Being able to watch the execution of a black person doesn't further any kind of consequences for the murderer.
The execution of a polluted person or a scapegoat animal often takes the form of drowning, choking, suffocating, or clubbing so that the pollution might not escape with a flow of blood.
The execution of an innocent person is an even greater horror.
The judge, Kevin Fine of 177th Criminal Court, said he still wanted more information on whether the state's death penalty statute was unconstitutional because it allowed for the possible execution of an innocent person.
No judge wants to be responsible for allowing the execution of an innocent person, which helps explain why there tend to be an unusually high number of appeals in a capital case.
However purportedly different, in fact, all contemporary moral philosophies lead to this sort of "consequentialism" (it was Anscombe who coined that now-indispensable term), which blithely countenances the execution of an innocent person as a potentially right action.
A new Pew Research Center poll found that seven in 10 Americans feel this way, with just a quarter of people saying there are enough safeguards in the system to prevent the execution of an innocent person.
If denied by Georgia courts, his case would present an excellent vehicle for the United States Supreme Court to decide, once and for all, that incarceration or execution of an innocent person is constitutionally impermissible.
Steven Drizin, a Northwestern University law professor and death penalty expert, said of Mr. Ryan: "He was a small-town pharmacist whose views of the death penalty and the criminal justice system were profoundly rocked by the prospect that he would preside over the execution of an innocent person".
