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Pope Benedict XVI would have found himself in the minority if he had been visiting the judicial branch of the United States government instead. By a vote of 7-2 the Supreme Court found nothing "cruel and unusual" about using a cocktail of injections to kill prisoners. All three networks had a correspondent at the high court to cover the decision. After a seven month moratorium this decision "in effect restores capital punishment in America," declared CBS' Wyatt Andrews. NBC's Pete Williams counted 18 planned executions in ten states that had been postponed pending the ruling and "dozens more that were not even scheduled." ABC's Jan Crawford Greenburg saw killings under way imminently in Virginia, Oklahoma, Texas and Mississippi. She quoted Justice Clarence Thomas as ruling that "lethal injection is designed to eliminate pain rather than to inflict it" and Justice John Paul Stevens, who found no objection to the specific method of execution, as finding the entire system of capital punishment to be "a pointless and needless extinction of life with only marginal contributions to any discernible social or public purpose." The Bishop of Rome no doubt concurs.
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