Sherry Chandler » Cruel and Unusual
Cruel and Unusual
Today’s NYTimes editorial:
The Supreme Court hears arguments on Monday in a case about whether Kentucky’s use of a “cocktail” of injected poisons to carry out the death penalty is unconstitutional. We believe that the death penalty, no matter how it is administered, is unconstitutional and wrong. If a state does execute anyone, it must do so in a way that is humane and does not impose needless suffering. Kentucky’s method does not meet that standard.
Popular support for capital punishment is, thankfully, declining in this country. The growing number of exonerations of innocent people on death row has shown that the system cannot be trusted to make such an irrevocable decision. There is considerable evidence of racial discrimination in the application of the death penalty. After years of botched electrocutions and other horrors, it is clear that the methods of taking life are barbaric.
In Kentucky, and nearly all of the states that have capital punishment, executions are carried out by injection of a three-drug “cocktail.” This is supposedly more humane than the electric chair. The more one learns about lethal injection, the less humane it appears.
There is considerable evidence that inmates do not go peacefully or easily. Instead they are reported to feel suffocation, paralysis and excruciating pain. This is particularly true when poorly trained, unskilled workers are administering the drugs, which is all too often the case.
If you think lethal injection is humane, I’d ask you to imagine yourself strapped to a gurney while some technician approaches you with the needle.
It makes me cold in the pit of my stomach.
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2 Comments
1. Max Chandler replies at 7th January 2008, 12:46 pm :
Texas has (again) proven well beyond a shadow of a doubt, that all convictions can not be trusted, therefore I feel the death penalty should not be carried out in the US of A.
This can be debated back and forth with good reason on both sides.
John Couey, abducted (kidnapped), raped, and buried alive Jessica Lundsford. How did Jessica feel when dirt was being thrown on her while she was still alive? I don’t particularly care how Couey might feel when the cocktail enters his body.
2. sherry replies at 7th January 2008, 1:52 pm :
Hey Max. We agree that the system can’t be trusted and that’s reason enough to do away with the death penalty. And I understand that the compassion argument puts me in danger of sounding a little looney. Some people do unthinkable evil. And yet, if I lose my compassion, what is it then that separates me from the world’s John Couey’s?
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