Sometimes shit is so messed up, you have to start a new blog.
Botched execution.
Two words that drip with meaning.
Don’t read the comments, I tell myself, don’t read the comments, don’t read the comments.
I read the comments. The comments keep me up all night.
Legions of self-proclaimed Christians call the incident God’s will, call it the guy getting what he deserved, argue that it wasn’t botched at all, he’s dead isn’t he.
One commenter suggests the condemned prisoner pulled this stunt on purpose. Dehydrated himself so he’d blow a vein. Suggests he planned this.
To the governor’s chagrin, other planned executions are on hold until they can figure out how to prevent another unfortunate incident like this one.
To the governor’s chagrin, the state must temporarily stop killing prisoners until they can find a way to kill them that looks less brutal.
I read the way European outlets report this story. Another frowny face for the USA, for the state I made my home for eight years. Mentally I rank where our country now stands, globally. I lie in bed and think of escape routes. Canada. The forest. For if the shit hits the fan.
I wanna know what version of the Bible we’re reading that tells us this is Christlike.
I wanna know what version of the U.S. Constitution we’re reading that tells us this is legal.
And right now, I'm not even mildly interested in entertaining conversation about what this man did, about how violent and heinous his actions were. He was A Bad Guy. The State is The State. When our leaders act worse than our murderers, where do we go from there.
YES! One can presume that the persistence of capital punishment in this country, being vastly more expensive than life imprisonment and lacking in any measured positive effect, is making money for a lot of bad people. Appeal after appeal puts attorneys to work, pharmaceutical companies make big bucks on lethal drugs. It has the bonus of a convenient distraction for legislators, who would rather the public be in arms about issues like this and sexuality and racism than their continuing theft of rights and resources from citizens and murder and exploitation of people abroad. Capital punishment is another tool of corruption. And the whole un-Christian thing. Great post, Julia.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment, Luc! You brought up a lot of interesting angles to this topic that I neglected, most notably the "convenient distraction" issue. I always feel slightly duped when I've been successfully distracted by a hot-button issue.
DeleteI think what I said doesn't address your post very well. It's an important issue to me too. I just think it shares some characteristics of other issues because it involves a lot of people lacking a basic understanding of morality. It ought to be enough to point out that the more money a criminal can spend on a defense, the less severe the punishment will be.
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