HANDS OFF CAIN, U.S. SUPREME COURT SHOULD EVALUATE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF DEATH PENALTY ITSELF

June 29, 2015: About the news of the rejection 5/4 by the US Supreme Court of the appeals on the constitutionality of one of the lethal injection drugs, Elisabetta Zamparutti, Treasurer of Hands Off Cain said:
"The knot that the Supreme Court should untie is not the constitutionality of a single drug, or of a method of execution, but of the death penalty itself. The death penalty is an anachronism that must be overcome to fully realize the rule of law, the vision of the Founding Fathers of the world's oldest democracy.
For this reason - continued Zamparutti - the majority opinion written by Judge Alito, for which the applicants have failed to demonstrate that there is a less painful alternative, expresses a diabolical burden of proof.
Instead, judge Stephen Breyer, drafter of the minority opinion, is right when he writes that the Court must consider whether the death penalty has by now become a cruel and unusual punishment itself. Not only with respect to the fundamental values of American history but also with respect to the current sensitivity of public opinion that sees it as an anachronism of the past, something to get rid of." (Sources: NtC, 29/06/2015)