"Electrocution is wrong direction," is the Virginian Pilot editorial. Here's an extended excerpt from the beginning:
A choice between two methods for a barbaric death isn't much choice at all.
Yet Virginia's House of Delegates wants to ensure that the commonwealth continues state-sanctioned killing, known as the death penalty, by mandating use of the electric chair if drugs used for lethal injections are not available.
For the past 20 years, the commonwealth has given the condemned a choice between electrocution and lethal injection, but few have chosen the electric chair. Virginia's former executioner, who administered 25 executions using the electric chair before retiring in 1999, explained why during testimony last week before a Senate committee.
Electrocution leaves bodies burned and blistered, Jerry Givens said. "If you've got a fire in the execution room and the witnesses have to witness this, this is something that will live with them forever," he said.
But Virginia, one of 32 states that continues to use the death penalty, now faces a shortage of lethal injection drugs, and proponents of the death penalty are rallying around the electric chair as an acceptable alternative.
Rather than reverting to that torturous, cruel device, Virginia should tack toward a more humane, sensible criminal justice system, one that replaces the ultimate punishment with life in prison without parole.
Earlier coverage from Virginia begins at the link.
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