I hadn't seen this before. Wow, they'll do anything to keep her off of DR. If I read it right they're questioning the legality of the definition of "extremely heinous or cruel". If stabbing a person 29 times, slitting their throat and shooting them in the face isn't "extremely heinous AND cruel" I don't know what is.
Have you put this on the legal thread to see if one of the lawyers can shed any light on what it's all about?
I don't know anything about law, so this is completely MY INTERPRETATION. This is the kind of wording that causes 'legal loop holes' that years from now gets the DP taken away, but this document is probably just a standard thing...
Basically it is saying that the word "especially" in front of cruel could mean different things to different people, and questions the ability of a jury that lacks legal knowledge to make the determination of 'especially' in their decision of what is "especially cruel, especially depraved, etc.. It gives examples of cruel cases and some were decided cruel others weren't and so it ask the question: What is "especially" cruel, depraved, etc. vs. "run-of-the mill" cruel, depraved, etc.?
Wants the courts to provide a more 'opinion proof' definition....
In cases where the judge is the ultimate person making the ruling on life or death than their legal knowledge was appropriate to determine proper reasoning of the word "especially" so that wording did not matter, but now that we let jury's determine that factor, which ultimately determines a person receiving life or death it can pose more of a problem.
It then talks of some cases where judges who had dealt with death penalty cases provided the jury with a more defined definition, and the only problem is the judge said "prolonged physical or mental anguish" and again the question is what constitutes 'mental anguish'?
Anyway, I personally agree, that if we are going to be having jurors make the determination, their should be a more clear, cut definition.
In the Arias case it would not matter how you worded it, the verdict would remain the same!
What I don't like is this is one of those 'things' that years down the road, some legal ruling will determine that jury's should have better defined parameters, or that Judges should have given them parameters, etc. and so people given the death penalty end up getting changed to life instead...so they really should get that cleared up...
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