Please, please, if you need to kill me, just shoot me.
“Suppose someone you love was brutally murdered, an innocent life taken in vain. You might want an eye for an eye, a life for a life. But the very system designed to deliver justice for such unspeakable acts has perpetrated acts of its own. The United States is the only Western civilization that imposes the death penalty.” More. . .
Just the other day the 200th death row inmate was released after DNA evidence showed that he had not committed the crime he was accused of, after losing 20 years of his life.
In Florida, last December, it took 34 minutes to kill Angel Diaz, by lethal injection. Past horror stories have described electrocutions, with the flesh starting to sizzle and then flames rising from the head of the human being, like a piece of meat on a grill with the heat too high.
Today we read about an execution that was so inept that the man in the middle of watching people attempt to kill him at least ten times, spread throughout an hour, had to ask for a timeout to use the restroom.
This is not an article about the pros and cons of the death penalty. But, do you realize that the Supreme Court, “in an unusual” ruling “cited the ‘overwhelming weight of international opinion’ in banning executions of those under 18. Justice Kennedy, noted that the U.S was the only country in the world that still officially permitted the execution of juveniles. He wrote that since 1990, only seven countries have executed persons under 18. They are Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and China. However, all of these countries have since publicly disavowed the practice. Justice Kennedy also noted that the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits the juvenile death penalty, has been ratified by every country except Somalia and the United States.”
During the last few years, reading about humans being decapitated, or blown up unexpectedly, or even unfortunately seeing the ghoulish hangings in the Middle East, I found myself repulsed and thinking, “how primitive!”
But, it is incredible, without excuse whatever, that a country with the technology of the US, since it chooses to kill humans, cannot do a better job.
This is as barbaric as the Middle Ages, with its guillotines, except the guillotines probably worked much better.
I cringed when I read the title of a new offering from one of my book clubs, by Geoffrey Abbot, described this way–
“It’s not easy being an executioner—especially when the job doesn’t go right. Like when the condemned unexpectedly pops up to make a quip when he should have sunk without a word. Or, when an eyeball pops out of a victim’s head during an electrocution. From bungled decapitations in the 16th century to botched lethal injections in the 20th, The Executioner Always Chops Twice is a grisly and bizarre anthology of more than 80 executions that didn’t go exactly as planned.” Want to order it and read how they continue throughout the 20th century?
Public Notice: If I have to be executed, please send me to a more compassionate or technologically advanced country than the United States of America, for a guillotine or a firing squad. Like I bet that the eight countries mentioned above, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, China and Somalia have perfected the procedure.
Signed,
Victoria Bresee
