We can all sleep safer now?

SAN QUENTIN, Calif. - California executed its oldest death row inmate early Tuesday, minutes after his 76th birthday, despite arguments that putting to death an elderly, blind and wheelchair-bound man was cruel and unusual punishment.

Clarence Ray Allen was pronounced dead at 12:38 a.m. at San Quentin State Prison. He became the second-oldest inmate put to death nationally since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976.

Allen, who was blind and mostly deaf, suffered from diabetes and had a nearly fatal heart attack in September only to be revived and returned to death row, was assisted into the death chamber by four large correctional officers and lifted out of his wheelchair.

His lawyers had raised two claims never before endorsed by the high court: that executing a frail old man would violate the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and that the 23 years he spent on death row were unconstitutionally cruel as well.

*** Blind, mostly deaf suffered from diabetes and had a nearly fatal heart attack??? Hadn't he already been served the death penalty?