Guest Post by Morbo
It seems that America has been dragged – or perhaps has simply lurched and stumbled – to a crossroads over the death penalty.
As a recent article in The New York Times Magazine noted, the most common form of state-sponsored execution used these days — lethal injection — is now under fire, legally and morally. In some states, it is being challenged as a form of “cruel and unusual” punishment.
The irony is, lethal injection was devised because the previous method, the gas chamber, was deemed to be too barbaric. It failed to provide a quick death. A condemned person could easily sit around for 11 minutes choking to death.
The gas chamber had superseded the electric chair. Although the chair is still legal for use in some states, several gruesome tales of prisoners who were cooked alive led to its reconsideration.
Of course, the electric chair had taken the place of the firing squad, which was also deemed too crude for the modern era. But it’s worth remembering that at one point, the firing squad was seen as a great advancement over hanging.
It seems we just can’t get a foolproof method for capital punishment.
As The Times Magazine pointed out, it is also becoming increasingly difficult to find doctors willing to provide lethal injections. Most professional medical associations have policies advising doctors not to take part in executions. This leads amateurs to step in, often with unpleasant results.
Elizabeth Weil writes of a legal document that describes problems with lethal injection in several states. Included in the document, Weil says, “are stories of inmates, like one in Ohio, raising his head in the middle of his own execution to say, ‘It’s not working.’ In Alabama, officials at one point said they would execute an inmate who had compromised veins by placing an IV in the saphenous vein in his arm; that vein is actually in the leg…. As these various court proceedings were unfolding, corrections officials in Starke, Fla., executed Angel Diaz by lethal injection on Dec. 13, 2006. But because the execution team punctured the veins in Diaz’s arms when putting in the intravenous catheters, forcing the drugs into the soft tissue instead, Diaz grimaced for as long as 26 minutes, suffering from 11-inch and 12-inch chemical burns on his left and right arms respectively, and took 34 minutes to die.”
It’s obvious this “humane” form of capital punishment isn’t so humane after all. Therefore, I’d like to make a suggestion: Let’s go back to the guillotine.
Think of it: If the blade is kept sharp enough and dropped from a sufficient height, death is instantaneous. The method cannot fail. The condemned prisoner experiences little pain. Yes, there is a little blood, but nothing that can’t be cleaned up afterward. There’s no need to have a doctor present at all. (Put those stories about people’s heads remaining alive after separation from the body out of your mind. They are anecdotal.)
I’m being facetious, of course. I make this suggestion merely to point out that what we seek — a pleasant way to kill someone — does not exist.
The article points out that Americans are conflicted over the death penalty. I can understand that. I’ve felt it myself. Reading some of the stories of the crimes committed in The Times Magazine article — one man raped, tortured and killed a teenage girl — makes you cry out for vengeance.
But that is the reptile part of your brain crying out, and it must be resisted. The more rational side tells us the obvious: There is no way to execute someone that does not involve some pain, physical, psychic or both.
If we really are at a crossroads over the death penalty, let’s take some time to pause and reflect there. Perhaps we need to think about the cost of the pain involved in the procedure – to the individual executed and the society that sanctions it.