I’m following this death penalty case out in California out of the corner of my eye. There appear to be some concerns that the chemicals used to execute by lethal injection can cause several minutes of extreme pain before taking full effect, which has raised the possibility that lethal injection reaches the level of cruel and unusual punishment. Doctors in California have refused to sign off on the chemicals being used, so the state needs to come up with a different chemical cocktail.
I say I’m following it out of the corner of my eye because part of me thinks that once you reach the point of killing someone, how quickly you do it is almost a side issue. Intellectually I understand that it is not – that minimizing the suffering involved is vital if capital punishment is going to be an issue of justice rather than vengeance. But the exact how-it’s-done is not something that reaches me on an emotional level, because I question whether capital punishment can possibly be made to serve justice. But if this case opens up the field for a discussion of exactly what we hope to accomplish with the death penalty, then I’m all for it.