"Death Penalty Problem"

A commentary in the Boston Globe by Ellen Goodman entitled Goodman: A Problem with Execution outlines the author's feelings on the Supreme Court taking another death penalty case. This case is meant, not to decide on the constitutionality of the death penalty, but rather on the current popular method being used, the lethal injection. The Supreme Court is to make a decision on whether or not the lethal injection method should be used to execute inmates on death row. Of course, we all know, Texas is the foremost state in capital punishment.

Lethal injection, for those of you who don't know, is a drug cocktail. The first drug puts the inmate to sleep, the second paralyzes, and the third stops the heart. Goodman sites several cases in her article supporting the fact that, even with the "sophisticated" methods we have of killing an inmate painlessly, the injections, are in fact, botched. She sites the dyslexic doctor from Missouri who openly stated he miscalculated doses and the Lancet study stating that half of inmates were still conscious when they received the heart stopping drug.

She ends, "We are tinkering, tinkering, tinkering to avoid the possibility that we can't have our death penalty and our humanity too." In this aspect, I would have to agree with her. The end result of the death penalty, no matter how the person is actually executed, is ultimately death. Whether it be injections, hanging, drawing and quartering, or the overly "cinematized" firing squad, someone always ends up dead, as we Texans seem to know all too well.

My question, however, is this. Why spend time worrying about how the execution is carried out? Is it because we feel more humane sleeping at night knowing we killed a person, but he or she died painlessly? While I am all for killing people with dignity, I have to wonder, if we are so worried about the methods used (in fact Texas has actually suspended all death row sentences pending the Supreme Court decision) why use it at all? It obviously has not been done right no matter how many technological advances we have dedicated to the act, so why waste the time? I would feel worse knowing that I told someone they would die painlessly and in all reality, they felt every agonizing second of it and couldn't express the pain. In fact, I have a feeling the paralyzing drug is more for the executioners rather than the executes. Either way, I am taking Goodman's side in this situation. I see the irony in this situation.

Read this article for yourself at http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/10/11/1012goodman_edit.html