The execution was carried out so late in the process that only a few minutes passed between the pronouncement of death and and the expiration of the court order to kill.

What if the execution had taken twice as long? With the order expired, would it be stopped during the final minutes? Would someone dial 911, get EMTs in there, try to save the guy’s life?

I’m against the death penalty. I think it is time we recognized that this is the 21st century, and that we have this whole civilization thing. But, if we are going to execute someone, this absurd idea that somehow modern medicine can do a better job than the old methods is crazy. Perhaps our reluctance to use tried and true methods like hanging, beheading, and firing squad, all modern methods developed to replace the ancient horrible methods like crushing to death, burning to death, and stoning to death, is an indicator. Our preference to pretend that this is all very scientific and clean may be an indication that not very far below the surface we find the whole thing abhorrent. By pretending it is a medical procedure, painless, controlled, etc., we also pretend it is a civilized act to take the life of a person already imprisoned for life.

I’d rather live in a society where the argument “these people will not feel good about the horrible death of their loved ones until another horrible death has been carried out” is reserved for the anthropology textbooks, in the chapter on vengeance based societies.

By the way, I lived for years in a vengeance based society, a society in which all deaths, including from disease, or even being killed by a wild animal, were considered homicide, and the homicide should always be avenged. There were many deaths during my time there. Never once was a death avenged. The process of adjudication, of finding the party who caused the death (most likely by which craft) was very carefully done. The guilty party was always identified, but strangely, it always seemed to be an individual that lived very far away, that no one quite seemed to know well enough to find, or even bother looking for. So please don’t think that a tribal vengeance society is necessarily less civilized than our Western society.

But I digress. What do we do about the Death Penalty in America?

There seems to be no doubt about his guilt or about the severity of his crime. Crowe pled guilty. In May, 2008, he was about to be strapped in and given a lethal injection. But the parole board gave him a break, commuting his sentence to life in prison.

Why did he get off? “….. his lawyers presented a dossier of evidence attesting to his remorse and good behavior in jail … The lawyers also said he was suffering from withdrawal symptoms from a cocaine addiction at the time of the crime.” Poor baby.

I’m thinking his being a white guy helped, what do you think? Maybe not. Who knows. Just sayin’

source

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Ideally one might avoid the hateful emotion to begin with, but without the appropriate affective pathologies in place, or years of training, that’s rather difficult.

I often think of what Mike Dukakis should have said when asked what he would do if Kitty was raped and murdered by Willie Horton. He should have said “I’d want to kill the guy. But long before I had the chance the Criminal Justice System would kick in and there’d be due process.”

________________

Thanks to Ruth Gaul Schleissmann for suggesting I change “OK” to “natural” … a natural substitution that is quite OK.

I wonder what the consequences of this whole maneno will be?

On the other side of the issue we have several people and institutions who feel that Troy Davis needs to be executed later today. This includes various courts to which his appeal was brought, the Georgia State parole board, and the family of the slain police officer, who say they need Troy to die in order to close the book and have some peace.

Yes, indeed, “justice” is being done here because that is how the justice system works. It is a system, and it has its checks and balances and its way of going slowly enough that it is more fair than it otherwise might be, and so on and so forth. But, it is also a biased system and a very imperfect system. The bias in the system is beyond the need for argument … it is established fact. The imperfection in the system is easily demonstrated. These are two of the most important reasons, among a half dozen or so reasons, that the death penalty should be eliminated in the United States. You can’t have a system in which reasonable doubt matters and appeal is possible, in which nefarious or subconscious bias or imperfection in the process is acknowledged, in which you also kill the defendant at some point along the way.

It is especially poignant to see that two young white middle class Americans will be released from an Iranian jail about the same time Troy will take the needle. Not that Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal should not be released or that they have anything to do with it. It is poignant for another reason. If you were an Iranian government official looking at the Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal case, the assumption that these to guys are spies would be natural. As a person who has traveled a fair amount in or near bellicose regions, and actually met spies along the way (I even spent a bit of time in prison with a spy in the Eastern Congo) I was never closed to the idea, while in the mean time virtually every American hearing of their fate simply knew that the were innocent of these charges. Young American men hiking on the border of a hostile state could not possibly be spies! Meanwhile, in downtown Savannah Georgia, if the police pick up a young black male for some crime or another, there are a lot of people who will assume he is guilty. Or, worse, not care if he is guilty. It’s the inner city. Young black males are the criminals. A crime was committed. Close enough.

Notice that in the first paragraph above I did not say that I was certain that Troy Davis is innocent. I didn’t say that because I couldn’t care less. It is not relevant to the present situation. What is relevant is that had he been given a fair trail … if our criminal justice system worked for him the same way it is supposed to work for everyone … he would not have been convicted then, and he certainly would not be slated to die tonight. I’m sure he’s guilty of something. But so are you, dear reader. And so am I. The difference between Tory Davis and you and me is that he is receiving justice in a system of justice that is broken, and we are, at the moment, being ignored. I don’t dream much, and I rarely have nightmares, but when I do they are always one of two recurring themes. One of those themes is that I’ve been sentenced to death. I did actually find myself in front of a makeshift firing squad once, and I think the dreams started after that. It is a very very bad feeling in real life or in a nightmare. I don’t think I’ll be sleeping tonight.

Murder is the responsibility of the state. No one else is allowed to do it. When the state does it, it should do so more reluctantly than it seems to like, and more carefully than it seems to do.

_________________________________

Asha, I want to thank you for reminding me to think about this today.