Florida Catholic | Jesus In My Pocket

Jesus in my pocket, a column by Dale Recinella.

The problem with assumptions

Published: 06.06.08

When I was an economics major attending Catholic college in Kentucky almost 40 years ago, a popular academic joke was: “Two economists find themselves thousands of miles from civilization stranded on a deserted island where there is no edible vegetation and there are no animals. How do they survive?” The punchline was: “One of them assumes he has a can of food and the other one assumes he has a can opener.”

The point of the jest is that the discipline of economics is fragile indeed, because the outcome of the deliberations always rests on the assumptions. The result is only as good as those assumptions. My specific discipline was mathematical economics and the assumptions were frequently stated in statistical formulae that ran for pages. Yet, no matter how complex or intriguing the integrals and summations of the model might be, the juice was always in the assumptions.

All this quickly came to memory as I read the seven opinions totaling a hundred pages that comprise the recent U.S. Supreme Court’s decision authorizing Kentucky to proceed with lethal injections. Contrary to the pronouncements by many pro-death spin doctors, the court did not rule on the constitutionality of capital punishment in America. I know that because the justices said so. Their written opinions say that, for purposes of the Kentucky decision, capital punishment is assumed to be constitutional.

That is not all. Contrary to the sound bites in the media, the U.S. Supreme Court did not even rule on the constitutionality of lethal injection. Once again, I know that because they said so. Their opinions say that, for purposes of the Kentucky decision, lethal injection is assumed to be constitutional.

So what did the U.S. Supreme Court actually decide about capital punishment? The answer is: incredibly little. In the 7 to 2 decision, the highest justices in the land proclaimed that assuming capital punishment is constitutional in the U.S. and assuming lethal injection is a constitutional way of killing people in the U.S., then the two death-row inmates from Kentucky had failed to put forward enough evidence to justify forcing Kentucky to change the chemicals that the state uses to kill people.

Actually, the result is even more narrow that that. The Supreme Court justices, ruling in favor of Kentucky, relied heavily on the fact that Kentucky did not botch its one lethal injection.

Perhaps this is why even some of the justices who agreed with Chief Justice John Roberts predicted the decision would spawn an explosion of death penalty appeals. For example, what about the states that have had problems with lethal injection? What about states like Florida that has had horrendous problems? What about states like Ohio that have had people screaming in agony on the gurney? What about California, and Missouri, and North Carolina and all the others that have not had a one-good for one-shot record?

The most disturbing element of the narrow decision has gone unmentioned in the press. Most states prohibit the lethal injection chemicals used by Kentucky (and the other lethal injection states) from being used to euthanize animals because they can cause extreme and unnecessary agony and suffering. What was the authoritative source used by our five Catholic Supreme Court justices to override that concern?

The authority that our Catholic Chief Justice Roberts cites for this purpose is none other than the horrendous handbook for assisted suicide and euthanasia in the Netherlands. Our Catholic Supreme Court justices are citing the Dr. Kevorkians of northern Europe as authority for lethal injections in America. The Dutch bible of the culture of death has now been enshrined in our case law.

Dare we assume that the precedent set by the Kentucky case will never be applied to us in our nursing homes? That is not an assumption I would bet money on.

Recinella is the coordinator of Death Row Ministries, St. Mary’s Church, Macclenny.

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