Capital Punishment

9 XI 2023: Crimson Tide to drown inmate

Headline on CNN: Alabama sets date for execution of a death row inmate by nitrogen gas, a method never used in any state. Alabama has repeatedly screwed up its attempts to execute prisoners by lethal injection. The victim of the last botched execution, Kenneth Eugene Smith, requested to be executed with nitrogen gas. This is, as Smith’s lawyer described it, “an experimental, never-before-used method” for execution.

The article on CNN reports that according to the Death Penalty Information Center “Death by nitrogen hypoxia deprives the brain and body of oxygen,” and this is assumed to be a more humane, or, rather, a more reliable technique for execution. So Alabama, usually the most backward of former Confederate states, is now leading the way.

26 XI 2020: Kill all the prisoners!

Our psychotic President intends, with the help of William Barr, Attorney General and world-class asslicker, to see how many convicts he can exterminate before he leaves office. In aid of this, I should think, Trump is also re-thinking the method of execution: because there has been difficulty purchasing the poison currently used in murder-by-injection, maybe we should bring back the electric chair or even the firing squad. I am amazed at Trump’s uncharacteristically humane ideas for execution. Most dictators prefer to drop people from airplanes or hang them from the end of a crane or behead them.

And I don’t hear the fair-weather Christians, neither Evangelicals nor Catholics, condemning these upcoming murders. Of course, the Trump Base is keen on capital punishment. They say they want take a life in return for the life that was taken. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” they intone, “it’s in the Bible.” Yes, and it is also rejected by Jesus in the Bible (Matt 5:38-42). Will murdering another person make the person murdered feel any better? Will it make the living feel better? Oh yes, they want “closure for the family,” as if the long-delayed barbaric murder of the killer of a family member will wipe clean the family’s slate of sorrow with the sponge of revenge. 

Another pretense of the enthusiasts for capital punishment is that they want to “see justice done,” to see malefactors “brought to justice.” No, what they want is a legalized revenge, not justice. People carry on about justice as if they knew what is just, thus claiming as their own the divine prerogative. These want to be the arbiters of who deserves to live and who deserves to die, while mindlessly asserting their absolute “pro-life” convictions. It is for people like these that Trump, the Man Above the Law, and his hangmen in his Department of Justice are going to put on a show of not one, but five executions.

16 VII 2020: Barr keeping busy

Another convicted murderer was executed today by our Attorney General, Bill Barr, a noted Roman Catholic, at the behest, I’m sure, of that unbending zealot for justice and candidate for re-election, Donald Trump. Apparently, Wesley Purkey was pretty far gone with progressive dementia, schizophrenia, and severe mental illness, nonetheless justice, delayed since Purkey’s sentencing in 2004, had still to be done. 

Olivia Long, the stepmother of the child he killed, is quoted as saying: “It just took way too long, … We just shouldn’t have to wait this long.” But one Kerri Kupec, a spokesperson for the DOJ, concluded “… Purkey has finally faced justice.”

Could anything mitigate the life-destroying grief of the Long Family? What could calm society’s fears and vent its indignation at sociopathic behavior? So I have to ask: What were the Long Family awaiting for sixteen years? What is that “justice” the DOJ says Purkey finally faced? I would guess that the Long Family were waiting for closure, i.e., vengeance for the murder of their daughter, and the DOJ’s “justice” means simply the conclusion of a murder trial that will be satisfactory to the frightened, vindictive, and self-righteous. 

The DOJ and pseudo-christian enthusiasts for the death penalty will quote to us Exodus 21:23-25: “… thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth” etc. They will not quote the rescinding of this law in the Sermon on the Mount Mt 5:38-39: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if any strikes you on the right cheek ….” or in Romans 12:19: “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”

So the capital-punishment crowd choose the Old Law over the New and claim for themselves a divine prerogative. But we must challenge their use of the term “justice.” Human justice is too often the creation of limited minds confused by unrealized fears and of that ancient enemy, the libido dominandi, the desperate craving for dominance over other human beings. So let’s do an experiment and in our discourse substitute “revenge” for “justice.” I predict that we would be amazed at the number of instances in which “revenge” is clearly the correct term to use.

14 VII 2020: Billy “the Hangman” Barr

Finally, finally, Billy Barr has “got his man,” “made his bones,” or whatever gangland expression might apply to judicial murder. Billy and others like him have shown amazing patience. They’ve waited 17 years to execute a federal prisoner. Authoritarians with less self-control would have been unable to endure so long a delay and would by now have hosted any number of semi-official lynchings. But Billy the Hangman and Sheriff Trump have waited patiently, using the delay to build up their supply of lethal injections. And now, at last! The only flaw I can see is that the victim was not electrocuted, for if he were to be electrocuted, Billy and Trump could have thrown the switch from the Oval Office. 

To prolong the execution high, Billy has scheduled two more executions for this week. Off course, Billy and Trump are not the only ones getting off on the prospect of future executions. A very considerable portion of Trump’s base has been longing for a return to the good old days of capital punishment, for in these times of sudden and unpredictable change it’s so comforting to get back to “the way we used to do it.” Trumpists everywhere are rejoicing, so we can be sure that Trump will look for ways to stoke this grassroots enthusiasm. Public executions at a Trump rally would be ideal, but are not feasible because of bogus social distancing. However, executions could be shown on real-time television using the protocols of professional football coverage, and there would be no shortage of Trumpists who would want to do the play-by-play.