This, from your Yahoo link, sure shows it wasn't 'unusual.'
giving scores of inmates on death row the possibility of a reprieve.
'Cruel' is more complicated, philosophically.
Oh, wait, I see this, which makes the point that although it used to be usual, it's getting more unusual.
"It is not so much the number of these states that is significant, but the consistency of the direction of the change," Justice John Paul Stevens ( news - web sites) wrote for the majority.
"The practice ... has become unusual, and it is fair to say that a national consensus has developed against it," Stevens wrote for himself and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor ( news - web sites), Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg ( news - web sites) and Stephen Breyer ( news - web sites).
That Yahoo piece is excellently done! So here it is again:
story.news.yahoo.com |
