Authors: Helen Prejean
But it’s not the presence of television cameras or the composition of the crowd or even whether the crowd acts politely or not that makes the execution of a human being ugly. An execution is ugly because the premeditated killing of a human being is ugly. Torture is ugly. Gassing, hanging, shooting, electrocuting, or lethally injecting a person whose hands and feet are tied is ugly. And hiding the ugliness from view and rationalizing it numbs our minds to the horror of what we are doing. This is what truly “coarsens” us.
I think of the moment when Warden Ross Maggio stood at the microphone to announce the time of Pat Sonnier’s execution. His eyes happened to meet mine, and he lowered his eyes. It was instinctive. He had helped kill a man. There was nothing noble about it.
Camus held that executions are performed in secret because they are shameful deeds. State governments, he said, who wish executions to continue, know to keep them hidden from view, not only physically but also symbolically in the euphemistic language used to describe them (p. 176).
When the death penalty is talked about, a strange lexicon of euphemisms emerges:
Ronald Reagan voiced this last euphemism in 1973, when, as governor of California, he advocated lethal injection as a method of execution: “Being a former farmer and horse raiser, I know what it’s like to try to eliminate an injured horse by shooting him. Now you call the veterinarian and the vet gives it a shot and the horse goes to sleep — that’s it.”
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Surely, the reasoning goes, lethal injection is a far more “humane” method of execution than methods practiced in times past (and not-so-past — the last four methods on the following list are current): poisoning, stoning, beheading, crucifying, burning, casting from heights onto rocks, pouring molten lead on the body, starving, sawing into pieces, burying alive, impaling, drowning, drawing and quartering, crushing with heavy weights, boiling, throwing into a pit with reptiles, giving to wild animals to be eaten alive, disemboweling, garroting (strangulation), beating to death, breaking on the wheel, stretching on the rack, flaying, hanging,
*
electrocuting, shooting, gassing.
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Witnesses will be “bored,” Deputy Warden Richard Peabody, who supervises executions at Angola, said when Louisiana switched in 1990 from the electric chair to lethal injection. “About the only thing that witnesses may observe is that during the injection of sodium pentothal, the man may gasp or yawn. There doesn’t seem to be any other activity that’s going to be physically seen.”
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Louisiana became the nineteenth state to use lethal injection to kill prisoners since the state of Oklahoma inaugurated its use in 1977. The method is preferred because it virtually eliminates visible, bodily pain. There is only the “uncomfortableness” of a needle prick into a vein. There remains, however, one dimension of suffering that can never be eliminated when death is imposed on a conscious human being: the horror of being put to death against your will and the agony of anticipation. As if, when they strap you down on the gurney, your arms outstretched, waiting for the silent deadly fluid to flow — the sodium pentothal, which comes first to make you unconscious so you do not feel the pancuronium bromide when it paralyzes your diaphragm and stops your breathing and the potassium chloride which causes cardiac arrest and stops your heart — as if you feel the terror of death any less because chemicals are being used to kill you instead of electricity or bullets or rope?
There is an elaborate ruse going on here, a pitiful disguise. Killing is camouflaged as a medicinal act. The attendant will even swab the
“patient’s” arm with alcohol before inserting the needle —
to prevent infection
.
Admittedly, when executions were public, it was not a pretty sight. People sensed blood, drama. They came in droves, in the thousands sometimes — men, women, and teenagers, and some children too. Some came early to get a “good seat” right up under the gallows. Some packed lunches and ate in the shade of trees and waited for the big event — “There’s gonna be a hanging.” Some cheered. Some taunted. Some were silent. All watched. When a black person was executed, the racism was not disguised. “Whooie, niggah boy, they’re gonna hang your ass now.” It was awful to see, and fascinating. And visible. It was truthful. They didn’t call it “noble” or “dignified” or say they were putting a person to “sleep” like a horse. It was cruel. It was unusual. And it was obviously punishment. It was death. Forcible, violent, premeditated death. And the people knew it, and the people came to watch because it was death, because death, when you can see it happening in front of your eyes, is always something to watch.
These public executions were called “vulgar” spectacles, which meant not that the execution itself was vulgar, but that the people witnessing it did not act in a seemly or dignified manner.
Then, the “coarsening” effect of executions on people was clear. Now, with executions hidden, the “coarsening” effect is more subtle. But there are symptoms:
If
the innocent are executed?
A two-year study of capital punishment in the U.S. by Hugo A. Bedau of Tufts University and Michael L. Radelet of the University
of Florida documents that in this century 417 people were wrongly convicted of capital offenses and 23 were actually executed.
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In recent years cases have surfaced of people sent to death row in error and later released.
These are the lucky ones. A good attorney like Millard Farmer comes into their lives and struggles vigorously to keep them alive or, as in the case of Randall Adams, the subject of
The Thin Blue Line
, a film producer aggressively pursues the evidence and exposes
prosecutorial misconduct. In the last twenty years at least forty-six people have been released from death row because the errors in their convictions were found in time to save their lives.
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Some are not so lucky.
James Adams, for example, executed in Florida in 1984.
In 1974 Adams, a black man, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. Witnesses located Adams’ car at the time of the crime at the home of the victim, a white rancher. Some of the victim’s jewelry was found in the car trunk. Adams maintained his innocence, claiming that he had loaned the car to his girlfriend. A witness identified Adams as driving the car away from the victim’s home shortly after the crime. This witness, however, was driving a large truck in the direction opposite to that of Adams’ car, and probably could not have had a good look at the driver. It was later discovered that this witness was angry with Adams for allegedly dating his wife. A second witness heard a voice inside the victim’s home at the time of the crime and saw someone fleeing. He stated this voice was a woman’s; the day after the crime he stated that the fleeing person was positively not Adams. More importantly, a hair sample found clutched in the victim’s hand, which in all likelihood had come from the assailant, did not match Adams’ hair. Much of this exculpatory information was not discovered until the case was examined by a skilled investigator a month before Adams’ execution. Governor Bob Graham, however, refused to grant even a short stay so that these questions could be resolved.
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The fact that mistakes are made will not surprise anyone with even cursory knowledge of the criminal justice system. It has been a sobering discovery for me to see just how flawed and at times chaotic the system of justice is. Examining capital cases, Bedau and Radelet found numerous instances of overzealous prosecution, mistaken or perjured testimony, codefendants who testify against the other to receive a more lenient sentence for themselves, faulty police work, coerced confessions, suppressed exculpatory evidence, inept defense counsel, racial bias, community pressure for a conviction, and, at times, blatant politics — such as a D.A.’s decision to press for the death penalty in a particular case because he’s campaigning for reelection.
In England the hanging of an innocent man, Timothy Evans, in 1949, mustered public outrage which led to a moratorium on the death penalty for murder in 1965 and permanent abolition in 1969. And Camus in his “Reflections on the Guillotine” mentions the effect that the execution of an innocent man, Lesurques, had on Victor Hugo:
When Hugo writes that to him the name of the guillotine is Lesurques, he does not mean that all those who are decapitated are Lesurques, but that one Lesurques is enough for the guillotine to be permanently dishonored, (pp. 212-213)
In contrast, Ernest van den Haag, a professor of jurisprudence and public policy at Fordham University, when asked to respond to the Bedau-Radelet study showing that innocent people have actually been executed in this country, said: “All human activities — building houses, driving a car, playing golf or football — cause innocent people to suffer wrongful death, but we don’t give them up because on the whole we feel there’s a net gain. Here [executions], a net gain in justice is being done.”
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A handful of relatives and friends gather at the Brown-McGeehee Funeral Home in Covington to bury Robert Lee Willie. When I see Elizabeth she holds me tight and cries and I try to comfort her, telling her about the last hours of her son and how bravely he had met his death.
The three boys hover close to their mother, and Junior is here, too. Little Todd keeps taking his mother’s hand and holding it.
I walk over to the open casket and look down at what remains of Robert Lee Willie. His body is dressed in blue jeans and a white T-shirt, and I notice a couple of tattoos on his arms that I hadn’t noticed before — a peacock and marijuana leaves. It is a shock to see him so quiet and still like this, his eyes closed, his lips not moving.
There is a flutter of commotion and some laughter when word spreads that Robert’s aunt Bessie, waving her shoe, just chased away a reporter who tried to enter the funeral home.
When the funeral director announces that the last good-byes are to be said, Elizabeth approaches the casket. “Oh, Robert, Robert, my boy, O God, help me,” she says, weeping. “Oh, Robert, how much I loved you,” and she leans over to kiss him and faints,
collapsing on the floor. “Mama! Mama!” Todd says and he begins to cry. Elizabeth is brought to an adjoining parlor and remains there for the rest of the service.
A local minister, addressing the young people, gives a sermon about the evils of drugs and prays, asking God to spare Robert Lee Willie the pains of everlasting hellfire. I talk about Robert and the last days and hours of his life and how Jesus taught us to love each other no matter what, and I tell them what Robert had said to the Harveys before he died — how he hoped his death would give them some relief.
The minister says a short prayer at the grave site and someone whispers to me that Robert’s father is here, and after the ceremony I go up to him standing here in his denim overalls near the freshly dug grave of his son, and I take his hand and do not know what to say to him except “Mr. Willie,” and I begin to cry.