Letters To My Country

May 17, 2014

"It sounds draconian. It sounds really bad, but the minute the bullet hits your heart, you’re dead."

—

That’s Rep. Paul Ray, a Utah legislator, who hopes to reintroduce the firing squad as an option for the state’s death row inmates.

Ray argues the controversial method may seem more palatable now, especially as states struggle to maneuver lawsuits and drug shortages that have complicated lethal injections.
“It sounds like the Wild West, but it’s probably the most humane way to kill somebody,” Ray said.

First of all, “palatable” to whom?

Second of all, if you’re worried about being “humane,” you might consider not killing.

And, finally, what he means to say — even though he’s dressing it up with words like “palatable” and “humane” — is that the firing squad would simply make it easier for the state to kill people than is currently the case with lethal injection. But easier doesn’t sound so good.

(via kohenari)

LTMC: The irony is that Paul Ray unintentionally stumbled into a nearly-coherent ethical argument without realizing it. In his book In Defense of Flogging, Peter Moskos argues that America’s prison system has become so inhumane that it would be more humane to give people the choice of being flogged rather than being sent to prison. To sum up his thesis in a sentence: if flogging seems inhumane, what does that say about our prison system that many people would choose a notoriously painful form of corporal punishment rather than be sent to prison?

In Paul Ray’s case, an argument could be made that “death by firing squad” is more reliable and less likely to result in unnecessary suffering than, say, a botched lethal injection (presumably it’s not difficult to arrange to have condemned people shot in the head with a high-powered rifle that would instantly kill them). The difference between Moskos and Ray’s argument, though, is that Moskos assumes that punishment is necessary in civil society, which most people accept as part of the Social Contract. There is far more debate over whether the death penalty is necessary or even effective. As Professor Kohen suggests, we could always just not kill people, which would defeat the need for hand-wringing over how to accomplish it without unnecessary suffering.

(Source: The Huffington Post, via kohenari)

4:28pm | URL: https://tmblr.co/ZMMjnx1G8HzxD

(Notes: 72)