 |
| San Quentin's brand new death chamber |
For decades supporters of the death penalty in America have embraced lethal injection not just as an evolutionary plateau in the method of capital punishment but as a convenient solution to a problem that is both legal and moral. By purporting to ease the suffering of the condemned as he is killed, the procedure is supposed to neutralize concerns that any particular execution is “cruel” under the Eighth Amendment. And by purporting to put the prisoner to deep sleep first before the poison was administered, the practice is supposed to assuage whatever guilt exists in the minds of the executioner, or the administrator, over the intentional taking of life. We hide behind science, in other words, and then pat ourselves on the back for our ingenuity.
But these two pillars of support for lethal injection have always been based on a form of deceit. Making executions tidier does not make the dead any less dead or those who authorize the poison any less culpable for taking life. It is the act of capital punishment itself, not just the manner in which it is carried out, that carries the moral force. And no human development, no magic pill, no sterile syringe, can change that. This profound question is pertinent again, as a practical matter as well as a legal and political one, because recent developments in the practice of lethal injections have raised new doubts about the pain associated with their use. And if lethal injection protocols cause profound suffering the landscape of capital punishment as we know it may change.
Source: The Daily Beast, January 21, 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment