What does the Death Penalty really kill?

The United States is one of a small contingent of countries that still provide for execution. Most of the others are struggling to rise to the level of third-world status.

Even though the American death penalty is metered out largely to minorities, and exclusively to poor people, we have shown compassion on these wretched ones by "improving" how we kill them. Now it is generally an injection of a cocktail of drugs that peacefully (we are told) puts our prisoner to sleep wherein he (sometimes she) then dies. Some medical personnel think that only appears "peaceful" to the witnesses; to the dying one it is an agony to be suffered in a drug-paralyzed body. Who really knows?

A group of undergraduate students in Illinois did some pretty basic journalistic research and found several people on death row waiting to be put to “sleep” were actually innocent and a number of them were subsequently found to be innocent, and some were even released from prison as a result! That was a “wake up” for everybody.

What about those like Timothy McVeigh? He confessed freely. He did it. There seems to be no doubt of any degree. If anyone would deserve to be killed, it would be one such as he, or Charles Manson, or others we can all name. But even in those cases, what about those who commit the act of execution or "official killing"? And it is not just one person. There are prison workers who “care” for the one to be put to death during the last days of his life, there are clergy involved, there are technicians, doctors, reporters, witnesses, and even people who just live in the community in which it all takes place.

There cannot be a system to put just one person to death; it must be a system designed to operate in an ongoing manner. There will have to be continual purchases of expensive equipment, maintenance, testing and repair of all that. Personnel will have to be hired and trained, budgets will require additional funds, and that funding will need to increase from year to year. Performance standards and program measures will be developed and implemented; position descriptions will be build around all that, resumes will be solicited and received and evaluated. People will apply for jobs to kill. There will grow "justifications for death, and a “need” to kill prisoners will assume an importance, and will bureaucratically compete at some level with the “need” for justice.

Many of the people who play seemingly distant roles in in the process have found that they have become connected with those who are executed at a very deep place within their spiritual being. Some of them stated in a National Public Radio program that was aired in May, 2001, that these connections seem permanent and do not go away or fade. More than a few have found that they have slowly entered into a post-traumatic stress syndrome type of life that has proven to be irreversible. Some of the countries which have abandoned the death penalty have said that they did so not because of what it did to the prisoners but because of what they found it did to them as a nation and as a people.

Then there is the issue of “promotion”. History often turns on stories of people who have been put to death for following their own conviction, whether inspired by glory or evil. No one can become a martyr without being killed by his enemies. Whenever any person like McVeigh is put to death, then their cause can become “promoted” to a more worthy cause – a cause more important than life itself. Not for everyone, but some people will always come to see the one who is killed by the state as a noble prophet. Throughout history, the very act of execution has “freed” many people from a prison to play a greater role in the future. Just more of the seeds of death.