A man lies strapped down on gurney
in a plain room lined with green tiles. Large intravenous tubes, inserted into
the man’s veins, run through a hole in the wall to another room hidden behind a
one way window. The other large windows are two way, and if the curtains are
raised the man can look at the faces of various observers who have come to see
that justice is done. This will be the last sight the prisoner sees, as the
chemicals run through the tubes into his veins, putting him to sleep and then
ending his life.
But is it the last thing he feels?
This is the question which has raised its own special controversy over Lethal
Injection, the method that the United States uses in the already controversial
practice of capital punishment. First, a little background is needed: the
United States, Japan, and South Korea are the only three industrialized
democracies that still employ the death penalty. Considered the most “humane”
way of doing this, lethal injection usually uses a cocktail of three drugs: a
barbiturate (depressant), a paralyzing agent, and a poison to stop the heart.
Returning to the question then, brings us to the controversy. There is some
debate whether or not the depressant wears off quickly enough to render the
prisoner conscious, but paralyzed, as the potassium chloride burns through
their veins to the heart. They may feel it, but be unable to scream due to the
paralysis. Another piece of the controversy is that, because of the creed “do
no harm” medically trained people cannot participate in the death penalty
directly. Thus the job of inserting the syringes and injecting the drugs falls
to often untrained prison officials who are liable to mess up and cause the
criminal to suffer a lot before finally dying. An example of this is the case
of Angel Diaz, where the syringe had pierced through the vein and the chemical
were released in the arm, burning Diaz his arm without killing him until
another needle was added.
Why is this important? After all, we
are dealing with convicted felons. Dr. Edward Brunner, a professor at the University
of Northwestern Medical School, describes the situation as “experimenting on
human beings, much like the German Doctors did in the concentration camps. What
they are doing is inhuman. The subject ends up with a strong possibility of
being subjected to excruciating suffering.” One issue which Brunner is referring
to the fact is that no one should have to suffer when at death, even if they
are a murderer. If we torture a killer before killing them, then we become just
as bad as that person was, does that mean someone should kill the executioner
as well? What if the person is innocent? While rare, it does happen that
innocent men are executed for someone else’s crime. Why should they be tortured
even while they are hoping for salvation?
The obvious solution to the dilemma
over the effect of the drugs and the question of who is qualified to carry out
such acts is to stop them altogether. Studies show that it costs significantly
less to incarcerate a person for life than to kill them ($2.16 million extra in
North Carolina and $3 million in Maryland. In Texas they have found that it is on average
2.3 million more per person to kill them than to keep them under the highest
security for 40 years.) Clearly, global opinion leans this way, as does popular
opinion. Additionally, if prison is supposed to be rehabilitation focused, then
the death penalty seems a bit counter-purpose. Let’s practice what we preach,
and stop the killing.
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