Apparently doctors in California have had an epiphany: killing people sort of contradicts our Hippocratic oath to do no harm. (Hmm... Some delicious ironies here with the Right to Life and the Right to Die, ie euthanasia, movements.) Is there really a more humane way to kill people? Things are getting curiouser and curiouser.
Execution called off because of lethal injection questions
February 22, 2006
SAN QUENTIN – Concern over whether health care providers can ethically play a role in putting condemned inmates to death and legal uncertainty over whether lethal injections are unconstitutionally cruel prompted California prison officials to postpone the execution of a convicted killer for the second time in less than a day.
An hour before Michael Morales was scheduled to be strapped to a gurney in the death chamber at San Quentin State Prison, Warden Stephen Ornoski called off the execution Tuesday evening. He said officials were unable to comply with a judge's order that only a licensed medical provider could administer the sedative that would kill Morales.
“We were not able to find a licensed professional that was willing to inject medication intravenously, ending the life of a human being,” said San Quentin spokesman Vernell Crittendon in explaining the unexpected delay.
I keep hearing that "polls say most American's favor the death penalty". I am one of those people or it at least I have been one of them.
On one hand, there is a natural feeling that people who commit crimes should be punished and that the punishment should fit the crime. The Old Testament tells us "eye for an eye". Some people want justice; others want revenge. Sometimes those are the same and sometimes not but everyone wants some action. This line of reasoning has a simple conclusion: if you kill someone you should die too.
Another argument in favor of the death penalty is mere practicality. It costs a lot of money to pay for people in prison. Life in prison is a financial penalty to the tax payers, people who did not commit a crime. For the sake of economy, put the killers to death.
However, the death penalty is an example of that phenomenon, "the more you know, the less clear it really is". The reality of the death penalty is not pretty and I seriously question how many of "most American's" who favor the death penalty know much if anything about it, (Beyond Law & Order and CSI of course) and whether they would change their vote if they did.
Law is not a science. In science, we would do a lot of statistics and focus on eliminating the false positives (punishing the innocent) and false negatives (not punishing the guilty) so that only the guilty got the punishment. But law is not science it is a debate. Two advocates and a judge or jury present a case and argue the legal merits of each side. Unfortunately the quality of the advocate and the judge are highly variable, often depending solely on how much money you have and where you live.
The result? Blacks and latinos are a minority of the population but most people on death row are poor and black or latino. Scientific evidence, like DNA, has proved that a lot of those poor blacks and latinos were not guilty. That is AFTER they have spent years in prison for crimes they did not commit while the guilty went free. Law is not a science but these emotional cases are scientific proof that our legal system makes mistakes.
When people talk about their taxes or the elections, there is a common feeling that the government is a bunch of idiots and screw ups. When we talk about the death penalty and police in general, we somehow have the reverse reaction: law enforcement is infallible. We maintain this fantasy even as we joke about police and donuts.
The reality is that mistakes are made. Everyone makes mistakes but highly political situations usually demand "a" solution more than a "just" solution which means they are even more likely to make mistakes. And it is hard to find a more politically charged situation than terrible crimes.
Lifetime imprisonment and the death penalty are two of the most extreme uses of government power and thus two things we should be most careful about. Recognizing the fallibility of people and the political pressures, it makes sense for a government to err on the side of leniency so that as few innocent people suffer as possible.
Of course this is based on my personal judgement that killing and innocent person is worse than letting a guilty person, like OJ Simpson, go free. But beyond my feelings, the cases of punishing an innocent man are also cases of letting a guilty man go free. And these cases show that such occurrences do not destroy society, ergo our country can afford to be generous with leniency.
Of course on a personal level, we all want things to be perfect but real life is a series of compromises not perfection. So it will be interesting to see what California does. Either way, Im sure Texas and the Deep South will continue to represent us on the world-stage by putting people of color to death, whether it is by hanging, gunshot, beheading, lethal injection or poison gas.
