Thoughts on Capital Punishment

For just one moment, let's lay aside all the many sound theological arguments against the death penalty (and there are many). When our supposedly "most humane" way of executing people goes this terribly awry, it shows that something is fundamentally wrong with the death penalty system:

A few days ago, the state of Florida attempted to execute a convicted killer named Angel Diaz. But instead of the execution going smoothly, the person administering the lethal drugs messed up. The drug cocktail went into the soft tissue of Diaz's arm (instead of a vein), and it took him 34 minutes to die. During that time, witnesses reported seeing his lips moving, his eyes alert, and his Adam's apple bobbing furiously.

Sound gruesome? And this is supposed to be the nicest way we have to legally kill people. See a summary article for yourself in the NY Times.

Some of the more grisly aspects of Diaz's experience are chronicled in this CNN article.

I am 100% against the death penalty. Now, I do not believe that society should be "soft on crime." And I do not believe that we should turn convicted killers out onto the streets. But that does not mean that we should be in the business of "eye for an eye" retributive justice. There are better ways to pursue justice - both in the form of punishment for offenders and vindication for the victims of crime.

But let me go out on a limb here. If you are in favor of the death penalty, isn't lethal injection a fairly cowardly way to go about it? The justification for it that is usually given is that it is the most humane way to kill someone. I think it is actually just the opposite. I think that lethal injection is really easier on the public, because it gives the semblance of something that is painless and even medical - hence the gurney, syringe, etc.

Let's remember that the electric chair was once employed for many of the same reasons. The condemned could sit down in a chair, which seems like a positively civilized way to die. And the electric currents theoretically didn't do anything traumatic to the exterior of the body - or at least, it didn't seem nearly as violent as the snapping of the neck via hanging. Of course, hair catching on fire and exploding eyeballs changed that perception in time.

If we're going to continue capital punishment, let's do it in a way that is really the most painless for the condemned: the guillotine. In one quick instant, the spinal cord is severed and feeling stops. In that way, you even avoid the momentary terror that a hanged man must experience as he falls through the trap door of the gallows. Of course, there is no way to avoid the few seconds of cognitive awareness that a severed head may experience, but there's probably no way to get around that.

Wouldn't the prospect of guillotining condemned prisoners seem gruesome to the public, you might ask? Yes, it would. Exactly. But if we are going to keep up the barbaric practice of state-sponsored killing, we should at least do so in an honest way. A way that causes the least suffering on the part of the condemned, but a way which also brings home the reality of what we are insisting must be done.

And FYI, the picture of the gurney above was taken off the Florida Department of Corrections homepage, where it is proudly displayed. It's probably the same one that Angel Diaz suffered on for 34 minutes last week.