To the Editor:
The Supreme Court has ruled that crowding in the California prisons violates the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Yet a previous court ruled that capital punishment does not violate the Constitution.
While I have never had to face prison crowding or capital punishment, I believe I could tolerate the former over the latter. Evidently, one can be put to death in California, but cannot be crowded into a cell.
GERALD BAZER
Toledo, Ohio, May 24, 2011
Note from KBJ: To my knowledge, nobody on the current Supreme Court holds both of the following: (1) prison overcrowding violates the Eighth Amendment; (2) capital punishment does not violate the Eighth Amendment. Hence, the inconsistency identified by the letter writer is manufactured out of whole cloth. But suppose someone did hold these two views. Are they incompatible? No. Capital punishment is punishment. Denying people adequate medical care and accommodations as a result of overcrowding is not part of their punishment. It is gratuitous. The letter writer needs a course in critical thinking. He is all dressed up (in progressive dogma) with nowhere to go.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 