Reply #1: If You Think That's Evil, Check This Out:

[LoneStarLiberal]

From NY Times yesterday:

Court Begins New Term by Letting State Authority Expand

October 6, 2003
By NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 - The Supreme Court today let stand a
ruling by a federal appeals court that Arkansas officials
may force a convicted murderer to take drugs to make him
sane enough to be executed.

<snip>

In the Arkansas case, the appeals court based in St. Louis
had ruled, 6 to 5, that the Constitution's prohibition
against cruel and unusual punishment would not be violated
if the authorities forcibly administered antipsychotic
medication to the inmate, Charles Laverne Singleton.

<snip>

The Supreme Court ruled in a pair of cases in 1986 that
executing the insane was prohibited by the Eighth
Amendment's edict against cruel and unusual punishment. In
one of the cases, Justice Lewis F. Powell set out the
standard, saying that "the Eighth Amendment forbids the
execution only of those who are unaware of the punishment
they are about to suffer and why they are to suffer it."

<snip>

The appeals court judges were in sharp disagreement over
what should be done when they ruled in February. Judge
Roger L. Wollman, writing for the majority, said that the
court had a choice "between involuntary medication followed
by execution and no medication followed by psychosis and
imprisonment."

<snip>

Judge Gerald W. Heaney, in dissent, said the authorities
should have allowed the prisoner to be medicated without
the consequence of execution. "I believe that to execute a
man who is severely deranged without treatment, and
arguably incompetent when treated, is the pinnacle of what
Justice Marshall called `the barbarity of exacting mindless
vengeance.' "