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Cruel And Unusual Logic
By Doug Patton
January 17, 2006

Now that Stanley "Tookie" Williams has been executed, Clarence Ray Allen is the new cause celeb among those seeking to end capital punishment in the United States. As I write this, Allen is just hours from execution by lethal injection in California.

A quarter century ago, while serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for the brutal 1974 murder of his son's girlfriend, Clarence Allen was convicted and sentenced to death for ordering the murders of three other people from behind bars.

So weak was the logic of the appeal that even the left-leaning Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco was not persuaded to review the case. And when it was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was unconvinced. Only Justice Stephen Breyer dissented. The other eight justices refused to hear the case. With five votes necessary for the High Court to review a case, the stage is now set for another murderer to be put to death.

What makes Clarence Allen unique is that he is 76 years old, blind, suffers from diabetes and is confined to a wheelchair. This makes him the poster boy for the anti-death penalty crowd, who believe his execution would constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

According to a federal appeals court ruling in 2004, "Allen remains dangerous to society even while behind bars, and no jurors would have been persuaded to spare his life by evidence that he had been nice to some people at some point in his life."

Allen has continued to deny his guilt. However, his final appeal did not challenge his conviction or sentence and instead focused on his physical condition, including a near-fatal heart attack last September.

"To wheel Mr. Allen, a blind, aged, crippled and enfeebled man, into the execution chamber at San Quentin to be put to death would be a bizarre spectacle that shocks the conscience and offends fundamental notions of human decency,'' his lawyers said in an appeal last month. They said Allen, if allowed to finish his life in prison, posed no risk of harm to anyone.

The federal appeals court rejected those arguments, saying that while Supreme Court rulings have barred the execution of juveniles and the mentally retarded, as well as prisoners who were insane and unable to understand that they were being executed, no American court has ever found a barrier to executing someone like Allen, a mentally sound 50-year-old when he ordered the murders.

"Nothing about his current ailments reduces his culpability and thus they do no lessen the retributive or deterrent purposes of the death penalty,'' the court said.

Lost in all this, of course, are the victims, long forgotten in the rush to save this man, who committed crimes so heinous that society condemned him to death for them. But there are other considerations as well.

Consider, for example, that Clarence Ray Allen is alive today, 25 years after his death sentence was imposed, because of a nearly endless appeals process. Consider that if Allen's sentence was commuted to life, he could live another ten years in prison, all the while supported and cared for at taxpayer expense. And consider that Allen's guilt is not diminished by his infirmity. That is the most important consideration of all. Should society be less inclined to strap an evil old man to a table and drip death into his veins than to do so to a young man? Hardly.

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Doug Patton is a freelance columnist whose work is published in newspapers across the country, and on selected Internet web sites. Doug is a former political speechwriter and advisor to candidates, elected officials and public policy organizations. Readers can e-mail him at dougpatton@cox.net.

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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.