Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.

 

1 May 2014

Discuss whether to have the death penalty, not how to inflict it

Lethal injection isn’t the only allegedly humane way to execute a human being. A condemned man could be drugged into unconsciousness, then gassed with carbon monoxide (Jack Kevorkian used CO, and it worked well). Or, drugged into unconsciousness, wrapped in C-4 explosive, dropped in a deep hole, and blown to Kingdom Come. I can think of other methods. So can you.

But in the aftermath of Oklahoma’s horribly botched execution of Clayton Lockett, we should not be discussing execution methods and protocols. We should be discussing whether there should be executions. Writing in the United Kingdom’s Daily Telegraph, Alice Arnold says:

America is missing the point. There are easy and fast ways to execute someone. You can just put a gun to their head and shoot them. It wouldn’t take a second. People don’t like that idea much though. It seems barbaric. A lethal injection is considered somehow more acceptable.

The argument about the death penalty can’t be focused on the method. It needs to focus on the very concept of killing in cold blood. Never mind the wrongful execution of innocents that take place each year, the idea of killing those who kill is for old centuries and old Testaments.

She’s right. The death penalty isn’t self-defense or any kind of justifiable homicide. It’s Biblical retribution: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life. It’s premeditated, cold blooded murder, sanctioned by the state — a dirty, dehumanizing, practice that sullies our society and diminishes our nation.

The issue we should be discussing is not how to inflict the death penalty, but how to repeal it.