN., N.C., GA., KAN., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 7



PENNSYLVANIA:

Johnson appeal denied


The United States Supreme Court denied Christopher Johnson's petition for writ 
of certiorari on Monday, 1 day and 3 years after he was given the death 
penalty.

Johnson, now 32, was given the death penalty by a Lancaster jury in Adams 
County Court on Oct. 4, 2012 after being convicted of 1st-degree murder in the 
2010 shooting death of Pennsylvania Wildlife Conservation Officer David Grove.

(soruce: Gettysburg Times)






NORTH CAROLINA:

HPU/N&R Poll: North Carolinians Favor Death Penalty and Prefer Sales to Income 
Taxes


The High Point University/News and Record Poll finds that an overwhelming large 
majority of North Carolinians (72 percent) believe that there are crimes where 
the death penalty is appropriate, and 24 % believe the death penalty should not 
be used at all. 63 % of North Carolinians favor the death penalty for a person 
convicted of murder and 28 % oppose. When North Carolinians were asked which 
method of the death penalty was the most humane, 64 % said lethal injection.

"It is clear from these findings that people in North Carolina believe that the 
death penalty is the appropriate punishment for at least some crimes, and 
lethal injection is seen as the most humane means by many more people than any 
other single method," says Martin Kifer, HPU Poll director and assistant 
professor of political science. "There does not appear to be much support for 
changes in policy governing capital punishment here in North Carolina."

Thinking in general about your views of the death penalty, are there any crimes 
for which you believe people should receive the death penalty?

Yes - 72 % HPU N&R Poll - Death penalty - Oct. 2015

No - 24 %

Don't know/refused - 4 %

(All adult (North Carolina resident) sample surveyed September 26 - October 1, 
n = 446 and margin of sampling error approximately = +/- 4.6 %)

All adults - Death Penalty for Murder Conviction (September/October 2015)

Do you strongly favor, favor, oppose or strongly oppose the death penalty for 
persons convicted of murder?

Strongly favor - 30 %

Favor - 33 %

Oppose - 17 %

Strongly Oppose - 11 %

Don't know/refused - 9 %

(All adult (North Carolina resident) sample surveyed September 26 - October 1, 
n = 446 and margin of sampling error approximately = +/- 4.6 %)

All adults - Most Human Death Penalty Punishment (September/October 2015)

Apart from your opinion about the death penalty, what form of punishment do you 
consider to be the most humane - the electric chair, the gas chamber, lethal 
injection, firing squad or hanging?

Electric chair - 2 % Gas chamber - 4 %

Firing squad - 9 %

Hanging - 6 % Lethal injection - 64 % None - 7 % No opinion/don't know - 7 %

Refused - 2 %

The most recent HPU Poll was fielded by live interviewers at the High Point 
University Survey Research Center calling on Sept. 26 - Oct. 1, 2015. The 
responses from a sample of all North Carolina counties came from 446 adults 
with landline or cellular telephones. The Survey Research Center contracted 
with Survey Sampling International to acquire this sample. The survey has an 
estimated margin of sampling error of approximately 4.6 % points for all adult 
respondents. The data is weighted toward population estimates for cellular and 
landline telephone use, age, gender and race. In addition to sampling error, 
factors such as question wording and other methodological choices in conducting 
survey research can introduce additional error into the findings of opinion 
polls. Details from this survey are available at 
http://www.highpoint.edu/src/files/2015/10/41memoB.pdf.

Further results and methodological details from the most recent survey and past 
studies can be found at the Survey Research Center website at 
http://www.highpoint.edu/src/. The materials online include past press releases 
as well as memos summarizing the findings (including approval ratings) for each 
poll since 2010.

The HPU Poll reports methodological details in accordance with the standards 
set out by AAPOR???s Transparency Initiative, and the HPU Survey Research 
Center is a Charter Member of the Initiative. For more information, see

http://transparency.aapor.org/index.php/transparency.

You can follow the HPU Poll on Twitter at https://twitter.com/HPUSurveyCenter.

(source: Dr. Martin Kifer, assistant professor of political science, serves as 
the director of the HPU Poll, and Brian McDonald serves as the assistant 
director of the HPU Poll----highpoint.edu)






GEORGIA:

McAfee prof sees hope in Gissendaner's life and example, despite 
execution----Melissa Browning was an organizer of a grassroots campaign to save 
the life of Kelly Gissendaner, who was eventually excecuted on Sept. 29 in 
Georgia. Despite that, Browning said she was encouraged by the anti-capital 
punishment passion she saw develop during the campaign.

Melissa Browning's Facebook page tells the story. More specifically, it tells 
Kelly Gissendaner's story.

Post after post describes the life and death of the Georgia inmate executed by 
lethal injection last week.

"The amazing grace of Kelly Gissendaner," "Kelly Gissendaner execution is 
Georgia's latest worldwide saga" and "Georgia executes 2st woman in 70 years" 
are just a few.

But these and the other headlines also reveal much about Browning - an 
assistant professor at Mercer University's McAfee School of Theology - and her 
devoted service to the small army of organizers who waged a months-long public 
relations and social media campaign to save Gissendaner's life.

While disappointed in the state's refusal to show Gissendaner mercy, Browning, 
who had earned a theology certificate in a prison-based program provided by 
McAfee and other local divinity schools, said she was encouraged by the fierce 
determination of students and preachers, and especially Cooperative Baptist 
ministers.

"I would call CBF pastors and they would show up - [former CBF Executive 
Coordinator] Daniel Vestal showed up," she said.

Browning spoke with Baptist News Global following Gissendaner's death about 
what it's like to fight so hard for a cause and, in some ways, come up short.

Have you been mourning?

It's a lot of mourning. I've never experienced anything like I experienced 
[that] night.

Where were you during the execution?

I was with Kelly's daughter, Kayla, and a small group of pastors and friends, 
seven of us, at a separate location. We were just absolutely appalled by the 
way this was happening and what we were watching. We were watching the trauma 
Kayla was experiencing ... when she found out her mom had been murdered by the 
state. It was unreal.

When did you learn Kelly had actually been executed?

After all her appeals were denied, you know it was happening but didn't know 
precisely when. Not even the children knew. A DOC [Department of Corrections] 
spokesperson came out to the vigil. She died at 12:12 a.m. (Sept. 30)

How was Kayla during all of this?

The thing that was tremendously difficult is that the parole board agreed to 
hear one last piece Tuesday morning. Her kids had to choose between a visit 
with her [Kelly] or go to the parole board. All 3 went and when they arrived 
they were told only 1 could speak. So all 3 missed seeing their mom - they 
didn't get to hug her a last time .... And in the end, the board upheld the 
decision [for execution]. The lawyers asked for another 24 hours, but the state 
could not wait for another 24 hours. The kids are going to be forever 
[traumatized by this].

What bothered you most about how it all unfolded?

As a Baptist minister the thing that disturbs me is that the [parole] board is 
mostly Baptist ... yet they made this decision not to consider the children of 
the person who was killed. They made a decision that redemption and 
transformation don't matter.

How did you come to be involved with the effort to save Kelly?

We started a campaign in March, Kelly on my Mind, during the first round. There 
was a bunch of us doing what we could - some seminary professors from Emory. I 
am from McAfee. The goal at that point was just trying to tell her story 
because the only thing in the news was her last meal, how she had ordered a lot 
of food. It was repulsive. She was part of our theology program, she had helped 
people in prison and prevented suicides, and nobody knew any of that. So we 
wanted to tell her story.

How did it go?

We published articles. We got the press involved. Then the 1st execution date 
was canceled because of snow, then because of cloudy drugs. Then we had more 
time. The 2nd time around we built on the first campaign. We had no real 
funding. It was grassroots ... with a core group and students doing social 
media .... It was an interesting moment for all of our students to come up 
against the death penalty and against a political machine that's this strong 
and to bear witness to Kelly's life and to stand with her in her life .... I 
had 3 students who organized a vigil on Monday afternoon [the day before the 
execution]. Our community was very supportive of Kelly.

Was it all worth it?

Absolutely. God does not call us to possible tasks; God calls us to impossible 
tasks. He expects us to build his kingdom. We cannot measure success with small 
things. It's not something that's measurable, so we can't say that we failed. 
... We were able to start a movement where people did not forget about Kelly. 
It opened a way to think about the death penalty, what is happening in the 
prison system. A lot of people changed their minds on the death penalty after 
walking alongside Kelly, particularly Baptists who said Kelly's story has made 
them think about the death penalty because of this. I anticipate a decrease in 
support for the death penalty in Georgia. We promised Kelly not to let her 
death be in vain and [her death] has motivated faith leaders to double down.

What's next?

A lot of the folks have already done vigils for others on death row and there 
are a lot of people who are doing anti-death penalty work. ... But we have a 
lot more work to do to really help people engage in the death penalty.... We 
have to preach that God is a God of redemption and grace. There is so much 
support in scripture for anti-death penalty work.

(source: baptistnews.com)






KANSAS:

Supreme Court defends contested death penalty verdicts in Kansas


A Supreme Court deeply divided over the death penalty appeared slightly more 
persuaded Wednesday that death sentences may have been appropriately rendered 
in 2 notoriously heinous murder cases from Kansas.

During oral arguments that exposed the same tensions and fault lines over 
capital punishment first revealed on the high court's last day of decisions in 
June, a majority of justices defended death sentences against three men that 
had been thrown out for procedural reasons by Kansas' highest court.

It was the first of several days the high court will devote to death penalty 
cases this fall, following its 5-4 decision that upheld a controversial form of 
lethal injection implicated in 3 botched executions last year. When that 
decision was announced June 29, 4 justices jousted emotionally over the 
relative correctness or cruelty of capital punishment, and Justice Stephen 
Breyer said it might be unconstitutional.

Wednesday's cases involved the Kansas Supreme Court's decisions striking down 
death sentences against three convicted murderers because of instructions given 
to the juries and, in the case of 2 brothers, the use of a joint rather than 
separate sentencing hearings. The state sought to restore the death sentences, 
and a majority of justices appeared to agree.

Noting that 6 of the state's 9 death row inmates could win new hearings if the 
Kansas court's ruling stands, Justice Antonin Scalia said, "Kansans, unlike 
Justice Breyer, do not think the death penalty is unconstitutional." He later 
went out of his way to read the gory details of the more notorious murder case, 
in which 5 men and women were repeatedly raped and abused before 4 were 
murdered and the 5th shot execution-style.

Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the court's June opinion in Glossip v. Gross 
upholding lethal injections, called the Kansas killings "some of the most 
horrendous murders that I have seen in my 10 years here, and we see practically 
every death penalty case that comes up anywhere in the country. These have to 
rank as among the worst."

Nevertheless, the Kansas Supreme Court tossed out the death sentences for two 
reasons. It said the juries were not told that mitigating factors such as 
troubled childhoods did not need to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and it 
said brothers Jonathan and Reginald Carr should have had separate sentencing 
hearings.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor took the lead in questioning the death sentences, as 
she did earlier this year in criticizing Oklahoma's lethal injection protocol. 
She said the state court's criticism of the jury instructions was reasonable, 
if not under the Constitution, then under state law.

"What a wonderful system we've created," she said sarcastically. "Even when a 
state court is wrong in convicting somebody, so long as they are reasonably 
wrong, we uphold them. And when they are wrong on a legal conclusion applying 
our test, we jump in and reverse them."

But even the court's more liberal members expressed doubt about the Kansas 
court's ruling that the Carr brothers deserved separate sentencing hearings, so 
that a jury could parse accusations about who was the gunman, who was the 
leader, and who had a more troubled childhood. Breyer warned that could lead to 
similar demands in countless numbers of trials involving gang members.

"Given the kind of evidence that was presented in this case," Justice Elena 
Kagan said, "the idea that somebody was a lousy big brother seems pretty small 
in the scale of things."

(source: USA Today)






USA:

US High Court Starts Hearing Death Penalty Cases


The U.S. Supreme Court began hearing arguments Wednesday questioning how the 
death penalty is carried out in the country.

Executions are carried out unevenly in the United States, with 31 states still 
sanctioning the death penalty for a range of crimes, while 19 states have 
banned capital punishment.

None of the cases the Supreme Court has agreed to consider represents an 
attempt to overturn capital punishment in the United States, but rather to 
raise legal questions on how states conduct executions.

In the first of at least 6 capital punishment cases it expects to consider 
during the next several months, the court heard lawyers argue whether death 
sentences should be reinstated against 2 brothers involved in a 2000 crime 
spree in the central state of Kansas that left 5 people dead. The state's 
highest court threw out death sentences against the brothers.

The case centers on whether each brother should have been entitled to a 
separate sentencing hearing and whether the trial judge erred in his 
instructions to jurors. A ruling is expected by next June.

In other cases, the high court is considering whether judges have too much 
discretion in imposing death sentences, whether prosecutors improperly struck 
all four prospective jurors who are black from a capital punishment case, and 
whether a judge who initially prosecuted a death penalty case should have 
removed himself from considering an appeal in the case.

(source: Voice of America)

******************

For Justices, Death Penalty Cases Are Personal


With the long black robes, red velvet curtain and secret conference room, the 
U.S. Supreme Court can seem like a pretty weird place. But the court is never 
weirder than when the death penalty is being discussed, as it was in 
Wednesday's oral arguments. On the surface, the justices must decide whether 
co-defendants can have their sentences determined in a single hearing, and 
whether a jury must be told that factors mitigating against a capital sentence 
don't need to be proved beyond reasonable doubt. But underneath these technical 
legal issues, something more profound is at stake: the immediate, personal 
involvement of the nine justices in the intentional killing of human beings.

Because the court thinks "death is different," its usual rules for choosing 
which cases to hear don't apply. It considers cases where there's no split of 
authority among the courts of appeal or among the states, and it corrects 
errors that it thinks were made by the courts below. More than that, the court 
gets into the guts of how the death penalty is determined and administered, 
making it the de facto supervisor of what Justice Harry Blackmun memorably 
called the "machinery of death."

Quicktake Lethal Injections

The court doesn't hear every death penalty appeal, but the clerks and justices 
do in practice review every legal argument made by desperate death row inmates 
and their lawyers as their dates of execution draw near. For decades, the court 
has employed a special "death clerk," not one of the justices' clerks who 
typically serve for a year, but a permanent staff member who has developed an 
expertise in the arcana of state and federal death penalty law. The death clerk 
monitors the appeals, makes sure the justices vote on them in an orderly 
fashion, and communicates the responses back to the states and the lawyers.

Although the court prefers otherwise, sometimes all this happens in the dead of 
night, in anticipation of a crack-of-dawn execution. If it's after hours, each 
justice leaves a law clerk behind in chambers to monitor developments and 
communicate with his or her boss at home. I can tell you I've never experienced 
anything eerier than staying up to the small hours in the darkened, 
almost-empty Supreme Court building, waiting for someone to die in Texas or 
Arizona or Oklahoma so that I could go home.

I mention the detail to suggest how closely the justices are involved in 
administering the death penalty -- and how that experience becomes part of the 
justices' professional routine. There are many fewer executions now than there 
were in the late 1990s, when I clerked, but reduced numbers don't, I think, 
reduce the psychological impact -- possibly the reverse.

Public attention tends to focus on whether the court will strike down the death 
penalty as cruel and unusual, which it did in effect from 1972 to 1976. The 
day-to-day death penalty jurisprudence isn't as legally dramatic. But the right 
answer often depends on what you think about the death penalty writ large.

Take the question of whether it's fair to sentence co-defendants in the same 
proceeding. The Carr brothers, whose case is before the court, were convicted 
of a vicious crime spree in which they killed 5 people and almost killed a 6th. 
Reginald, the older brother, seems to have been leader of the 2. Jonathan, the 
younger brother, presented evidence at trial that made Reginald look worse than 
he -- in the hopes of getting the jury to sympathize with him as a follower who 
didn't deserve the death penalty. Reginald's lawyers have argued that this was 
unjust. Jonathan's lawyers, for that matter, argue that sentencing him 
alongside his brother must've prejudiced the jury against him.

If you oppose the death penalty, you'll probably think the answer is pretty 
obvious: Each man bears independent guilt, so each man should get a separate 
sentencing hearing.

But if you think the death penalty is warranted, you might conclude that 
there's nothing wrong with sentencing murderers together for crimes they 
committed together. Criminals are tried together and sentenced together all the 
time for joint crimes. Indeed, a jury that considered the crimes of both Carrs 
and their punishments could arguably do it better in a single proceeding than 
in 2 separate ones.

2 justices, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, made headlines last term by 
saying they consider the death penalty unconstitutional in all circumstances. 
The court's 2 younger liberals, Sonya Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, kept their 
powder dry, declining to join their older colleagues' position at this 
comparatively early stage in their Supreme Court tenures.

The only way the death penalty will be struck down the foreseeable future is if 
Justice Anthony Kennedy thinks it should be. Kennedy doesn't like to be 
pigeonholed as a bleeding-heart liberal, and given his landmark liberal vote 
for gay marriage in June, it's very unlikely that he wants to become a death 
penalty pioneer, at least for now.

That leaves the court with skirmishes over procedure that stand in for the real 
question: How much can the justices tolerate their intimate connection to 
death? For now, the answer is that they can. Dostoevsky, no stranger to capital 
punishment, said it best: "Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!"

(source: Noah Feldman, Bloomberg News)

****************

Kill the Death Penalty


"Since every life is sacred, every human person is endowed with an inalienable 
dignity, and society can only benefit from the rehabilitation of those 
convicted of crimes." -- Pope Francis, speaking to the joint session of 
Congress last week.

The United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the death 
penalty in a lethal injection case this year in Glossip v. Gross by a vote of 
5-4. The Court will hear a Florida case this term that considers the Sixth 
Amendment right to trial by Jury together with the Eighth Amendment prohibition 
against "cruel and unusual punishment."

Hurst v. Florida will be an interesting case to watch and see whether the 5-4 
vote holds. In 2015, not only Catholics agree with Pope Francis.

Only our unique American way of thinking could refuse to consider death as 
"cruel and unusual" for 225 years. The American mind cares about preserving the 
life of a fetus, but does not care much about what happens to that life after 
birth. We care about prolonging life for the elderly, but don't care much about 
the quality of care the elderly receive or the quality of the life they will 
lead. We care about putting criminals behind bars, but we don't care much about 
what happens to the criminals we imprison or how we can prevent them from 
returning to prison.

The History of the Death Penalty

The death penalty has been imposed for centuries, which is one of the reasons 
the most severe form of criminal punishment has endured so long. The first 
historically recorded execution took place in Egypt in the 16th Century B.C. 
When the United States was founded, it continued the English tradition of 
imposing death sentences on criminals convicted of the most heinous crimes, 
including murder, rape, arson, and treason. Over time, the accepted forms of 
execution have evolved from public hangings to electrocution to lethal 
injection.

Public opinion has also shifted, with seven states abolishing the death penalty 
in the last decade, making a total of nineteen non-death penalty states. 
Criticism has grown in recent years after several death-row inmates were later 
proven innocent of the crimes of which they were convicted. Nonetheless, 
approximately 60 % of Americans say they favor the death penalty for convicted 
murderers, according to Gallop.

The Constitutionality of the Death Penalty

With the exception of a brief period in the 1970s, the death penalty has always 
been constitutional. In Furman v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the 
death penalty could violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and 
unusual punishment, although the majority disagreed on the specific reason. 
Several justices expressed concern over the risk of racial bias, while others 
asserted that the death penalty was unconstitutional in any circumstance.

The Furman decision imposed a moratorium on capital punishment, while lawmakers 
worked to amend their death penalty statutes to include safeguards intended to 
ensure that death sentences were not imposed discriminatorily or arbitrarily. 
While capital punishment resumed 5 years later with the Court's blessing, the 
Court has restricted its use in a series of subsequent decisions.

In 2003, the justices ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that the Eighth Amendment's 
ban on cruel and unusual punishment prohibits the execution of death row 
inmates with mental retardation. 3 years later, the Court held that imposing 
the death penalty on juveniles who had committed their crimes while less than 
18 years of age was also unconstitutional.

Decisions, however, have not always favored defendants. Last term, the Court 
ruled by a vote of 5-4 that Oklahoma's lethal injection protocol does not 
violate the Eighth Amendment, concluding that the inmates failed to identify a 
viable alternative that entails a lesser risk of pain. In a sharply worded 
dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer questioned whether all methods of execution 
violate the Eighth Amendment. "Rather than try to patch up the death penalty's 
legal wounds one at a time," Justice Breyer wrote, "I would ask for full 
briefing on a more basic question: whether the death penalty violates the 
Constitution."

There are already 2 death penalty cases on the Supreme Court???s upcoming term, 
which begins on October 5, 2015. It will be interesting to see whether the 5-4 
majority holds firm on the issue of capital punishment or whether either case 
will even reach the issue rather than focus on the more narrow questions 
presented.

(source: Opinion; Donald Scarinci is a managing partner at Lyndhurst, N.J. 
based law firm Scarinci Hollenbeck----politickernj.com)

****************

On Capital Punishment, SCOTUS Is Behind The Times -- And The Talmud


When the Supreme Court considers reinstating the death penalty against Jonathan 
and Reginald Carr, whose sentences were overturned by the Kansas Supreme Court, 
they will be considering some technical aspects of the case. Defense lawyers 
for the two brothers, convicted for a grisly series of four murders in 2000, 
have maintained that they should have been given separate trials to determine 
who was most responsible, as opposed to the joint trial they received. The 
Court, though, will likely not be considering the potential method of 
execution, lethal injection, in light of its ruling last term in Glossip v. 
Gross. In that case, the Court held that the sedative midazolam, despite a 
record of painful and prolonged executions, did not meet the standard of "cruel 
and unusual punishment" proscribed by the Eighth Amendment.

Glossip was noteworthy for the passion it evoked from the bench, with four 
justices passionately reading opinions back and forth. It also showed how, in 
this case, the Supreme Court is out of step with history - and Talmudic 
precedent.

In his majority opinion in Glossip, Justice Samuel Alito noted that midazolam 
is currently the only drug available to states wishing to execute prisoners by 
lethal injection, as the petitioners, who faced lethal injection in Oklahoma, 
had not demonstrated the availability of an alternative. The lack of 
alternative was critical, as he wrote, "because capital punishment is 
constitutional, there must be a constitutional means of carrying it out."

In a blistering dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out that, given 
Alito's logic, the state might then be allowed to burn the inmates to death, so 
long as the petitioners had not specifically demonstrated an alternative; 
clearly, the Eighth Amendment should prevent this. Therefore, she concluded, 
even if capital punishment is constitutional in theory, there are times when 
there is no way to apply it in practice such that it would not be cruel and 
unusual. The lack of alternatives does not make what remains any less cruel or 
unusual, nor does it permit the suspension of the Eighth Amendment.

Justice Sotomayor's argument tracked closely with that of several third-century 
talmudic sages as they grapple with the Deuteronomic laws of the Wayward and 
Rebellious Son and the Wayward City. The first case deals with a young man who 
consistently refuses his parents' discipline and instead engages in gluttony 
and idleness. His parents take him before the judges of the town, and he is 
executed (Deuteronomy 21:18-21). Rabbi Simeon, perhaps bothered by the moral 
implications, explains, "It never happened and never will happen. Why then was 
this law written? -- That you may study it and receive reward."

The 2nd case deals with an Israelite city that turns to idolatry. In 
retribution, it is to be razed to the ground, its inhabitants annihilated 
(Deuteronomy 13:13-19). Again, the rabbis state that this never actually 
happened -- and, in fact, they interpreted the laws in such a way as to make 
their application nearly impossible beyond the understanding "that you may 
study it and receive reward."

One sage, though, Rabbi Yonatan, claimed that these laws actually were applied 
-- and that he himself had visited both the grave of a Wayward and Rebellious 
Son and the ruins of a Wayward City. Perhaps, like Justice Alito, Rabbi Yonatan 
felt that a law on the books must have a practical application. However, Rabbi 
Yonatan is a minority viewpoint.

The overwhelming weight of the Jewish tradition comes down against the notion 
that these laws were ever carried out, and certainly not such that there was 
any trace of them by the talmudic period. In a similar fashion, despite the 
many offenses for which the Bible prescribes capital punishment, and the many 
long discussions of their laws and procedures by the rabbis, the dominant sense 
in the Talmud is that the death penalty was to sparingly applied -- if at all. 
"A court that puts a man to death once in seven years is called murderous. 
Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah says 'Or even once in 70 years'" (Makkot 1:10).

There is some controversy as to what reward the talmudic sages thought there 
might be for studying these morally troubling laws that would never be applied 
in real life. Some explain that the potential consequences would provide a 
deterrent against bad behavior. However, as Justice Antonin Scalia noted in his 
concurring opinion, a punishment that is deliberately never applied is no 
deterrent at all -- in fact, it may even be the opposite.

I would argue that at least part of the benefit is in appreciating the 
developing sense of morality with which we perceive the world. There is value 
in seeing troubling laws written into our foundational texts and understanding 
that they are a monument to a different point in our living traditions.

The laws governing the owning and maintenance of Canaanite slaves, for example, 
while practical for the sages of the Talmud, are now theoretical, having long 
ago joined the ranks of those that we "study to receive reward." The laws 
concerning the eradication of the nation of Amalek were theoretical for the 
sages of the Talmud, but were very practical for the Biblical kings a thousand 
years earlier. For me, much of the reward of study is the feeling of gratitude 
for how far we have come, and the renewed sense of purpose and mission as I 
envision an even more just and ethical future.

Justices Scalia and Alito argued that the death penalty must be constitutional 
because it is specifically prescribed by the Constitution, as the punishment 
for treason. Despite this, Justices Breyer and Ginsburg countered that, as 
currently practiced, the death penalty in its totality may likely be cruel, 
unusual, and wholly unconstitutional - thinking may well impact the Court's 
decision to revisit the Carrs' case. The Jewish tradition dealt with similar 
questions centuries ago and concluded on the side of progress. Hopefully, the 
American legal tradition will eventually come around as well.

(source: Avraham Bronstein; Huffington Post)