And How Should We Kill?
or Killing an American.
Many of you, I’m sure, are unaware of the execution of Dennis B. McGuire that took place in Ohio this past friday. Though it got its time in the news, it was overshadowed by talk of President Obama talking about marijuana and chatter about the upcoming football playoffs and Super Bowl.
For those that do not know, it took close to thirty minutes before he was declared dead. The average time it should have taken was between two and ten minutes.
The crimes that he committed (rape and murder) surely deserved a penalty, but we also have rules against cruel and unusual punishment. Was it cruel and unusual what took place in Ohio?
Should we be executing prisoners at all?
What Europe Has To Do With This.
As the American love affair with Crime and Punishment continues, there is another story that runs concurrently with ours. And that story involves the drugs we use to kill our inmates.
When Ohio executed McGuire, they did so with a new combination of drugs, midazolam and hydromorphone. This is where many people believed the state erred, using untested drugs. So why didn’t they just use pentobarbital?
Because they didn’t have any.
That’s because the makers of these drugs, mostly European, have prevented their drugs from being used solely in executions, and have gone as far as preventing resellers from dealing with the United States. Lundbeck, a Danish company, and the maker of pentobarbital, has enforced a strict procedure in order to obtain the drug (which is used, under the name Nembutal, to treat epilepsy).
States such as Texas have gone so far as to falsify documents in order to obtain the necessary drugs. They have had drugs sent to fake hospitals. They have asked for prescriptions under the names of wardens.
This, of course, is insane. But the reason behind it is not.
It is in part due to our sole use of these drugs that have caused foreign countries and businesses to stop their export. In 2010, the United Kingdom’s business secretary had reversed his position on the sale to the United States based on their use:
Mr Cable’s lawyers had told the High Court they couldn’t stop exports because the drug had legitimate uses.
However, he changed that position after seeing evidence that the drug was only being exported for use on death row. (source)
And this is stance is what has led to states like Ohio and Texas using whatever method necessary to get their prisoners killed. Even if that means committing fraud or botching the execution.
Why are we so persistent to kill these men?
Cruel and Unusual
This sad display of the whatever-it-takes attitude shows what lengths Americans will go to to kill a citizen. But how should we kill someone (usually a man) for their crimes?
We’ve come a long way from the Eye For An Eye that was laid out in what is known as one of the first codes of law, Hammurabi’s Code. But how far have we come when the guillotine is a quicker death than lethal injection?
When you look up cruel and unusual on wikipedia, there are past examples of capital punishment that are considered cruel and unusual: “Severe historical penalties include the breaking wheel, boiling to death, flaying, disembowelment, crucifixion, impalement,crushing, stoning, execution by burning, dismemberment, sawing, scaphism, or necklacing.”
Upon seeing that list, I suddenly remembered my Camus. It is towards the end of The Fall (109 in the Vintage paperback) that the main character, Jean-Baptiste Clamence, describes his living for a while in the “little ease”. The “little ease” was a dungeon of “ingenious dimensions”: “not high enough to stand up in nor yet wide enough to lie down in”. The man would become so uncomfortable as to believe he was guilty, or to detest his innocence.
While the “little ease” was certainly a real thing, I’m not sure the “spitting cell” is—a “human masterpiece” in which the jailed is covered except for his face, so that the jailers could spit on him, but the prisoner could not wipe off his face. What’s interesting about this isn’t the cell, but how Camus introduces it: “have you at least heard of the spitting cell, which a nation recently thought up to prove itself the greatest on earth?”
In terms of the execution, each the electric chair, the gas chamber, and lethal injection will surely be on that list. And the swabbing of the arm with an alcohol wipe before the needle is to be inserted is as absurd as a door that covers a man except his face. And yet, here we are claiming this to be a humane means of execution.
We say that in the face of examples like Romell Broom who lingered for over two hours on the death bed before they could find a sufficient vein. At that point, the execution was called off, and they left it up to the courts to decide whether or not trying to execute him a second time was cruel and unusual.
And, once again, his crimes surely befit punishment, but is capital punishment the right method?
No.
As a citizen of the United States, and a mostly law-abiding citizen, I could not argue that we should be killing fellow citizens, regardless of their crimes. And I say that for many reasons, but my main objections are as follows:
- I do not want murder committed in my name, using my money.
- I do not believe that any execution is outside of the cruel and unusual clause in out Eighth Amendment.
- And most importantly, just as the convicted had no right to murder, the state has no right to murder.
And to be honest, I’m surprised that more people have not come to this conclusion. There are only eighteen states that have outright bans on the death penalty, mostly in the Northeast and Great Lakes States, but also New Mexico, Hawaii, and Alaska.
In light of my first reason, the rest of the country, as conservative as it is, I’m shocked they aren’t against it for tax reasons. Executing a person in the United States costs more than imprisoning them for life. In Maryland it costs three times as much as any other case at $3 million (source). It obviously does not work as a deterrent except when you consider that it deters money away from legitimate crime-fighting resources. Overall, it is a taxpayer’s nightmare.
While not appealing exclusively to the wallets of Americans everywhere, I hope to appeal to their morals by awakening them to the idea that they are collectively called to murder the prisoner. And, again, I’m surprised that many more people haven’t called on the idea that when prisoner is murdered in the name of the state, he is murdered by every individual of that state. each and every citizen of that state is partaking in the murder vis a vis their citizenship.
I’d even call on Christians everywhere to remember— as they ironically wear one of the Roman’s favorite execution methods—the commandment that forbids murder.
As I’ve stated before, it does not appear that any means of capital punishment is above cruel and unusual. What is so normal about strapping a man to a table and intentionally overdosing him? Or strapping him to a chair and pulsating an overdose of electricity through him? Since the demise of that form of execution, it has almost become comical in its insanity.
But where do we want to stand on that list of capital punishments; next to stoning or dismemberment? What method of death makes us most comfortable?
And lastly, as our current discussion involves the use of drones and spying techniques, what gives the state rights to do which it has outlawed? I do not myself have the answer to that. Certainly a state has the right to take out a states actions, such as taking taxes, but how do they perform the mental acrobatics to legitimize capital punishment? Or in other words, how do they get away with murder?
The Ghosts of Executions Past
The problems I have laid out here have not even touched the amount of debate about capital punishment that has gone on before me. And I have barely touched upon the debt owed to the victims of the crimes the men on death row have committed: some families asked that the criminal suffer for his crimes, others ask that he merely spend his life in prison.
Knowing that prison serves one of two functions: they rehabilitate (or claim to), or separate from society. I believe merely separating a severe criminal from society should be enough punishment, but that is certainly up for discussion.
I want to leave with three short stories. That of the Innocence Project, George Stinney, and Marvin Wilson.
The Innocence Project does exactly what it sounds like it does. It tries to prove those on death row innocent using resources that might not have been available during the original trial. So far, 312 individuals have been found to be not guilty after their convictions. After.
Simple pieces of evidence, such as DNA and other forensics are what usually proves innocence, but in some cases rigged juries or even crooked District Attorneys or Policemen have sent men to their deaths. Let alone what role race plays in convictions.
George Stinney, who was executed long ago, in 1944. That year, George Stinney was set to turn fifteen. As Christopher Hitchens noted in his essay “Old Enough to Die,” “since 1990… only six countries have executed juvenile offenders: Iran, Yemen, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and the United States of America.”
Of the many children we sentence to death, many are barely able to comprehend the extent of their crimes. Hitchens goes on to cite an investigation by The American Journal of Psychiatry, “using a sample of four states, that covered juveniles on hold for execution. There were fourteen of them. Only two of these had I.Q. scores higher than 90.”
And Marvin Wilson was executed in 2012 by the State of Texas despite his I.Q. score of 61. The state used their rationalizing powers again, this time demeaning the great literary figure Steinbeck by using his character Lennie from Of Mice And Men as the standard bearer of who could and could not be executed. Who can argue with reasoning like that?
Or how about the man who was so unaware of his impending death, that at his last meal he saved a piece of dessert for later? I shudder to think of the man who heard those words and was able to continue with the execution.
The death penalty is atrocious. We kill innocent men, children, and those incapable of understanding what they have done. We cannot sufficiently satisfy those requirements of even our own Bill of Rights. Other countries have put sanctions on us because of our addiction to state-sanctioned murder.
I say put an end to it. If you disagree, I’d like to hear your rationale for murder.
