LatinosUSA

This is not an essay on the moral merits or demerits of capital punishment, nor does it address the question of whether the death penalty is a deterrent.

This is rather a discourse on whether capital punishment is one more thing that we as a society now do so badly, in such a climate of intellectual dishonesty, that we made it ridiculous. I don’t know whether Americans ought to be concerned that much of the Free World thinks we are barbaric for continuing to accept capital punishment, but I would rather not have much of the Free World think that we are idiots who, in the immortal words of Lyndon Johnson, couldn’t pour piss out of a boot with the instructions printed on the heel.

At this writing, Christa Pike, 50, is in critical condition in a Tennessee hospital because of–and despite–the distinction of being the first woman executed in Tennessee in two hundred years. Readers who have been tempted to poison a significant other because of his snoring should be advised that the stuff Tennessee gave Pike–twice–actually induced snoring.

In a macabre way, the Pike debacle represents progress of a sort:

Earlier this year Tennessee was forced to call off an execution after hitting the vein but being unable to locate the required backup IV line. Ohio twice halted executions in recent years because of the inability to find one of those mischievous blood vessels. Alabama had similar problems one glorious day in 2022, but after three hours of hunting in vain for a vein, sliced the prisoner’s arm open and introduced the mortal substance that way. Roll Tide, Roll! One dose did the job, unlike the fifteen doses Arizona needed on one occasion in 2014.

Botched executions are nothing new. The chair, the rope, the gas chamber, and the firing squad all resulted in atrocious incidents. Lethal injection, which was supposed to eliminate all of these grisly happenings, actually became ludicrous in its possibilities and actualities. I recall a condemned man, not quite twenty years ago, who argued that he was too obese to be executed. This inspired me to compose a heavy-metal anthem that I often sang in the offices of the classical school where I was employed:

Too fat to die!
I’m too fat to die!
I’m too-too-too-too-toooooooo…
Too fat to die!

Some of the jurisdictions using lethal injection are unsure which chemical agent will work most effectively and with the least fuss and bother. Others know what they want but have trouble getting it. Supply chain problems and empty shelves increasingly affect most Americans, so why should condemned prisoners be any different? Ding-dang it, they’re no better’n the rest of us.

I suppose the next grand idea will be some form of digital execution implemented via artificial intelligence. Of course, at the big moment, a no longer supported message will appear, leading to a tech support phone call to some incomprehensible denizen of the Punjab, who then hacks into the state computer system, steals the identities of everyone employed by the Department of Corrections, and deletes the criminal records of all their guests.

Most of our problems with an assortment of execution methods stem ultimately from our desire to have one person kill another without it quite seeming that way. We know that a pistol shot delivered to the back of the head at point-blank range (a “Lubyanka cigarette” in the droll parlance of the Stalin era) is foolproof, but that sort of thing is so, well, personal. I mean, the condemned person’s occiput is right there, and the muzzle of the gun is right there, and you’re standing right there with your finger on the trigger, and gosh all fishhooks, that PTA meeting tomorrow evening is sure gonna be awkward now.

Numerous persons are involved in preparing and carrying out any execution in the United States, but when the time comes for the actual deed, someone must push the plunger, pull the lever, throw the switch, etc. The states of Idaho, Mississippi, Utah, South Carolina, and Oklahoma authorize the use of the firing squad, as does the federal government. Firing squads are all-volunteer units, so presumably each member is willing to be the one who administers the coup de grâce, so it strikes me as silly to continue the antique custom in some jurisdictions of issuing a blank to one member: “I volunteered to kill the dude, but thank God I can hit the hay tonight with some doubt in my mind. Mona, where’s the remote?”

The truth is that what has become a trial-and-error culture of capital punishment is the result not of a desire to spare the prisoner, but rather of a desire to spare the executioner and perhaps, by extension, some of the more squeamish members of the public who approve the sentence. If we sanitize it and put a little distance in there, it’s so much less troubling than, say, the Ay-rabs whacking some guy’s head off with a scimitar. Morally, however, it’s the same thing.

We don’t need to continue with capital punishment unless we can get used to the idea that one person is killing another. Only in the United States of Bull would the person who operates the electric chair be called the state electrician.

Face facts, folks, and switch to a method that takes reality into account. Prisoners will suffer less when we stop worrying about the suffering of the executioner(s). Many years ago, I saw on late-night television the 1970 Stacy Keach cult classic, The Traveling Executioner, the saga of an enterprising fellow in 1918 who charges $100 a throw to mete out ultimate justice wherever needed. (Believe it or not, the film inspired a musical titled The Fields of Ambrosia). I can’t help thinking that if we can’t find anyone else to dispatch the condemned, we should delegate it to some peripatetic marksman or headsman who in every sense knows what he’s doing. Or she. Maybe the sex that brings people into the world would be better at removing them from it.

None of this is complicated. Get real, get honest, and get on with it in a way that’s not inept and stupid. Either that or retire capital punishment as the antiquated relic of a time when we could still find our keisters with both hands, as a practice that is no longer tenable in a society wallowing and twerking in euphemism, self-deception, and incompetence.

We are now perilously close to revisiting 1946, when seventeen-year-old Willie Francis survived Louisiana’s electric chair, which had been wired by a guard and inmate who were drunk. Francis related that the current surging through his body left a sort of peanut butter taste in his mouth.

If the taste in your mouth isn’t considerably worse than that, right about now, I worry about the condition of your soul.

Capital punishment: Fix it or forget it.