<< Back 5/15/02 State executions spread the seeds of death By John Womack The United States is one of a small contingent of countries (most of the rest of which are struggling to rise to the level of third-world status) that still provide for execution of prisoners. The American death penalty is metered out largely to minorities, and exclusively to poor people, and it is probably for such reasons that we have shown compassion by improving the method in which we kill them. Now it is generally an injection of a cocktail of drugs that peacefully puts the prisoner to sleep wherein he or she then dies. A group of students in Illinois did some pretty basic research a few years ago and proved several people on their death row waiting to be put to “sleep” were innocent. A number of them were even released from prison. That woke up a lot of people. But what about the really bad guys? Timothy McVeigh, for example? He confessed freely. He did it. There seems to be no doubt at all about him. If anyone could deserve to be killed, it would be one such as he. But what about those who implement the judicially-directed death? It is not just one person who carries out the sentence. There are prison people who care for the one to be put to death during the last days, often lasting a year or longer. There are clergy, technicians, doctors, reporters, witnesses, and people who live in the community in which it takes place. There cannot be a system to put just one person to death. Such a system must be designed to operate in an ongoing manner. There will have to be purchases of expensive equipment, maintenance, testing and repair of all that. Personnel will have to be hired and trained, budgets will require additional funding, and that funding will need to increase from year to year. Performance standards and program measures will be developed and implemented. There will grow a need to kill prisoners, and justifications for death will assume an importance that will bureaucratically compete at some level with the need for justice. Many of the people who play seemingly distant roles in executions have found that they have become connected at a very deep place within their spiritual being with the prisoners who are executed. Some of those people spoke on a National Public Radio program that was aired in May 2001. They noted that those connections formed without their will, and that they seem permanent and do not go away or fade. More than a few of these people have found that they have slowly entered into a post-traumatic stress syndrome type of life that has proven to be irreversible. Many of the countries which have abandoned the death penalty have said that they did it not because of what it did to the prisoners who were killed, but because of what they found it did to them as a society. 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. Whenever any person like McVeigh is put to death, then their cause can become promoted to a more worthy cause. It becomes a cause demonstrably more important than life itself. Some people will come to see the one who is executed as a noble prophet; a rebel against the state, one who is a noble guide. Doubtless there are people in the United States were afraid some liberal judge would let McVeigh out of prison someday and set him free, but now, by the act of execution, he has been “freed” from prison to play a possibly greater role in the future. Just more of the seeds of death. (John Womack lives in Franklin)