Crime And Punishment

Capital punishment in America is down about 10% for the year 2013.  Mostly, this is due to a shortage of the drugs typically used in lethal injection cocktails -- pentobarbital, sodium thiopental, pancuronium, potassium chloride.  By and large, these drugs are for medical purposes and are made in Europe, either by European medical companies or by American medical companies operating in Europe.  Awhile back, the EU banned the export of such drugs for executions, meaning supplies of the fatal doses began to dwindle stateside.

In the past two years, 12 states have accordingly put a moratorium on executions.  There are 18 states which already prohibit capital punishment.

Ohio death chamber at Lucasville

Ohio is not one of them, and today we Buckeyes showed we're not only still dedicated to official government-sanctioned killing, we're willing to get creative about it.  Ignoring all objections and protests, we took a Death Row prisoner and field-tested our own brand-new chemical concoction on him.  It was a blend of massive doses of a sedative and a painkiller.  (Texas Gov. Rick Perry suggested we toss in some Drain-O and some Clorox for good measure.)  Whatever it was, the shit killed him, but it took 15 minutes and he was convulsing, twitching and gasping for the last 10 minutes.  And yes, he was a murderer.

The funny thing about any form of criminal punishment, from probation to a jail sentence to execution, is that it never eliminates similar future crimes.  Society continues to insist on its pound of flesh -- a price must be paid -- but the members of that society seem to keep doing the same stupid criminal shit again and again, no matter what we do to them.  I won't pretend to have any answers.

I'm opposed to the death penalty and I know I'm in the minority.  Execution changes nothing, but if our social compact requires that we avenge a death with another death, then what the State of Ohio did today is not the way.  We've done away with the gallows, the gas chamber and the electric chair for a reason.  Trial-and-error Popular Mechanics-style lethal injections are not the answer.

So how about this?  If some bad people simply must be executed, let's bring back the guillotine.  The desired death is certain, painless and instantaneous, but it's a little messy.  The head bounces on the floor, blood spurts all over, but that sumbitch is dead for sure.  The guillotine, in all its breath-taking, gory finality might also make some of  the capital punishment cheerleaders get up close and personal with their own motives, and maybe think twice.

Is it just about the death itself, or is it about inflicting some pain and misery along with the it?