[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 74 (Monday, June 12, 2006)]
[House]
[Page H3779]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2115
                  CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT--NOT--

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE. Mr. Speaker, there are a select few men and women in this 
world who know in advance the exact time of their death. The crime 
victims are not in that group. Without time to prepare, they never get 
to say goodbye for the last time. They never get to hug their kids 
goodbye, their parents for the last time. The last person they usually 
see on earth is the killer, the one who steals their life.
  One of those victims was Pensacola, Florida, police officer Stephen 
Taylor. He was handcuffing a bank robber that he had captured when 
another bandit named Clarence Hill cowardly shot Officer Taylor in the 
back, killing him. This was in 1982, 24 years ago.
  Hill was tried and sentenced to death, and his sentence was proper. 
He was to be executed with a date and time predetermined by law. He 
knew when he was to meet his maker.
  When at the very last minute he claimed that lethal injection is 
cruel and unusual punishment, our Supreme Court today agreed that his 
civil rights might have been violated and stayed the execution 
indefinitely. The courts have to figure this all out, according to the 
Supreme Court.
  Today the Supreme Court's wayward ruling will undo sentences and the 
sanity of grieving families.
  Mr. Speaker, has the Supreme Court lost its way? Soon many murderers 
and child rapists and armed robbers will scurry to have their sentence 
stopped. They will claim their deaths might be too cruel and unusual. 
Cruel and unusual they are not. Mr. Speaker, 37 of the 38 States in the 
United States that use the death penalty use lethal injection, a hardly 
unusual means of death when most States use it.
  Note the phrase is cruel and unusual punishment, not cruel or unusual 
punishment. Lethal injection drugs, those are the same drugs given to 
surgery patients every day, just in a different dosage.
  But the people on death row who hope Hill's case will serve their 
lives have committed crimes more painful than any drug could be, 
holding someone's head under water, stabbing someone dozens of times 
till they bleed to death, raping, robbing and bludgeoning their victims 
until every cry is silenced. Those folks have earned the right to be 
executed.
  I spent 22 years as a felony trial judge and 8 years as a felony 
court prosecutor in Texas. I have probably tried more cases and more 
death penalty cases than all the Justices on the Supreme Court put 
together, and I dealt with the Constitution every day, especially the 
issues of the Bill of Rights.
  I have been down there in the trial court, down in the mud and the 
blood and the beer with vicious criminal cases, and I have seen the 
families of murder victims grieve and pray and hope that justice will 
occur in their case when some outlaw snuffs out the life of their loved 
one. The death penalty is proper in proper cases. Some people deserve 
that punishment. Hill is one of those people.
  Mr. Speaker, his guilt is not in doubt, just the means of his 
execution is in doubt, according to the Supreme Court. You know we went 
from hanging criminals to the electric chair to the gas chamber to the 
firing squad to this, quote, put them to a quiet peaceful death, the 
lethal injection.
  Now those that are more concerned about the way criminals die than 
they are concerned about the way victims die say this death will be and 
may be a little painful. This ought not to be. Criminals should not 
have more rights than victims. This case is 26 years old. That absurd 
delay in sentencing is cruel and unusual to the family of the victims.
  Gunning down officer Taylor by shooting him in cold blood is cruel 
and unusual punishment for him, the victim. Lethal injection for this 
killer is neither cruel nor unusual, it is just justice.
  And that's the way it is.

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