The current chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, John Roberts, once wrote in an opinion something that his former boss, Judge Henry Friendly, once told him: That the high court of the land is “not required to exhibit a naivete from which ordinary citizens are free.” But maybe that applies only to the federal courts.
For a pro-life editorial column—which, years back, moved all in, coming out against the death penalty too—the Arkansas Supreme Court’s decision this week in the Brad Hunter Smith case was mixed indeed. And not a blessing in sight. The court tossed out a death penalty punishment, but in a way that tied itself up in knots. You can find the opinion(s) at this link: arkansasonline.com/1212court
Now have a student try to figure that out, and see how fast his brain will turn to mush. This must be what they mean by “law logic,” which John Quincy Adams described as “an artificial system of reasoning, exclusively used in Courts of Justice, but good for nothing anywhere else.”
If you can follow the legal horoscope of the majority opinion at the above link, you’ll note that the state’s highest court has apparently decided the Legislature meant that a person is a person only when a person is not, as decided by which sub-paragraph and section the Legislature had put together at the time.
If you can follow the reasoning, you’re doing better than we are.
Several years ago, a man named Brad Hunter Smith of Cleveland County was accused of killing a woman he believed was carrying his child. The young woman was apparently lured to a field by another person, and Brad Hunter Smith was convicted of attacking her there, first by shooting her with a crossbow bolt, then killing her with a baseball bat. For those who argue in favor of the death penalty, this is the kind of case for them to argue. They have a significant advantage. But that’s another editorial, or maybe 30 of them.
Mr. Smith was given the death penalty at trial because one of the aggravating circumstances was that he also killed the baby his victim was carrying. The General Assembly clearly made that part of state law. Or tried to make that clear.
The Arkansas Supreme Court decided to overturn the death sentence, because:
The court should resolve all doubts about the law in favor of the defendant in such important cases and the Legislature in the conviction part of the law intended for a “person” to include an unborn child, but in the sentencing part of the law the Legislature didn’t include the unborn child part specifically as an aggravating factor, and if the Legislature would have wanted it that way it should have said so.
So, death penalty overturned.
A more convincing case was made by the judge writing in dissent, Justice Rhonda Wood:
“The Arkansas General Assembly determined that when considering criminal homicides, as a matter of public policy, committing an offense against a person that causes the death of ‘an unborn child in utero at any stage of development’ is causing the death of a person. The majority holding that, within this narrow homicide statutory scheme, an ‘unborn child’ is a person in one context and not a person in another is an artificial distinction.”
The state, Justice Wood writes, could have charged the defendant with capital murder of both the mother and child, but it didn’t. So how does that mean the state can’t use the death of the child as an aggravating factor in the sentencing part of the mother’s case? (Editorial comment: Whaa?)
“I submit it is absurd and inharmonious,” she writes, “to hold that when the General Assembly defined a person to include an ‘unborn child’ for a death in a capital-murder statute that it did not intend that definition to apply to a death of a person in the capital-murder aggravating factors.”
Which is an oversight, if it is an oversight, that the Legislature will no doubt clear up soonest. If not before.
At least this is an argument about a technicality in the law. Instead of an argument about whether a baby inside a mother’s womb really is a baby. You’d have to read past the headlines, and maybe read all the way to the links provided, to understand that.
This case, or at least this majority opinion, seems to have tied itself up like a pretzel to get where it finally got. But that’s nothing like the twists, loops and tangles that come from the pro-abortion crowd when they begin arguing when a child actually becomes a child and not just another unwanted growth, like a hangnail.
But that’s another editorial. Or 30.
"Opinion" - Google News
December 12, 2020 at 07:28PM
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OPINION | EDITORIAL: Law logic - Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
"Opinion" - Google News
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