The Bloody Business of Executions

Earlier this month, the Ninth Circuit granted a conditional stay of the execution of Joseph R. Wood III based upon his claimed First Amendment right to government information.  Wood faced execution for murdering his ex-girlfriend and her father in 1989.  He wanted to know the manufacturer of his lethal injection drugs; the qualifications of those who will administer the execution; and the documents relied upon by the state to adopt its newest execution protocol. Normally I love a good First Amendment discussion--and this case would certainly provide one, with its novel right-to-information argument--but that's not what caught my eye.  Rather, it was Chief Judge Alex Kozinski's dissent from the denial of rehearing en banc. Kozinski eloquently and compellingly stated what is wrong with capital punishment today: "If we as a society want to carry out executions, we should be willing to face the fact that the state is committing a horrendous brutality on our behalf."

Many of the current challenges to death sentences focus on the method of lethal injection. The condemned prisoners argue that the drugs used to relax their muscles and stop their hearts will cause a painful death, and are thus cruel and unusual punishment. Kozinski concluded that "the enterprise is flawed."  These drugs were developed to help heal (or at least provide comfort to) sick people, not to kill people.  The state uses them to make executions seem peaceful, to mask the reality of death. Kozinski suggested bringing back the use of firing squads.  "If we, as a society, cannot stomach the splatter from an execution carried out by firing squad, then we shouldn’t be carrying out executions at all."

I agree with his reasoning.  Death by lethal injection seems too much like an ordinary medical procedure.  It allows citizens like me to ignore what the state is doing--killing someone on my behalf.  If the end of the line of a death-penalty case involves a squad of men with shotguns, then perhaps states will rethink the need for executions at all.  There are plenty of other reasons to abolish the death penalty: moral opposition (which can be a basis for legislation, but it's falling out of favor these days), judicial economy (so much time and effort goes into deciding death-penalty appeals), effectiveness (does the possibility of execution really deter criminals more so than life without parole?), and error (how many innocent people has the state executed?).

As for Mr. Wood, the Supreme Court lifted the stay, and he was executed on July 22. Attorneys for Wood tried to file an emergency request to halt the execution because Wood was still awake an hour after drugs were administered.  He snorted and gasped many times, and after two hours, he died.