Tag Archives: Texas executions

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Texas is shedding its ‘express lane’ execution process?

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death chamber

Texans love to proclaim “We’re No. 1!”

Well, OK, maybe not all Texans. A lot of us do, though.

One area of particular pride has been in the number and rate of executions carried out on those convicted of capital crimes.

For the record, that notion makes me decidedly not proud of Texas.

Get a load of this: The state has gone 148 days without executing someone. That’s almost a record. Is this where I can cheer?

http://fusion.net/story/342719/texas-death-penalty-execution-halt/?utm_campaign=ThisIsFusion&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social

Pablo Vasquez was the most recent inmate to be executed. Despite the hiatus that has gone through the entire summer, though, Texas remains the hands-down leader among the states in executing capital criminals. We put ’em down more than the next top six states combined.

There’s even a joke about how the Texas death chamber in Livingston has an “express lane.”

This is not a source of pride for me.

I declared a couple of years ago that I oppose capital punishment. My opposition surely has been tested over the years. When I read about the nature of some of the crimes committed, I admit to feeling a twinge that tells me, “That guy needed killin’.”

Then I remember what I’ve known all along. Capital punishment does not deter the commission of capital crimes. People still murder other people knowing they face the ultimate consequence if they are convicted of the crime for which they are accused.

Yes, I also have heard the rejoinder: But that guy, the one they executed, isn’t going to kill anyone any longer. Therefore, it does deter murder.

It’s an argument with no end. I’ll just revert to the empirical data that show how capital crimes take place with the perpetrator knowing full well the consequences of that action.

And then you have the issue that arises from time to time about people convicted wrongly and how the state — I’ll admit it’s rare — has killed innocent people. I believe one such case is too many.

The Texas Court of Criminal AppealsĀ has halted several executions this year, which surprises some of us who have watched the CCA routinely deny defendants’ pleas for clemency.

I’m not hopeful that the slowdown in the rate of executions portends a potential end to the practice in Texas. I’ll accept this hiatus and hope it lasts a good while longer.

It’s not likely Texas’s execution rate will be overtaken any time soon by another state. I wouldn’t mind one bit ceding this dubious No. 1 distinction.

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Did condemned man die from 'torture'?

John McCain knows torture when he sees it.

The Republican U.S. senator from Arizona was victimized by it as a prisoner of war in Vietnam for more than five years. So when the 2008 GOP presidential nominee says an Arizona inmate was tortured before he was executed this week, I tend to listen.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/25/justice/arizona-execution-controversy/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

I’ll declare here that I oppose capital punishment, largely because keeping someone alive to think about the crime he or she committed is punishment enough — in my book.

Well, this week Joseph Wood became the latest condemned man to die in what amounts to a botched or nearly botched execution. He gasped, moaned, snorted and writhed on the gurney for nearly two hours before succumbing to the drugs pumped into his body. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, another Republican, has ordered a complete review to determine what went wrong; the state attorney general has halted future executions until the review is complete.

Wood wasn’t a good guy. He committed a terrible and violent crime that put him on death row. Hardliners out there say they feel not a shred of remorse over what happened to him on the death chamber gurney. He still got off easy compared to the pain he inflicted on his victims, they will say.

Still, the 8th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits “cruel and unusual punishments.” States that used to hang, shoot, electrocute or gas inmates to death have gone to lethal injection as a form of supposedly “human” execution. Well, James Wood didn’t die humanely. Neither did the Oklahoma inmate who was executed in a hideously botched process in which the lethal drug was injected into tissue, rather than into his bloodstream.

What are states to do? Texas, which had gone on a death row killing spree in recent years, has somehow slowed the pace of executions. We still kill inmates more regularly than other states. We’ve had none of the instances lately of the kind of torture that John McCain described in the Wood case.

“The lethal injection needs to be an indeed lethal injection and not the bollocks-upped situation that just prevailed. That’s torture,” Sen. McCain told Politico on Thursday.

Yes, the state should review its capital punishment procedures. However, if states cannot guarantee prevention of the type of agony suffered by a condemned inmate, perhaps there ought to be some serious debate about ending the procedure altogether.

Let these inmates rot in prison for the rest of their natural lives.