Editorial: Why not just stop killing the killers?

Search for "humane" way of executing people leads nowhere.

In California and Missouri, federal judges have ruled that the states' procedures for putting inmates to death with lethal injections violate the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishments. In Florida, Gov. Jeb Bush has suspended executions after it took 34 apparently painful minutes for an inmate to die; the needle that was to feed a three-drug mix into his bloodstream missed his veins and instead pushed the drugs into soft tissue. Face it: Killing people humanely is all but impossible, and that's a good reason to stop the practice entirely.

Human sensibilities change, which is why the nation has gone from hanging and firing squads to gas chambers and electric chairs, then almost universally to lethal injection in the quest for a more humane way to end life. Now, with executions declining for a number of years and with lethal injections proving problematic, perhaps the American public is ready to accept that "humane executions" are a contradiction in terms and that the time has come finally to end this barbaric practice.

Supporters of capital punishment ask why all the concern over the pain inmates feel when they are put to death. After all, they say, it's less pain than the convicted murderers inflicted on their victims.

Indeed, but is that a justification anyone should take seriously? They inflicted great pain on their victims so we're free to inflict pain on them? What does that make us?

Therein lies the central point, which death-penalty advocates frequently miss: At its heart, the capital punishment debate isn't really about those put to death and whether they are comfortable. It's about the American public and the values it desires to uphold, which play a large role in shaping society's behavior. A society that kills people who kill people debases itself by cheapening life. Killing may be necessary in a war, but this is not a war, and the killing is both unnecessary and unfruitful. Over and over again, capital punishment has been shown to have no or very little value as a deterrent. Nor do these inmates need to be killed so they can't kill again. They can be securely locked away instead, which is what happens to most of them already.

America should give up on efforts to perfect ways of killing killers. It's demeaning to even engage in the effort, which will prove ultimately futile in any event. The Supreme Court says capital punishment is permissible, but Americans can, and should, decide it's just no longer acceptable.