Execution Policy is Irrational

The recent case of Rommel Broom illustrates that execution policy in the United States is incoherent and absurd. Mr. Broom was tortured for an hour and a half as his incompetent killers tried to stick him with an intravenous needle in order to kill him by the humane method of lethal injection.

There are still several arguments in favor of retaining capital punishment. It may be cheaper than housing a convict forever, to no end. And it is manlier and more sensible to die after one last cigarette, with no blindfold, before a firing squad, than spend decades degraded at the hands of sadistic guards and inmates in a squalid prison.

But those arguments are moot, because executions are always far more expensive than simply sentencing a convict to life in prison, and we are apparently not concerned with the honor or dignity of those we convict of capital crimes, only in their comfort and humanity.

Another argument in favor of capital punishment is that it satiates victim's lust for retribution. In that case, the execution should be painful and horrifying. Rape victims should be allowed to castrate the rapist with a hot iron, and the relatives of murder victims should be allowed to slowly cut apart the convict with a dull razor, relishing his pain and fear. Those convicted of witchcraft should be carried from the courtroom and burned alive on the common pasture before all the village people.

But that never happens, because executions are supposed to be “humane.” The lust for retribution has gone the way of every other visceral thrill that offends the sensibility of secular humanists. The noose, the firing squad, and the electric chair were all successively deemed too savage, and replaced by more “humane” methods, culminating with lethal injection, an ostensibly peachy way to die. Never mind that a bullet to the head, or better, a cocktail of morphine and booze, would be swifter and less painful.

Never mind that killing someone is inhumane anyway. Our penal system reflects that sentiment. We consider murder the worst crime in peacetime, even before torture and false imprisonment. But death isn't the worst thing that can happen to you.

Say a criminal cut off his victim's limbs and genitals and poked out his eyes with a searing-hot hickory stick. We might give him a long sentence, but we'd never consider shooting him up the anus with a small-caliber pistol and letting him bleed out through his intestines in a dumpster, like the Mafia does . We feel that torture is too inhumane. But if torturing someone is inhumane, then why is killing them humane? Do we not consider murder at least as bad as torture?

The third argument in favor of capital punishment is that it will deter potential criminals through fear of death and humiliation. But the deterrent value of a ceremony held in a little room at midnight is limited. Most people never witness an execution. Furthermore, executions occur so long after the commission of the crime they're supposed to deter that everyone's forgotten which murderer and rapist goes with which murder and rape. Such a mild institution is unlikely to dissuade a psychotic rapist in a murderous frenzy.

That leaves us with two reasonable options. We must either abolish capital punishment, or return it to all its previous glory as a bloody public spectacle.

All I've got to say about that is: Rommel Broom could have made a killing for the Department of Justice on Pay-Per-View.