Death goes shopping
It doesn’t take much imagination to visualize the Angel of Death’s bony hand scribbling out his shopping list for a visit to the nearest supermarket here in Arkansas. “Hmm, lessee now … a loaf of bread, quart of milk, and enough midazolam, vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride to kill at least eight men.” Stir, do not shake, and the cocktail is complete. Sure, the Constitution of the United States, complete with its Bill of Rights, outlaws cruel and unusual punishment, but what if said punishment has become cruel and usual? So let’s party! Set out the best silver and invite the guests of dishonor. There should be no need for a chaser if all goes as well as expected, or, to be more precise, as ill as expected. Here’s to Death!
An ancient legal code, long outdated since it was handed down from above, looks positively advanced compared to today’s in Arkansas, for it limits retribution to an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. And it consigns those convicted of taking another’s life to their own penal colony administered by a priestly caste. How things have changed since Old Testament days, at least here in the oh-so-advanced state of Arkansas, where both its attorney general and governor sound eager to get on with the job of taking life rather than protecting it.
At last report, an official with this state’s prison system, the appropriately named Solomon Graves, says he knows nothing about any attempt to find a new batch of the deadly drug for the state’s larder. But a spokesperson for the governor, one J.R. Davis, says the Department of Correction will indeed try to whip up a new batch of the stuff, which should suffice for current needs and assure the condemned of a long if not eternal sleep. Ah, to sleep, perchance to dream! For isn’t life itself but a dream? “La vida es sueno,” as the Spanish playwright wrote. A dream that should be lived so as to prepare ourselves for the grand awakening. But the pertinent law in this case is scarcely poetry. It’s more like satire, as the omniscient, omnipresent state does its best to keep the condemned alive long enough to kill them with a fine regard for law.
In their 18-page minority opinion, the two dissenters on the country’s highest court — their Honors Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer — conclude that “science and experience are now revealing that, at least with respect to midazolam-centered protocols, prisoners executed by lethal injection are suffering horrifying deaths.” Even as this state’s political leaders celebrate their success at making Arkansas one of those states that ought to be marked with a skull and crossbones in any graphic depicting states that embrace the death penalty.
Lest we forget, those prisoners challenging this state’s death penalty have names and loved ones, too, and can suffer just as excruciating deaths as those they killed. Will this mutual danse macabre never cease? Not till one generation speaks out at last to say: Enough! Choose life. Just as the dissenters on the high court did. It may take a graduate degree in chemistry to figure out the intricacies of this case, but the injustice of this ruling should be clear to anyone with a sense of irony.
This is what justice has come to in these United States of America — which may be the world’s leader in executions per capita, or at least the West’s leader. How’s that for a rate of productivity to brag about? When our still new president said he’d revitalize this country’s economy, that may not have been what he had in mind. For life is not only better than death, it may be more economical, too, considering the cost of unending appeals.
The price of the death penalty isn’t measured in just dollars and cents, but in anguish and suffering. Yes, choose life. It’s not only better but cheaper.