He’s Witnessed a Dozen Executions. He Has a Clear Answer as to Which Method Is Most Humane.
Slate · L · trust 31/100
The state of Tennessee tried to kill Christa Pike via lethal injection on Sept. 30, but it didn’t work. Before she was set to be executed, Joel Zivot, an intensive care physician who was retained as an expert by Pike’s legal team, had warned that lethal injection could mean a painful and cruel death for Pike, who has small veins and a blood condition.
He was right—though Pike isn’t dead. The death row inmate has been caught in a hellish middle ground. She remained alive after two doses of the lethal sedative pentobarbital, which may have entered her arm tissue instead of her bloodstream. She was taken to the hospital, where she was intubated and placed on a ventilator. On Tuesday, she regained consciousness , and is now shackled to a hospital bed.
Even a lethal injection that goes as planned is more gruesome than it appears, Zivot has argued in Slate: “My work on autopsy analyses of executed individuals reveals that lethal injection kills not quietly and peacefully, but instead by drowning the executed prisoner in their own blood.” Further, “lethal injection involves individuals with health care training, giving it a sheen of modernity, technological advancement, even sophistication.” A lethal injection can, for the general public, hide the cruelty that is inherent in killing someone.
An episode of What Next that aired in June explored the idea that there is a more humane way to carry out the death penalty: the firing squad. The concept seems to be making a comeback, though it’s still only legal in a small handful of states (of those that allow the death penalty at all). Mary Harris spoke to the Rev. Jeff Hood, a Catholic priest and founder of the Execution Intervention Project who has witnessed almost a dozen executions, about what the process is like and why a firing squad—as gruesome as it is—might be preferable for death row inmates. This transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Mary Harris: Have you witnessed a good execution?
Jeff Hood: Well, none of them are good, but there are some that function certainly more systematically than others. I’ve seen, at this point, nine lethal injections and two nitrogen executions. And the nine lethal injections look like, you know, going to recess, in comparison to the nitrogen executions, which involve a gas chamber and a mask.
The mask extends from the hairline to underneath the chin. It’s filled with nitrogen until the person practically suffocates to death. And so as fluids come out of the mouth and the nose, and boogers and saliva and eye gunk and all this kind of stuff is coming out, it’s catching at the front of the mask and drizzling down like a waterfall.
I want to mull over this question of what a good execution would even look like.
If I had to choose between a nitrogen execution and firing squad, I would choose a firing squad every day of the week. If I had to choose between a lethal injection and a firing squad, I would choose a firing squad every day of the week.
It’s a lot quicker. I think it’s a lot more humane, to be quite frank.
What does it say that the firing squad now looks like a humane choice?
I think what it says is that executions are horrible no matter how they’re carried out. It forces everyone to see, to hear, to feel the execution in a way that other methods don’t.
Of course, this brings up a very interesting juxtaposition in that it depends on how far states are willing to go. And what I mean by that is it depends on how dirty they’re interested in getting their hands. Are they going to have people who are willing to volunteer to be the shooters? Are they going to be willing to create these environments that are necessary to carry out a firing-squad execution?
But I can tell you that of all of the guys that I work with, if given the opportunity, I think a lot of them would be most interested in a firing squad.
Do you think more of them are going to get that choice?
I think so. It doesn’t matter what method we choose. It’s going to be horrible.
Read the original at Slate →
Open in TruthVane →