If we're going to be barbarians, why try to mask it?
Gotta agree with
this appellate judge:
"Using drugs meant for individuals with medical needs to carry out executions is a misguided effort to mask the brutality of executions by making them look serene and beautiful — like something any one of us might experience in our final moments," U.S. 9th Circuit Court Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote in a dissent in the Arizona death penalty case of Joseph Rudolph Wood III.
"But executions are, in fact, brutal, savage events, and nothing the state tries to do can mask that reality. Nor should we. If we as a society want to carry out executions, we should be willing to face the fact that the state is committing a horrendous brutality on our behalf."
Kozinski revealed his views in a dissent filed Monday to an order in which the full 9th Circuit refused to review a decision of a 9th Circuit three-judge panel to put Wood's execution on hold.
Now keep in mind that Kozinski, a Reagan appointee, is pro-death penalty, and is concerned that legal challenges to drug cocktails are keeping many death-row inmates alive. Yet this makes perfect sense:
"If we as a society cannot stomach the splatter from an execution carried out by a firing squad, then we shouldn’t be carrying out executions at all."
He may be blood-thirsty enough to welcome this (and the guillotine, too, which would be his preferred method), but society might not be so tolerant. And even if they were, let people know what is
really being done in their name.