CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
The existence of the death penalty in any
society raises one underlying question: have we ?
In the end, though, death is always at
least a little painful. Perhaps the only truly peaceful way to go is
while asleep—but no one has ever come back to say that this didn’t hurt.
If your heart stops while you sleep, it is certainly possible that your
brain will recognize a problem and wake you up at the very moment when it is too
late. So what we cannot help but let Nature do, we ought not to force on
others for any reason. If we do so, it might be fair to say that we
law-abiding people, who embody the justice system, are guilty of equal cruelty
towards criminals who commit murder. The United Nations’ Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, for one, dictates that “no one shall be subjected
to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
In the US, there are five legal methods of
execution: lethal injection, electrocution, firing squad, hanging, and gassing.
These are all intended to be as painless as possible, but they all run
the risk of accidents. John Wayne Gacy, who was not afraid of death, was
executed via lethal injection—the most efficient, risk-free method. Yet his
death did not go as planned.
It’s true that cruelty should not be
legally tolerated—and the five methods listed above are very efficient in
killing the condemned before he or she is able to feel it. Granted, we
are not able to ask the dead whether or not they felt their necks snap, or the
chemicals burn inside them—but modern American executions very rarely go awry.
It does happen, but the reported accidents since 1976 number about ten
nationwide, out of 1,328.
When the condemned is fastened into the
electric chair, one of the conductors is strapped securely around the head with
the bare metal flush against the shaved and wet scalp. This permits the
electricity to be conducted directly into the brain, shutting it off more
quickly than the brain can register pain.
Hanging causes death by snapping the neck
of the condemned around the second vertebrae—instantly shutting off the brain’s
ability to communicate with the rest of the body, and causing the heart to stop
within seconds.
The firing squad involves five men shooting
the heart of the condemned with high-powered rifles. The heart is
completely destroyed and unconsciousness follows within seconds.
The gas chamber is now no longer forced on
the condemned, because it frequently appeared to cause more pain than was
expected or acceptable. The gas is usually hydrogen cyanide, which
inhibits mitochondrial respiration in every cell of the entire body, theoretically
shutting off the brain like a light switch. But it requires that the condemned
breathe deeply.
Most prisoners consider each other to be in
the same predicament, and treat each other quite well in general. But
they are still in prison, and despair about their lack of freedom. What
is life like for Zacarias Moussaoui, the member of the September 11 hijacking
teams who got caught a month before the attack? A single juror saved him from
death. He has, since 2006, been incarcerated for twenty-three hours per
day in a tiny concrete cell, with one hour of daily exercise in an empty
concrete swimming pool; he has no access to other inmates, and only rare
contact with guards, who say nothing to him; he can see nothing of the outside
world except a tiny sliver of sky—and his will be his life. Capital
punishment is an unnecessary threat.Consider a pedophile who kills an infant
girl by raping her. There is an unwritten “code of honor” in prisons that
virtually requires inmates to kill such offenders. Probably half of
America’s prisoners were in some way abused as children, and harbor a seething
hatred for those who abuse children. The murdering pedophile is given the
death penalty, but will probably spend ten years beforehand in prison. He
will most likely be housed in solitary confinement for his own protection, but
there are frequently holes in such protection, and the inmates may find their
way to him. And if this happens, pedophiles are often gang-raped, castrated,
beaten to death, stabbed, and sometimes even beheaded before guards—who may
deliberately ignore the scene—can save them.