EDITORIALS
Death Penalty Is Inhumane
December 22, 2006 Executions have come a long way since the days when troublemakers were beheaded or burned. Or have they?
Over time, less messy methods of putting lawbreakers to death have emerged, purporting to be more humane. These include death by firing squad, hanging, the electric chair and, most recently, the use of chemicals.
Now, Florida and California are poised to re-evaluate lethal injection.
A federal judge in California last week declared the state's lethal injection procedures so unprofessional as to violate the Constitution's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
The decision prompted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to order an overhaul of execution procedures.
The next day, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush suspended lethal injections and named a commission to investigate the constitutionality of that state's death-row protocol after prison personnel bungled the execution of an inmate whose passing dragged on for 34 minutes.
Realistically, the idea that pain reduction somehow renders capital punishment more acceptable is absurd. Dead is dead, no matter what method is used. There are many reasons capital punishment shouldn't be used in a civilized society.
The death penalty may be a factor in deterring crime in some individual cases, but overall it isn't. Furthermore, research shows that executions are unequally applied and that a disturbing number of inmates on death row are not guilty of the crimes that got them there.
The latest wrangling over the amount of pain that capital punishment causes only underscores that fact that it is ineffective in stopping crime, unjust, inhumane and should be abolished.
Over time, less messy methods of putting lawbreakers to death have emerged, purporting to be more humane. These include death by firing squad, hanging, the electric chair and, most recently, the use of chemicals.
Now, Florida and California are poised to re-evaluate lethal injection.
A federal judge in California last week declared the state's lethal injection procedures so unprofessional as to violate the Constitution's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
The decision prompted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to order an overhaul of execution procedures.
The next day, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush suspended lethal injections and named a commission to investigate the constitutionality of that state's death-row protocol after prison personnel bungled the execution of an inmate whose passing dragged on for 34 minutes.
Realistically, the idea that pain reduction somehow renders capital punishment more acceptable is absurd. Dead is dead, no matter what method is used. There are many reasons capital punishment shouldn't be used in a civilized society.
The death penalty may be a factor in deterring crime in some individual cases, but overall it isn't. Furthermore, research shows that executions are unequally applied and that a disturbing number of inmates on death row are not guilty of the crimes that got them there.
The latest wrangling over the amount of pain that capital punishment causes only underscores that fact that it is ineffective in stopping crime, unjust, inhumane and should be abolished.
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