Death blows / There is no such thing as a clean execution |
There are times when the absence of Jonathan Swift is acutely felt. One such moment came at the end of last month with the botched execution of a woman in Tennessee called Christa Pike.
Pike has been in prison on death row since 1996 when she was convicted of the torture and murder of a classmate when she was just 18. She had originally been sentenced to death by electric chair. But society has become more benevolent since the 1990s and so, at the age of 50, Pike was prepared for execution by lethal injection.
If society sanctions the ultimate punishment, it should not look away from what that punishment looks like
If society sanctions the ultimate punishment, it should not look away from what that punishment looks like
The injections went ahead but they did not work. Pike survived two rounds of pentobarbital and, since she was still alive after the second dose, the executioners had to call 911 and request an ambulance. The emergency services rushed her to hospital to save her life. She has since regained consciousness and there is now a considerable debate in the US about what to do with her.
Even before this incident, capital punishment in the US is such a long drawn-out process that it is almost inevitable that a certain amount of sympathy ends up accruing to the perpetrator while the horrors of their crimes recede. There does seem something inhumane about someone spending their whole adult life awaiting the inevitable appeals and other legal processes to determine the day on which they should die.
Now there have been inevitable........