NEWSBYRYAN MANESS

The death penalty debate can become incredibly technical at times. Both sides tend to argue from legalistic, criminal justice, or moral terms, but in the process the actual executed are too often forgotten. In this space, each month, I want to recount those people who the citizens of the United States deemed too dangerous to be allowed to live.

At the beginning of August nine men were scheduled to be executed. By the end of the month, two of those men were dead.  The other seven executions were stayed.

Roderick Davie, 38, was executed in Lucasville, Ohio on August 10. On June 27, 1991 Davie went to the Veterinary Companies of America offices in Warren, Ohio, where he shot and killed two people, John Coleman, 38, and Tracey Jeffrey, 21. During the incident, Davie also shot and injured William John Everett. Davie had been fired from the VCA a month before the shooting.   When asked why he had done it, Davies told detectives, "I just flipped out this morning. I went down to the VCA and shot 'em up."

With his last breath, Davie expressed his remorse to the families of the people that he killed saying that he was sorry and hoping that this would allow them to move on. He was pronounced dead at 10:31 am. He is survived by his parents, his daughter, Paris and his niece, Brittany. Davie was the seventh person killed by the state of Ohio since the beginning of the year and the 1222nd since the death penalty was reintroduced to the United States in 1976.

Should posting a YouTube video get you thrown into jail? Earlier this March, Anthony Graber was stopped by a Maryland state trooper, who started to casually wave his pistol around before eventually identifying himself as a member of law enforcement. Graber happened to record his interaction with the officer and uploaded the video onto YouTube. And now, he faces up to 16 years in prison for the act.

How is this not violently out of whack?

Let's put this in perspective. In Maryland, the maximum sentence a person convicted of third degree sexual assault will face is 10 years. So if Graber had armed himself and raped a woman, he'd be facing a sentence that's six years lighter than the one he now faces for filming a state trooper perform a traffic stop.

Remember that Gardner was filming a public official performing a public function in a public place. If Graber had broken into police headquarters to film something actually secret, then that might be a different question. But all he did in this case is film his own interactions with the police at the side of the road.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton issued a preliminary injunction against four sections of Arizona's controversial immigration law, SB 1070. This decision has been widely reported, but less widely understood.

So here's two things you might not have heard about the challenge Arizona's law is facing.

The first thing you need to understand is that the judge didn't invalidate the law in its entirety, she just ruled that four out of six provisions in the law were unlikely to succeed in the long run, so they shouldn't take effect. The four provisions she issued the injunction against are the controversial aspects of the law — the provisions that require police officers to check immigration status of everyone they arrest, make it a crime to lack immigration papers, make it illegal for an undocumented immigrant to solicit work, and allow police to arrest anyone they have probable cause to believe can be deported.

The sections that she upheld are pretty uncontroversial and deal with Arizona's efforts to stop human trafficking and the process of illegal, U.S.-bound immigration in the first place.

The second thing that's important to know — something that's been grossly under-reported — is why the judge came to the conclusions she did. They boil down to the fact that to the judge, it's more important to effectively fight terrorism than harass undocumented immigrants.

If you read any Supreme Court opinions about capital punishment, you’ll see the phrase “death is different” used over and over again. The Court has historically viewed this form of punishment as being so serious that only the “worst of the worst” criminals get it. If we grant that the death penalty is a good idea (which I don’t), then this makes sense. Death is a permanent punishment: after someone is dead there is no chance for parole, appeal or reprieve. That’s why it is so often called the ultimate punishment.

But that’s where we run into problems. If the death penalty is the ultimate punishment, where does that leave torture? Torture has been used for thousands of years to punish criminals and enemies of the state. In our modern times, though, we (typically) think that it’s a practice too ghastly for civilized countries. So in many ways, torture is in fact viewed as the ultimate punishment — one so extreme that governments refuse to explicitly employ it (waterboarding by unscrupulous presidential administrations not withstanding).

This leaves us with the question: What's really at the top of the punitive food chain? What really is the ultimate punishment?

Ever since Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed SB 1070 into law, everyone and their mother has weighed in to opine on the merits of Arizona's battle against undocumented immigrants. Well, now it's my turn. Because I've actually read the law.

And trust me, it's a dumb one. Let me walk you through why. (For those of you who want to follow along, please proceed to the following link.)

There's plenty in the law to puzzle over, but today, we'll focus on the most publicized portion of the bill: section11-1051(B) — which for our purposes, we'll call the "Papers Please Section." This part of the law lies at the heart of the bill's controversy. In essence, it declares that if you're an Arizona law enforcement officer and you have reasonable suspicion that a person is in the country illegally, you shall take steps to determine their immigration status.

Shall is a powerful word here, because it means that Arizona's government is commanding you — as, say, a Phoenix police officer — to look for undocumented immigrants. This is why a lot of Arizona cops are upset about the bill, which the Obama administration is now suing Arizona over as unconstitutional. On top of their regular duties of, you know, keeping people safe, officers now have to actively try to round up so-called "illegal aliens," too.

Fortunately, Arizona police departments are swimming in money and have more than enough maintain services. Oh, wait.