Hofstra law prof Eric Freedman has sent me a link to Bill Wiseman's own article, "Inventing Lethal Injection," which appeared in The Christian Century, June 20, 2001.
IT WAS A LONG time ago but doesn't really seem like it. Perhaps because the years since I left the Oklahoma legislature in 1980 have been a kind of "anti-time," a period that has contained many good things, but that has never been the same as those days when I was wheeling through the halls of legislative history. I was bold and happy and sure that I was doing the Lord's work.
I had found what seemed to be my own voice and identity, a role which was a pure delight to me, at least in memory. For six years I was always sorry to go home, and eager to return to my work the next day or next week or next session. The only fear I had in those days was that something might snatch it all away, and thus take away the identity and purpose and pleasure in life.
In other words, I was no different than any other legislator I've ever known: my highest priority was retaining my seat. Everything else was in a different category of regard and concern.
I didn't even sense approaching danger in 1976, when the news carried reports that the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down the death penalties of several states in Furman v. Georgia. In that case, the court held that juries would need to make separate decisions about guilt and punishment, and would need a clear list of factors on which to base their decision to execute a prisoner. The word soon got around that our Oklahoma death penalty was "belly up" and we'd need to do something to reenact our flawed death penalty.
I hated the idea. I'd been educated by Philadelphia Quakers as a child and majored in philosophy as an undergraduate. I knew better. The death penalty was at best unjustified. Moreover, I instinctively hated the moral cowardice I felt welling up in my gut.
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