Other pundits also went on the offensive, with former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee saying any penalty short of execution for the WikiLeaks founder would be "too kind".
Talk story about enactment of the death penalty law in New York State, and the subsequent lack of executions.
"I sentence you to the penalty of death by execution," District Judge George A. O'Toole Jr said, before piling on: "No one will remember that your teachers were fond of you, that you were funny, a good athlete.
But the sheer number of executions in Texas, a fiercely pro-death-penalty state, has attracted criticism.
More common criminals could expect other forms of penalty: execution, for example, and various kinds of corporal punishment; forced labor and conscription; public humiliation; the levying of fines; exile; loss of privileges and offices; and so on.
Under the court's death penalty precedents, a method of execution must not be "contrary to evolving standards of decency" and may not inflict "unnecessary pain".
By contrast, only two states that had a death penalty barred execution of the mentally retarded in 1989, when the Supreme Court in a separate decision rejected a challenge to capital punishment for that category of defendants.
Capital punishment, also called death penalty, execution of an offender sentenced to death after conviction by a court of law of a criminal offense.
Capital Punishment Project, which provided representation for Mr. Jones, said the successful appeals showed that the problem with the death penalty was not the method of execution — the issue ruled on by the Supreme Court last month — but instead "poor people getting lousy lawyers".
"We urge the Saudi authorities to establish a moratorium on the use of the death penalty, halt executions of persons convicted who were children at the time of the offense, and ensure a prompt and impartial investigation into all alleged acts of torture". .
