The media recently reported the case of a person, who, judicially convicted in 1989 of murder in the first degree and sentenced to capital punishment, tested the patience of the Criminal Justice System by surviving the legally prescribed lethal injection, administered, remarkably, less than two years ago. We can only attempt to gauge the feelings of the patience of the criminal person, himself, however despicable, languishing on death row in contemplation of his imminent brutal execution for 35 years. It has been argued, with significant legal and humanistic merit, that a reprise of the homicidal process constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment,” forbidden by the U.S. Constitution.
Official methods of homicidal “retribution” have historically, and selectively, varied between “stoning,” burning,” “beheading,” (the latter, [“cap” meaning “head” as in “beheading”] the etymological source of the legally euphemistic term,” Capital Punishment,”) “hanging,” “shooting,” “lethal injection” and the infamous “electric chair” or “electrocution.” Readings of history readily inform of early executions which, acceptably, took on a carnival-like atmosphere to which people brought their children for family entertainment.
Botched killings of such evildoers, by the various temporally preferred modes du jour, cruelly and empirically are not rare occurrences. Further comments on the recent case and this subject will be offered after the following historical paragraph.
Reference to the relevant literature reveals that the long and bloody empirical history of capital punishment has demonstrated that, contrary to its eternal morally enunciated purpose, and its principled justification, capital punishment, does not deter crime nor provide closure for the family of the victim. Moreover, all too frequently, experiences have revealed the legally appropriate exoneration of many erroneously convicted individuals, interred on “Death Row;” for those who are posthumously discovered to be innocent, justice (and the innocent person) is tragically and poorly served.
Our troubled moral compass and innate sense of human rectitude, persist in declaring, that if the premeditated and deliberate killing of a human being by another has constituted the paramount, classically evil crime, should it be replicated by an official representational institution of the “People” under the atavistic umbrella of the prehistorically, primitive desire for Biblical “vengeance.” If killing is verboten, should society eternally be brutalized by the inconsistency of its public approval, provided homicide is committed by the State?
The media has reported that the State of Alabama can at long last engage in self-congratulation on its 2024, successful killing of the 1989 murderer, Kenneth Smith, by the innovative use of nitrogen to bring on lethal hypoxia. It is to be noted that the official method was itself preceded by a rather substantial debate among chemists, executioners, and ethicists as to the issues of efficacy and rectitude of the untested use of nitrogen to accomplish the scheduled, statutorily prescribed homicide. The controversial debate might have easily been avoided by a cursory (and heartless) reference to the irrefutably efficient use of the gas, “Zyclon-B,” in Ausvchvitz.
-p.
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