A great op-ed in the New York Times by Gilbert King detailing the sordid history of failed and botched executions following each of humankind’s new and improved methods.
King’s detailed stories are significant because they reflect the backstory to the decisions relied upon in some of the plurality opinions in Base v. Rees.
In its ruling last week, the court once more ignored the consequences of its rulings for men like Wallace Wilkerson, William Kemmler and Willie Francis. The justices cited and applied Wilkerson’s and Kemmler’s cases as if their executions went off without a hitch.
Supreme Court decisions will do that, you know. As will some other courts as well. The trick is to sanitize all the facts that don’t conform with, or support, the conclusion and pretend that they never happened. If you leave the bad facts out of the decision, you end up with a little piece of stare decisis prepackaged for use the next time someone complains. Then they can say, “but we have precedent, and we certainly can’t go against precedent. That would be wrong.”
But I can’t help but continue to ask, has our knowledge of medicine and anatomy lagged so far behind everything else scientific that no one has as yet come up with a painless, immediate and definitive way to execute someone?
We’ve got drugs for irritable bowel syndrome. We’ve got drugs for restless leg syndrome. We’ve got drugs for erectile dysfunction (whatever that is). Are you telling me that we don’t have a drug that can guarantee to kill a person?
What about a massive overdose of heroin? Not only will he die, but he’ll be euphoric in the process. What about a bullet to the back of the head while he’s sleeping, point blank range? Ugly but effective. Make federal buildings taller and toss him off the roof. If there’s 50 ways to leave your lover, how many are there to put someone to death?
And yet here we are, with the latest word from the Supremes still ringing in our ears, that lethal injection is the best we can do, or at least good enough to pass constitutional muster.
And 60 years after two drunken executioners disregarded the tortured screams of a teenage boy named Willie Francis, the Supreme Court continues to do so.
They really need to write more factually accurate decisions.
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“But I can’t help but continue to ask, has our knowledge of medicine and anatomy lagged so far behind everything else scientific that no one has as yet come up with a painless, immediate and definitive way to execute someone?”
Your suggestion of a bullet to the back of the head is excellent in this regard. I think the Russians use it.
Personally, I favor a small charge of C-4 explosives at the base of the skull. The detonation shockwave travels faster than nerve impulses, so the brain will be gone before it knows what’s happening.
The problem is, you left out one of the requirements for an execution. It should be painless, immediate, definitive, and not so disgusting to watch that no one ever wants to do it again.
(I think there’s also the problem that anything too medically complicated will require a doctor, and doctors are rarely willing to perform executions.)
Since when do you need a doc to pull a trigger?
Does pulling a trigger sound medically complicated to you?
That heroin overdose you mention requires inserting a needle into an artery, starting an IV, etc. and that requires some medical skill.
(Current lethal injection also requires medical skill, but the initial injection is an anesthetic, which makes the procedure more comfortable for the recipient, so it’s less of an ethical problem for medical professionals.)
Also, an opiate overdose might lead to some writhing and moaning which would be unpleasant for viewers, er, I mean would not serve the state’s interest in preserving the dignity of the event.
Whatever happened to the good old guillotine?
Happiness is a warm gun.
Always happy to hear from another Beatles fan.