[ALMANAR.LB] The US state of Georgia executed its oldest death row inmate Wednesday, just days before his 73rd birthday, in a move critics denounced as emblematic of capital punishment's excesses.Brandon Jones received a lethal injection at a state prison in Jackson, a corrections front man told AFP.
The African American man had spent more than 36 years behind bars for the 1979 murder of a white convenience store clerk.
It doesn't matter what color the convenience store clerk was, but why did Mr. Jones spend half his life on death row? Presumably he was filing appeal after appeal, but it's an indication of the sickness of the legal system that they weren't dealt with by, say, 1980.
His lawyers had launched last-minute appeals to halt the execution, including with the US Supreme Court, but they were rejected.
Critics point to his case as an example of the "double punishment" faced by some death row prisoners -- spending decades in solitary confinement with no prospects but death.
Why does it take 36 years for the appeal process to exhaust itself?
The obvious solution to the long wait for an execution never seems to be broached in court...
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer spoke out last year against "unconscionably long delays that undermine the death penalty's penological purpose."
Death penalty opponents note that many death row inmates were sentenced to death at a time when they lacked a satisfactory defense system and that if they were tried today, the outcome would be different.
Murder a clerk at a convenience store today while committing a robbery? There are any number of state prosecutors today that will seek the death penalty, and a fair number of judges and jurors who will impose it. Be careful what you wish for...
"Jones's case raises questions of proportionality and discriminatory application of the death penalty," the Death Penalty Information Center said in a statement.