Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Keeping Execution Safe and Legal

Remember back in the 80s when we were told that fatal injection was a more humane way to conduct the death penalty? I do. So now we have it and it apparently isn't working too well.

Then the European Union cut off one of the drugs originally used to do this because it was disturbed that we were using it to perform executions. Now different drugs are used and that is apparently one of the factors that played in to the botched execution in Oklahoma yesterday.

Thank you, EU.

I am in favor of the death penalty but I'm not unsympathetic to many of the arguments against it. However, the whole idea of trying to make the death penalty inoffensive is somehow, ... well, offensive. The death penalty is bad. It's the worst punishment someone can have meted out to him. And we're supposed to make it pleasant? Why would we (if we really could) want to do that?

Would that help the cause of the people who object to it: to make less objectionable?

In fact there is something a little creepy about someone in gloves and a medical mask in clean, antiseptic surroundings killing someone with a sterilized needle. What--is the prisoner going to catch something and die if they don't?

If I was sentenced to be executed, I would prefer a firing squad any day.

What is this strange obsession with making execution look all medical and scientific? Does this really make the humanitarians feel better? Do they want us to feed him healthy food for his last meal too?

Execution is an ugly business. The question is not whether it is humane: It isn't. The question is whether it is necessary. In deciding that question, we should see it for what it is.

And it isn't pretty.

1 comment:

KyCobb said...

I agree. Bring back firing squads, and less see how long the American public can stomach the death penalty.