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Mostly Cloudy Dead is dead, except in the death chamber
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In April, the state of Oklahoma eventually executed Clayton Lockett, but it wasn’t easy. The convicted killer mumbled, writhed and raised his body off the gurney, witnesses said, and that was after he had been declared unconscious.
You can’t find a competent executioner these days. Most doctors refuse because of their oath to “do no harm.” Those who do participate aren’t listed among New York magazine’s Top Doctors of the Year. Often, poorly trained prison officials do the job, missing veins, puncturing blood vessels and misinterpreting vital signs.
I’m not sorry these killers are dead and gone. The world is a better place without them. They gave no mercy; they deserve none. But I’m concerned about what these botched procedures do to us, as individuals, as a community and as a country.
I do not believe in the death penalty, but I find myself in the unusual position of agreeing with the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, Alex Kozinski, a conservative, who does support capital punishment. He said last week that lethal injections were a “dishonest” attempt to disguise the raw brutality of executions. He wants to bring back firing squads, which would be efficient, cheap and real.
“I’ve always thought executions should be executions,” Kozinski said.
He’s right. We try to make ourselves feel better by employing “euthanizing” medications, the stuff we use to put down our suffering animals. But lethal injections aren’t working very well, and the procedure allows us to delude ourselves — to avoid the fact that we are actually killing someone.
“If we as a society want to carry out executions,” Kozinski said, “we should be willing to face the fact that the state is committing a horrendous brutality on our behalf.” If and until our society evolves enough to ban the death penalty, then I agree: Let’s bring back the firing squad. Let’s remove the trappings that allow supporters of the death penalty to believe it is a gentle easing out of life and into eternity.
Copyright © 2014 Randi Kreiss. Randi can be reached at randik3@aol.com.
You can’t find a competent executioner these days. Most doctors refuse because of their oath to “do no harm.” Those who do participate aren’t listed among New York magazine’s Top Doctors of the Year. Often, poorly trained prison officials do the job, missing veins, puncturing blood vessels and misinterpreting vital signs.
I’m not sorry these killers are dead and gone. The world is a better place without them. They gave no mercy; they deserve none. But I’m concerned about what these botched procedures do to us, as individuals, as a community and as a country.
I do not believe in the death penalty, but I find myself in the unusual position of agreeing with the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, Alex Kozinski, a conservative, who does support capital punishment. He said last week that lethal injections were a “dishonest” attempt to disguise the raw brutality of executions. He wants to bring back firing squads, which would be efficient, cheap and real.
“I’ve always thought executions should be executions,” Kozinski said.
He’s right. We try to make ourselves feel better by employing “euthanizing” medications, the stuff we use to put down our suffering animals. But lethal injections aren’t working very well, and the procedure allows us to delude ourselves — to avoid the fact that we are actually killing someone.
“If we as a society want to carry out executions,” Kozinski said, “we should be willing to face the fact that the state is committing a horrendous brutality on our behalf.” If and until our society evolves enough to ban the death penalty, then I agree: Let’s bring back the firing squad. Let’s remove the trappings that allow supporters of the death penalty to believe it is a gentle easing out of life and into eternity.
Copyright © 2014 Randi Kreiss. Randi can be reached at randik3@aol.com.
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