Arkansas Blog

Is there a reason why, if the state must execute, the drugs cause pain?
I've had to put a number of animals to sleep in my life and it always is very peaceful.
Do these drugs not work on humans or is it more of still wanting get our "pound of flesh" and wanting to see these folks suffer?

Which Court?

Being a comitted death pentalty opponent, I would point out that when it is carried out two factors come into play. The first is that far too many persons have been wrongly convicted by overzealous prosecutors, flimsy evidence or underqualified defenders to name a few. The recent revelations about the West Memphis Three certainly shows what can happen. The second and most important is that killing a human is wrong and when you do it, either in the name of the law or heat of the moment, it is still killing. Don't give me any execution crappola either, because you kill when you execute. Further, in killing a person in the name of the law, the state and the people it represents in effect become like the murderer it punishes. Whether or not it is cruel and unusual is not relevant, it is whether or not it should be carried out, that is the overriding question.

Yeah, no need to hurry. We can always kill 'em later.

Traveler, I agree with you that the death penalty is wrong, but whether or not it is unduly painful is relevant, and I'm pretty sure that those who are going to be executed might agree with me. Just saying.

Just get rid of the death penalty and we won't have this problem.

Sure, if someone killed one of my loved ones, I'd want to do all sorts of horrible things to them, but that's not justice, that's vengeance, and vengeance alone can never be just, because it just perpetuates the anger ad infinitum.

Good work, General McDaniel.

I think you're right about the "unduly painful" issue, Arch. Sometimes you got to be practical.

I could never really make up my mind about the death penalty until the Illinois death row moratorium. I did not believe even the state should be killing, but then someone like the person in the other blog would kill in such a horrific manner that I would waver. After it became clear that a fairly large number of people on death row were demonstrably innocent, however, I became totally convinced we should join the other civilized nations and discontinue this practice. Exactly how many executions of innocent people are acceptable to us so that we can continue to do something so barbaric that benefits no one? Is one or two a year okay? Ten or twenty? This is one mistake that cannot ever be corrected. What do we say to the families of those wrongly executed? "Oh, well, sh*t happens?"

Statistics have shown the death penalty to be no deterrent to murder. And it's more cost effective to just keep them in prison their entire lives than go through all the litigation usually necessary to execute someone. Even the victims' relatives don't seem to really benefit. They usually express relief the murderer has been executed, but then go on to say their grief has not been lessened.

Since the death penalty is being administered only slightly less arbitrarily than in "The Lottery," we need to just stop it altogether. But at the same time, "life without parole" should mean just that. A person convicted of murder should be let out of prison only when they are proven innocent or the person they killed rises from the dead.