Life is only as sacred as we make it

Judge Isaac Parker's gallows in Fort Smith have always creeped me out.

I guess enough time has passed that we can take a more lighthearted approach to the "Hanging Judge" and the conventions of frontier justice, but I can't pass the reconstructed gallows without feeling a frisson of empathy for the 79 human beings--the convicted murderers and rapists--who died in the proximate mid-air.

At times it seems amazing to me that we still execute people in this country and that, though the numbers are dropping, a solid majority of Americans still support the practice. In 1966, only 42 percent of the country was in favor of capital punishment. I figured that by the end of the 1970s the U.S. would have, like most of the rest of the Western world, abolished the practice.

I do not believe in the inevitability of human progress or the perfectibility of our kind. My opposition to the death penalty is simple. I think we must try to not succumb to our worst instincts, to not act in anger or desperation. All of us are capable of doing wrong, then rationalizing our choices and excusing ourselves. We have to choose to be brave, to understand that the universe can be a harsh place and that there is nothing we can do to guarantee our safe passage through it. There are many mysteries in life and few certainties, but one thing we can count on is that we will all suffer, and we will all contribute to the suffering of others.

I'm not sure there's much we can do other than try to mitigate the suffering that we cause; I think we should be as gentle with one another--with all living creatures--as we can. But I know I am incapable of living as a saint; I know the wickedness of my own heart. And since I do not imagine I am special, I extrapolate. So I understand the need for jails and prisons and wars and collateral damage. I understand violence and vengeance and that there is a kind of hopelessness that can drive a person to turn himself into a bomb. I know we cannot trust our fellow humans; I'm not sure we can always trust ourselves.

But I believe we can do better.

Last week a man named Michael Worthington was put to death by the state of Missouri in the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center--a banal and blandly euphemistic name for a high-security prison--about 70 miles south of St. Louis. I don't know much about Worthington other than he was found guilty of the rape and murder of his 24-year-old neighbor Mindy Griffin. There seemed to be little question of his guilt. He'd been incarcerated for 19 years. The stories I read indicated the parents of his victim welcomed his execution.

Apparently this execution went off without a hitch. Worthington did not gasp more than 600 times and snort for two hours like the murderer Joseph Rudolph Wood did when the state of Arizona killed him in July. He did not gasp for almost 30 minutes like the Ohio inmate executed in January or die of a heart attack after his botched execution was called off like an inmate in Oklahoma in April.

Unlike the other executions carried out--or attempted--this year, Missouri didn't use the so-called "three-drug cocktail" commonly used in executions. They switched to a single-drug method in 2013 because they were having trouble obtaining the drugs that make up their lethal injection formulas. Seems the European companies that manufacture the drugs were appalled their products were being used to kill human beings.

Turns out a lot of people don't want to be associated with executions. That's why Missouri obtains the pentobarbital it uses to kill folks from a secret source. They have to pay cash because the suppliers don't want a paper trail connecting them to selling drugs for executions. So some states, like Arkansas, argue the need to keep the details of their lethal-injection formulas secret. It seems possible, if not likely, that continuing lethal injection may soon prove untenable.

One solution might be a return to the old ways of electric chairs, gas chambers or Judge Parker's gallows (Utah used firing squads as recently as 2010). But lethal injection is perceived as a more humane alternative to these methods; a court might hold that anything else violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

It's becoming increasingly clear that the death penalty is incompatible with a decent society. Over the past 40 years, more than 130 people have been released from death row. Mistakes are and will continue to be made.

I know there are legitimate arguments for executing criminals, and there are many people who, in good faith, believe it is a fitting punishment and a remedy with which we might trust the state. To be sure, executions prevent recidivism--the hanged man won't murder or rape again. They think it is workable, and that a certain amount of grim ritual benefits society by demonstrating the consequences of transgression.

I think those people are wrong. I don't think we need to kill people.

I am not arguing that some of these people don't deserve killing; I am not at all concerned with what capital punishment means to the condemned.

I'm concerned with what it means to us. There are more important, healthier things for a society to do than mete out retribution. As individuals, we might all thirst for vengeance against those who've injured us or the ones we love. As a society, we ought to try to do better; to sublimate our passions and restrain our angry impulses. We ought to deal rationally with criminals--and the reasons for putting wounded, stunted and crazy people to death have more to do with satisfying an unseemly need for spectacle than solving any of society's problems.

There are reasons this country is among the bloodiest on earth, and I believe that there is a correlation between our willingness to execute monsters and the manufacture of such monsters. Life is only as sacred as we hold it.

pmartin@arkansasonline.com

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Editorial on 08/10/2014

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