Might we make executions more civilized, please?

[TK-421]

NEIL MACDONALD, CBC News:

Might we make executions more civilized, please?

November 7, 2007


Late one hot Mississippi night in 1984, I sat drinking whisky at the kitchen table of T. Berry Bruce, trying tactfully to ask about one of his less skilled efforts on behalf of the state governor.

At the time, Bruce was Mississippi's executioner, in fact the only state executioner in the United States whose identity was a matter of public record.

In Canada, Brian Mulroney's Conservative government was considering a revival of capital punishment and I was writing about it. And T. Berry Bruce had invited me into his Belzoni, Miss. home for a few days.

A year earlier, he'd gassed Jimmy Lee Gray, a rapist and murderer, and the execution hadn't gone very well. Gray flailed and gasped for eight minutes after the cyanide pellets dropped into the bucket of acid. It created such a gruesome scene that the warden expelled all the witnesses.

Gray finally died slamming his head against the steel pole behind the chair as reporters counted his moans. T. Berry Bruce, it turned out, was drunk that night, and even in Mississippi, where inmates' rights are not a burning cause, the incident caused an uproar.

"Y'all talkin' about Jimmy Lee," drawled Bruce when I brought up the case. "Y'all know what Jimmy Lee done?"

I knew he'd killed a girl named Deressa Jean Seales.

"Sumbitch took a little three-year-old girl out into the bush and he raped her. Then he tried to shove her panties down her throat with a stick, then he pushed her head into a little crick full of running **** and then he broke her neck. So yeah, I feel real sorry for Jimmy Lee."

And there it was. Retribution. Without question, it is the single most powerful force behind the continuing popularity of the death penalty in this country.
I didn't argue with Bruce that night. Given the summary of Deressa Jean's agonies, it just didn't seem the time or place to launch into a discussion of what constitutes unnecessary suffering of a prisoner at the hands of the state.

Besides, there was a certain symmetry to the executioner's logic: The state had decided Jimmy Lee Gray should die. Killing folks is messy. So what if he suffered? He sure didn't suffer any more than his victim.

The illusion of lethal injection


Over the years, however, the courts and legislatures here have become more squeamish than T. Berry Bruce.

He was replaced as the state executioner a few years after the Jimmy Lee Gray debacle. Then Mississippi and most of the other 37 death-penalty states began shutting down their gas chambers and unplugging their electric chairs (in which prisoners had sometimes burst into flames).

Most states opted for what they claimed was the less violent procedure of lethal injection. The prisoner just appears to fall asleep and doesn't wake up.
But that appearance of calm can be illusory. It's clear that, in some cases, the initial barbiturate that causes unconsciousness wears off before the second and third chemicals, which paralyze the lungs and stop the heart, take effect. In other words, prisoners have suffocated with burning chemicals in their veins, perfectly aware of what was happening but unable to signal distress.

Jimmy Lee Gray episodes have taken place on the lethal injection gurney, too. Poorly trained death chamber officials have missed veins, mixed the wrong doses and struggled even to find the right place to insert the needle.
Faulty syringes have spouted leaks. Prisoners have taken half an hour, even an hour, to die, some grimacing and heaving for air.

The issue has now reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which has imposed a de facto moratorium on executions while it considers whether lethal injection, as currently practised, constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

Be clear here: This is not a debate over whether governments have the right to kill people. In the U.S., they do. Rather, this is a uniquely American discussion: How do you kill someone with a minimum of discomfort?

'Unnecessary pain'


For Prof. Deborah Denno of Fordham Law Faculty in New York City, though, this debate is not about discomfort. "This is about unnecessary pain and suffering," she says. "Untrained people butchering other people, which is what has been happening."

Denno, who says she is not necessarily against the death penalty, has studied lethal injection extensively. She says it is clothed in official secrecy, probably to cover up the fact that untrained prison staff administer the procedure, rather than doctors, whose oaths prevent them from taking part.
"My concern is that the people performing it are incompetent. You would not have them cook a hamburger for you."

Denno, herself, leans toward the firing squad as a solution, but that's generally considered too savage these days.

Some people here suggest abandoning the three-chemical system and using, instead, a single massive dose of barbiturate, the method used by veterinarians to euthanize a dog or cat.

That may work fine, but no state wants to be the first to try it, because no one really knows how much flailing and moaning such a procedure might produce, and that would be most unseemly, especially before a panel of official witnesses.

At the very least, the paralysis of the three-chemical system usually produces a quiet scene, whatever the suffering it might mask.

There are witnesses


The sensibility of witnesses, and by extension that of the public, is a big factor in this debate. If it weren't, the whole question could be quickly resolved by building a few guillotines. They undoubtedly deliver a quick death, but they also involve geysers of blood, which is likely to unsettle the audience after the condemned is beyond caring.

"People associate it, ironically, with barbarity," says Denno of the guillotine. "But not lethal injection," which, she says, is perhaps worse.

Most probably, the solution will be some sort of fine-tuning of lethal injection and that is why death penalty opponents are not overly excited about the Supreme Court deliberations, which are to begin in January.

Of much greater interest to opponents is the declining rate of executions. Forty-two people have been executed here so far this year, down from 53 last year, 60 in 2005 and 98 in 1999.

Legal experts say juries are increasingly reluctant to hand down death sentences and prosecutors are increasingly reluctant to seek them. The reasons are a growing awareness of incompetence on the part of defence lawyers, systemic racism (a death sentence is a much greater possibility when the victim is white), and the big one — exoneration after trial.
In the past 34 years, 115 condemned men and one condemned woman in the U.S. have been freed from death row. Fourteen were cleared by DNA evidence, some of which actually pointed to other suspects.
The import of this is not lost on judges or other participants: Incontrovertible science determined 14 people headed for death at the hands of the state were not guilty. Period.

It doesn't take a fantastic leap in logic to conclude that if at least 14 innocents have been retrieved from death row, there might be a few others among the roughly 3,000 condemned prisoners in this country.

And while justice officials here, concerned about maintaining the respect and integrity of the system, mightily resist DNA testing on prisoners already put to death, it would take a fanatic to contend that there could not have been a single innocent among the 17,000 executions recorded here since colonial times.

Eventually, at least one will come to light. And that could give even a fellow like T. Berry Bruce pause.

[The Ace]

I've always believed that execution is a barbaric way of settling an argument. This knuckle-dragging, toothless moron proves it.
The US system is even worse, though. If you want someone dead, kill him. Don't prolong the agony by keeping him locked up for decades for appeal after appeal.

[dustinzgirl]

Originally Posted by The Ace

I've always believed that execution is a barbaric way of settling an argument. This knuckle-dragging, toothless moron proves it.
The US system is even worse, though. If you want someone dead, kill him. Don't prolong the agony by keeping him locked up for decades for appeal after appeal.

I wouldn't call raping a three year old and shoving her panties down her throat an argument.

I'm actually all for executions, even though I know they are morally wrong. I can't get passed that rid the world of evil thought.

[The Ace]

Err DG, the law says he had to die, fine. If some of the kid's relatives had got hold of him and treated him like that, that would be revenge. Justice should be above that.

The man was a monster, I'm not denying that, but only the victim's family had any right to take revenge. The state had a responsibility to either kill him cleanly or throw away the key.

[Allegra]

I'm sorry guys, but a monster like that deserves to be shredded, slowly.

[dustinzgirl]

Originally Posted by The Ace

Err DG, the law says he had to die, fine. If some of the kid's relatives had got hold of him and treated him like that, that would be revenge. Justice should be above that.

The man was a monster, I'm not denying that, but only the victim's family had any right to take revenge. The state had a responsibility to either kill him cleanly or throw away the key.

Well it wasn't as though the state did that on purpose, but really, do you pity that the man had an accidentally painful death after what he did? Cuz I sure don't.

[The Ace]

No, I don't pity him. I merely question the right of the state to exact revenge under the guise of justice.
If a child of mine had been treated like that, the scum responsible would be praying that the police got to him before I did, but I'd have a right to take revenge and would face a jury afterwards knowing they'd understand.
Torture is immoral and illegal and the state has no right to condone such behaviour.

[TK-421]

Well, what I know is capital punishment is not a deterrent for violent crimes or murder. That is an undisputible fact otherwise a country like the US would have substantially lower murder rates than a country like...the rest of the western world.

And, killing someone, whether it be Jimmy Lee killing that poor little girl in Mississippi or the State itself killing him in return is murder. Period. Both are violent and evil acts.

[McMurphy]

Originally Posted by TK-421

And, killing someone, whether it be Jimmy Lee killing that poor little girl in Mississippi or the State itself killing him in return is murder. Period. Both are violent and evil acts.

I do get what you are attempting to point out. Building a morality system that moves beyond an old "eye for an eye" mentality is a more stable, conscience society. There is one thing that irks me whenever these types of debates are brought up and an attempt to pronounce the wickedness of State or Federal executions is scribed , and it is this: the placing of the execution of a convicted rapist and murderer on the same level as the murder and raping of an absolutely innocent little girl.

I am not a supporter of State run executions in the United States (again, not all States in America allow executions), but I also do not believe all human life is on an equal footing. Life is precious, and a system that centers itself around preserving life is also precious. Murderers and rapists are not. I care about the dignity of the system. I don't care in the least about the murderer/rapist. I am sure that the family of that little girl would not be overly pleased to have people imply that his execution is of equal footing as her murder regardless of their stance on capital punishment.

[McMurphy]

Originally Posted by The Ace

I've always believed that execution is a barbaric way of settling an argument. This knuckle-dragging, toothless moron proves it.
The US system is even worse, though. If you want someone dead, kill him. Don't prolong the agony by keeping him locked up for decades for appeal after appeal.

What is the truer agony bringer: the amount of time imprisoned or the amount of appeals?

[The Ace]

Well said McMurphy. The journalist seems to be making a fair point, though that the main reason for the death penalty in the US is for retribution, which cannot be the responsibility of the state.

In the UK, we learned the hard way. Before the abolition of capital punishment for all but high treason (the statute is still on the books but has never been used) death was by hanging. The last generation of hangmen were skilled professionals, experts in the complex formulae which allowed the condemned to die instantly due to the neck being broken by the drop.

If someone told me I was sentenced to death, I'd just want it over with. How many times does false hope have to be generated, delays instituted, only for the accused to die anyway? Surely the only reason the sentence was handed down was that the accused had committed a crime that merited it ?

Which leads me to the real objection to the death penalty. If you lock up an innocent man, then find out, you can let him go. If you top him, it'll look great on his headstone;

Here Lies

JOE BLOGGS

1982-2007

EXECUTED
IN ERROR
We're very sorry

[McMurphy]

Originally Posted by The Ace

Well said McMurphy. The journalist seems to be making a fair point, though that the main reason for the death penalty in the US is for retribution, which cannot be the responsibility of the state.

I really wish the United States would, like the rest of the Western World---particularly our good northern neighbors---, rid itself of capital punishment. Like you said, it isn't about upholding justice in the land. It is for retribution. Closure. Moving on. Far too often the human mind seems to be more concerned about cleaning up a situation and moving on than allowing the scales to balance. It happens in forums, law, social situations, accidents, and other areas of decision making. It isn't exclusive to capital punishment.

There is one problem with the United States---across the State borders---universally denouncing capital punishment as being part of the State legal system. The States all have their own laws, and great debate and opposition is wrangled anytime lawmaking on a State level is overruled by new Federal amendments. Such turn overs can take years, even decades. It is frustrating, and even more so when such slow motioned changes are used to fuel international sentiment that the United States does not value human life. In truth, any Federal law introduced that takes away State power is fought. It should be fought every time because that is one of the great things about the division of State and Federal power. I admire the distinction of power and its desire to drag its feet anytime the Federal level is given more central leverage. Again, I am a supporter of the system itself, in the truest sense.

The Federal lawmakers should amend the power of the States to have the ability to hand down death sentences. But that takes time. Canada, for example, has only completely abandoned capital punishment since 1998 (since the late '70s for nonmilitary crimes), and their distinctions between Federal and Province power aren't nearly as divided as the United States' division between State and Federal powers. That fact is often overlooked when a lack of value of life is ascribed to the country as a whole.

It will be interesting to see what will happen first: Federal lawmakers stepping in or more and more States abolishing capital punishments from their constitutions on their own. Historically, unfortunately, the South has been less than willing to accept social changes on a national level. Then again, the Federal government has yet to back down from supporting death sentences for treason, mutiny, or murders deemed as a Federal offense.

[Redtail]

I can't say I agree with executions, so many innocent people may have gone to their deaths, but I wish there was a fairer justice system. Just recently a man murdered an 8 year old girl after raping her, he also broke her arms and legs, he can be up for parole in 13 years, where is the justice in that?!?!?!?

[The Ace]

There is none, they should've thrown away the key when they sent him down.

[dustinzgirl]

Originally Posted by TK-421

Well, what I know is capital punishment is not a deterrent for violent crimes or murder. That is an undisputible fact otherwise a country like the US would have substantially lower murder rates than a country like...the rest of the western world.

And, killing someone, whether it be Jimmy Lee killing that poor little girl in Mississippi or the State itself killing him in return is murder. Period. Both are violent and evil acts.

You are correct.

I looked up at humanrights.org.

China, Iran, and the USA execute the most people in a judicial process worldwide. Each of these countries has massive crime problems. So no, its not a deterrent.

I believe that if we focused on using the incarcerated people as a workforce, with rehabilitation/therapy a constant, we would make better inmates. At least they would be useful.

However, that doesn't take away from the fact that I want people with no possibility of being innocent who raped and murdered to be painfully dead. dead. dead. dead.

Thats very un-Christian of me and I realize that.