Do you believe in spirits?

I do want to believe in ghosts after reading the story of the yesterday's execution in Arizona.


Now, in all civilized countries but the United States (if the United States may be called a civilized country in view of its staunch adherence to the death penalty) death penalty is abolished.


I am blessed to live in a state (New York) which imposed an indefinite moratorium on death penalty, hopefully for good.


Yet, death penalty is still "administered" in many states in the United States.


And executions are botched throughout the country, the latest being the execution of Clayton D. Lockett in Oklahoma and the yesterday's execution of Joseph Rudolph Wood in Arizona.


Executions, if the government is to claim that it is a constitutional and not a cruel and inhuman punishment, should at least be quick and the least painful.


Yet, had Mr. Locket and Mr. Wood been simply shot in the head, they would have suffered less than what they had to endure - physically and emotionally.  At least they would have died instantly.


The death penalty is taking of a life, not inflicting pain.


Yet, in this country people are fried in electric chairs or suffocated for hours by using unknown lethal injection drugs information about the government refuse to reveal to the public - with the U.S. Supreme Courts' blessing.


The federal Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has granted Joseph Rudolph Wood, scheduled to death by a lethal injection, an injunction to at least verify what drugs are going to be used to kill him.


That was on July 19, 2014.


Within 4 days the U.S. Supreme Court has lifted the stay and sent Joseph Rudolph Wood to die a horrible death.


That is the same court that denies writs of certiorari to thousands of people whose constitutional rights are violated.


In order to deny a human being a basic human and constitutional right to know whether the punishment that is about to be inflicted upon him may turn into hours of torture, and in order to allow the state government to send a human being to a horrible death, the U.S. Supreme Court has all the time in the world.


Did judges who allowed the execution of Joseph Rudolph Wood in Arizona to proceed without disclosing to Joseph Rudolph Wood the manufacturer of the drugs, the names of the drugs and the batch numbers of the drugs which were going to be used in his execution not know that executions by lethal injections were recently botched in Oklahoma, resulting in suffering of the condemned.


Did those judges not know that the American Civil Liberties Union called for an immediate moratorium on death penalty until an independent investigation is concluded into the causes of the horrible death of Clayton D. Lockett in Oklahoma?


Did they not know that the United Nations which the U.S. is part of has a moratorium on death penalty since 2007?


Did they not know that the United Nations has actually called upon the United States after the previous botched execution, back in May of 2014, to impose a moratorium on death penalty in the entire country?


Did they not know that executions in Oklahoma were stayed due to the botched execution of Clayton D. Lockett?


Did they not know that after the horrible death of Clayton D. Lockett a federal court imposed a stay of executions in Ohio?


Of course they knew it.  It was all over the news in the country.  The judges of the highest court in the country may not claim ignorance and stupidity defense in a case this important.  The botched executions throughout the country were the main reason why Joseph Rudolph Wood's attorneys filed a civil rights lawsuit in the first place.  The concerns about botched executions were in the pleadings.


So why did these judges make a decision that has sent a human being, a murderer or not, to at least a possibility of a horrible death by hours of suffocation, a death that even Nazis did not inflict on their victims?


The answer is very simple.


Judicial immunity.


Judges knew that for any judicial decision, no matter how bizarre, no matter how cruel and inhuman, no matter how unconstitutional, their brethren, other judges will always cover them with absolute immunity, to do what they whim from the bench.


The horrible death of Joseph Rudolph Wood was predictable.  And it happened.


I am not a believer in God or any Supreme being.  I am not a believer in spirits or ghosts.


But in this case I want to believe that the afterlife exists, that judges who made the decision denying the stay of execution and denying to Joseph Rudolph Wood knowledge of what drugs were going to be used to kill him (knowledge that could have served to prevent his horrible death), those judges, all of them, should be haunted by the ghost of Joseph Rudolph Wood suffocating on that gurney day and night, for as long as they live, and should rot in hell after they die. 


When Joseph Rudolph Wood murdered a human being, that was wrong and punishment was in order.


When the government suffocated Joseph Rudolph Wood for 2 hours, after denying him the right to know that the drugs to be used in killing him can do just that, that is a punishment long banished from the arsenal of the civilized world.  This is murder, too.


What is most concerning to me as an attorney and a human rights defender is that the United States is openly and arrogantly flouting requests of the United Nations to stay clearly inhuman and cruel punishment of its prisoners.   That is the same United States of America which presides in the United Nations over cases of other countries violating human rights of their citizens or residents.


Another reason why Americans should push for full ratification of the United Nations Convention on Political and Civil Rights by the United States without any restrictions and allowing Americans remedies against their own government that citizens of countries like Belarus have.


At this time, the only remedy Americans have against their government violating their basic human rights seem to be in the belief in the afterlife, and that the spirits of those wronged by the government would haunt the wrongdoers and condemn them after their death.   During our lifetimes - there is no remedy.