Capital Punishment is Inherently Cruel

At the heart of the recently argued case by the Supreme Court, Moore vs. Texas, is a simple question, how smart do you have to be to be executed? It joins a stellar lineup of previous capital punishment cases with a long list of seminal, unresolved issues: , How young is too young, How crazy is too crazy, How racist is too racist a jury, How incompetent is too incompetent representation, How late is too late an appeal, How much brain damage is too much damage How much withheld information is too much information We are no longer arguing over the merits of capital punishment, we are arguing over the details of its demise. That extends to the current method of execution. Lethal injection has a long and illustrious list of predecessors: Burning at the Stake Crucifixion Stoning Drawing and Quartering Beheading Hanging Firing Squad Electric Chair Gas Chamber The early methods were not chosen for their justice, but for their cruelty. Capital punishment was meant to be cruel, else why were burning at the stake or drawing and quartering chosen? They were chosen to scare and intimidate, so they were brutal and public. While it is argued that capital punishment is a deterrent, its history suggests otherwise. Even when capital punishment was at its cruelest and most capricious, people still engaged in activities that would get them executed. How effective a deterrent can today’s humane, hidden executions be if these others failed? Throughout the arc of history, societies have searched for more acceptable methods of execution. It is an acknowledgement that what they want is something less cruel and less public for executing people. The current execution proponents have tried to shield us from this cruelty by hiding it away so that now it is safe from prying eyes in windowless rooms with a curtain that can be drawn whenever too much cruelty appears. They know this is the only way they can continue doing it. The current method of punishment is acknowledged to be cruel as a historical matter; it is also unusual in both senses of that word – uncommon and strange. Capital punishment is no longer used as a deterrent or even revenge. It is used when we’re shocked, disgusted, or outraged by a crime. The logical connection between crime and punishment has been severed; it has relevance only to our level of sensitivity to a crime. Given the rise of torture porn and its ilk, the level of desensitivity will continue to rise, leaving only the unimaginably shocking cases as acceptable. Even that may not last long and we will be executing only a disfavored few. Capital punishment long ago lost its legitimacy when executions were no longer held in public, when lynchings were rampant, when they tried to make it less cruel, when they tried to hide the executioners and their tools from scrutiny, when innocence was no longer theoretical but proven, when they continued to prosecute defendants when it was clear they were not involved. Capital punishment has also lost legitimacy because of the proponents seeming indifference as to the correctness of their convictions. They have chosen speed over justice as their goal, ignoring the questions that have bedeviled many convictions and pushed onward towards execution. Too much junk science Too much tainted evidence Too much misconduct Too incompetent the counsel Too late the appeal Too much contradictory evidence What of the victims, should they not have a say in whether to execute or not? That would add yet another layer of capriciousness to an already irretrievably capricious system of selecting who should be executed. And what if they change their minds later, do we change the sentence? What if they said no, would we then not execute the killer? Capital punishment is inherently cruel, what else could snuffing out a life be? Capital punishment is unusual – so few receive it and in increasingly bizarre ways. Capital punishment deserves to go, the question is very simple for the Supreme Court, “Are you smart enough to execute it?”