"Secrecy Behind Executions," is the editorial published in today's New York Times. Here's the beginning:
It is bad enough that the death penalty is barbaric, racist and arbitrary in its application, but it is also becoming less transparent as the dwindling number of death-penalty states work to hide the means by which they kill people.
The increased secrecy around lethal-injection drug protocols is only the latest tactic of pro-death-penalty legislators and corrections officials around the country. In Missouri, this secrecy was upheld last week by a federal appeals court, which denied a condemned inmate’s constitutional claim that he is entitled to basic information about the drugs that would be used to put him to death.
Herbert Smulls was executed late Wednesday for the 1991 murder of a jewelry-store owner. Missouri refused to name the pharmacy or pharmacies involved in producing the execution drugs.
Missouri’s secrecy, along with new legislation in states such as Georgia and Tennessee, is a response to a mounting “crisis” in death-penalty states: Because many drug manufacturers now refuse to supply drugs for use in executions, states are scrambling to replenish their stocks. This often means turning to compounding pharmacies, which exist in a largely unregulated world.
Northwest Missourian columnist Dustin McMahon writes, "Debate over lethal injection drugs missing the point."
I find it extremely difficult to understand what people mean by a “humane execution.” Perhaps this phrase may be used to separate the state from the animals it decides to give an “eye-for-an-eye” style of justice to. For, if the state commits a “humane execution,” the death can be justified as being more ethical than the original.
Maybe a solid alternative, and an undoubtedly more humane one, would be to eliminate the death penalty. I know it sounds crazy, to euthanize the state’s harshest penalty for criminals, but consideration is warranted.
It is quite clear that, in an advanced society, a state can find much more humane ways to treat prisoners and criminals than to simply kill them off. If there is any dispute over the inhumane nature of the method(s) used to kill prisoners, it is not unreasonable to call for the abolition of the entire practice.
Coverage from Missouri begins with the preceding post.
Comments