A case in point was the horrific Oklahoma murder of Stephanie Neiman, a 19-year old white girl. The murderer was a black brute named Clayton Lockett. Coming upon Lockett in the commission of other crimes, Ms. Neiman was hit in the face with a gun, kidnapped, shot repeatedly, and ultimately buried alive at Lockett's direction. A friend of Ms. Neiman's was also raped at the scene by Lockett and his two accomplices. After the usual procedural delays and jurisprudential atrocities ordained by the U.S.'s warped, criminal-friendly legal system, Lockett was convicted of murder, rape, kidnapping, assault and battery, and robbery. Like numerous similarly shocking black-on-white crimes, it was largely ignored or minimized by the mainstream media.
Eventually, however, the media actually did take a break from their obsessive indignation over Donald Sterling's private conversations to turn some attention to the case of Ms. Neiman's horrendous murder. But it was not to express any anger at the perpetrator, or sympathy for the victim. On the contrary, the media's sudden interest in the case was triggered solely by what was uniformly reported as Clayton Lockett's "botched" execution. See, e.g., http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/04/30/4-horrible-forms-of-capital-punishment-more-humane-than-oklahomas-botched-execution/.
Outlet after outlet rushed to outdo each other in shock and indignation that this murderous monster died of a heart attack after his lethal injection procedure was interrupted due to administration irregularities. Liberal reporters and commentators employed their most maudlin and lugubrious prose to depict Lockett's purported gasps, twitches, and groans in the course of an execution procedure that was aborted only because of the state's fastidious, court-induced efforts to assure the most painless execution possible. At any rate, the murderer expired only 43 minutes after the first injection. Compared to Ms. Nieman's prolonged and grievous sufferings, Lockett's antiseptic execution was a relative walk in the park.
As though on cue, President Obama soon joined the mournful chorus of liberal concern for the justly executed murderer. He ruefully declared that Lockett's execution was "deeply troubling," and directed his Afro-racist attorney general, the notorious Eric Holder, to investigate alleged problems respecting implementation of the death penalty.
Think about that deeply warped response. Obama did not find the inter-racial brutalization, pistol-whipping, murder, and burying alive of an innocent young girl "deeply troubling." Instead, he directed his concern entirely to the wildly embellished flaws in the brutal murderer's execution. This tells us all we need to know about Obama's sense of values and priorities, not to mention his race-based predilections.
As though on cue, President Obama soon joined the mournful chorus of liberal concern for the justly executed murderer. He ruefully declared that Lockett's execution was "deeply troubling," and directed his Afro-racist attorney general, the notorious Eric Holder, to investigate alleged problems respecting implementation of the death penalty.
Think about that deeply warped response. Obama did not find the inter-racial brutalization, pistol-whipping, murder, and burying alive of an innocent young girl "deeply troubling." Instead, he directed his concern entirely to the wildly embellished flaws in the brutal murderer's execution. This tells us all we need to know about Obama's sense of values and priorities, not to mention his race-based predilections.
Those who have watched and waited while a virtuous parent or loved one endures days and weeks (or more) of suffering before finally dying of cancer or some other painful disease are not likely to have great sympathy for this relatively swift death of a malicious murderer who inflicted unspeakable and prolonged suffering upon his hapless victim.
The grotesque and grossly disproportionate sympathy for Lockett proclaimed by the media and the anti-death penalty element reflects a profoundly distorted understanding of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment -- not to mention a bizarre predilection to empathize more with brutal murderers than with their victims and the victims' survivors.
These death penalty opponents persistently argue that the technical gliches that occasionally result in an imperfect lethal execution render that procedure unconstitutional. The unspoken premise for this argument is that the state is constitutionally obligated to employ the most painless means of execution possible. With the backing of their liberal allies in the courts, they are successfully changing the meaning of the Eight Amendment. Instead of merely prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment -- by which the Framers meant extremely torturous punishments like drawing-and-quartering -- it would guarantee an essentially painless execution. This, of course, is constitutional nonsense.
The condemnations of the states' lethal injection procedures are especially absurd and ironic because it was the anti-death penalty movement itself that has caused most of the states to adopt lethal injection in the first place. In 1985, for example, a lengthy dissent by Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, an extreme death penalty abolitionist, contended that the electric chair was an unconstitutional means of execution and noted that lethal injection would be a more human method. Mainly due to the relentless attacks on other modes of execution by abolitionist lawyers, the vast majority of the states that retain the death penalty (at least in theory -- most of them never use it at all) use lethal injection.
Now, due to the maudlin furor over murderer Lockett's interrupted, but ultimately effective, execution by lethal injection, the Governor of Oklahoma has predictably suspended all executions, pending a review of the state's protocols for lethal injection executions.
But it is obvious to anyone who has followed this issue that death penalty opponents will never accept any technique for lethal injection. The ACLU and other death penalty abolitionists have openly stated that they consider all methods of execution unconstitutional. So no amount of tinkering with the combination of chemicals or mode of administration used in lethal injection executions will deter or even reduce the relentless barrage of legal challenges brought by the legions of subsidized attorneys who have made this esoteric issue a cause celebre in the legal profession.
Even when lethal injections reach the point where the condemned murderer expires as peacefully as T.S. Eliot's "patient etherised upon the table," see The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, l.3, the abolitionists will not be satisfied. They aren't really interested in achieving painless and efficient executions. They prefer to employ the sordid melodrama of so-called botched executions as a convenient propaganda tool to further their acknowledged goal of abolishing the death penalty altogether -- even for crimes so heinous that merely describing them sickens the soul.
So Oklahoma and other states are wasting their time seeking to perfect the chemical combinations and delivery techniques used in lethal injection. There is a better, simpler, and more foolproof mode of execution, presently employed by one of the most civilized and pacifist democracies in the world, that would avoid all the complications, gliches, and medical confusion associated with lethal injection. The states should follow the example of Japan and, to borrow the title of a vintage Clint Eastwood western, "Hang 'em high." That is, employ Japan's method of long-drop hanging.
Although Japan's murder rate is only about one-fifth of the United States' rate, it deals firmly and forcefully with its murderers, as it does with other violent criminals. It retains and enforces the death penalty for aggravated murderers. With a population of only about one-third of the U.S. population, Japan still executed at least eight persons in 2013. As of March 2012,there were 135 people awaiting execution in Japan. In short, the death penalty is a genuine and practical element of Japan's penal system.
Japan's method of execution is long-drop hanging. In order to facilitate a quick and certain death, Japan's gallows are structured to assure a long drop, sufficiently long to assure a quick and certain death by fracturing the killer's neck.
While Japan's method may not be peaceful and pretty, it is swift and certain. Nor can it be seriously argued that hanging constitutes cruel and unusual punishment within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment. Hanging was the accepted, reliable, and "usual" method of execution during the era of the Framers and long afterward. Indeed, George Washington himself ordered numerous hangings for those convicted of capital court martial offenses during the Revolutionary War. Perhaps the most famous was the execution of the much-admired British officer, Major Andre, who was convicted of the capital offense of spying in connection with the treason of Benedict Arnold. If hanging was good enough for Major Andre, who faced the gallows with commendable sang froid, it is certainly good enough for the likes of murderous brutes like Clayton Lockett.
Now, due to the maudlin furor over murderer Lockett's interrupted, but ultimately effective, execution by lethal injection, the Governor of Oklahoma has predictably suspended all executions, pending a review of the state's protocols for lethal injection executions.
But it is obvious to anyone who has followed this issue that death penalty opponents will never accept any technique for lethal injection. The ACLU and other death penalty abolitionists have openly stated that they consider all methods of execution unconstitutional. So no amount of tinkering with the combination of chemicals or mode of administration used in lethal injection executions will deter or even reduce the relentless barrage of legal challenges brought by the legions of subsidized attorneys who have made this esoteric issue a cause celebre in the legal profession.
Even when lethal injections reach the point where the condemned murderer expires as peacefully as T.S. Eliot's "patient etherised upon the table," see The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, l.3, the abolitionists will not be satisfied. They aren't really interested in achieving painless and efficient executions. They prefer to employ the sordid melodrama of so-called botched executions as a convenient propaganda tool to further their acknowledged goal of abolishing the death penalty altogether -- even for crimes so heinous that merely describing them sickens the soul.
So Oklahoma and other states are wasting their time seeking to perfect the chemical combinations and delivery techniques used in lethal injection. There is a better, simpler, and more foolproof mode of execution, presently employed by one of the most civilized and pacifist democracies in the world, that would avoid all the complications, gliches, and medical confusion associated with lethal injection. The states should follow the example of Japan and, to borrow the title of a vintage Clint Eastwood western, "Hang 'em high." That is, employ Japan's method of long-drop hanging.
Although Japan's murder rate is only about one-fifth of the United States' rate, it deals firmly and forcefully with its murderers, as it does with other violent criminals. It retains and enforces the death penalty for aggravated murderers. With a population of only about one-third of the U.S. population, Japan still executed at least eight persons in 2013. As of March 2012,there were 135 people awaiting execution in Japan. In short, the death penalty is a genuine and practical element of Japan's penal system.
Japan's method of execution is long-drop hanging. In order to facilitate a quick and certain death, Japan's gallows are structured to assure a long drop, sufficiently long to assure a quick and certain death by fracturing the killer's neck.
While Japan's method may not be peaceful and pretty, it is swift and certain. Nor can it be seriously argued that hanging constitutes cruel and unusual punishment within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment. Hanging was the accepted, reliable, and "usual" method of execution during the era of the Framers and long afterward. Indeed, George Washington himself ordered numerous hangings for those convicted of capital court martial offenses during the Revolutionary War. Perhaps the most famous was the execution of the much-admired British officer, Major Andre, who was convicted of the capital offense of spying in connection with the treason of Benedict Arnold. If hanging was good enough for Major Andre, who faced the gallows with commendable sang froid, it is certainly good enough for the likes of murderous brutes like Clayton Lockett.
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