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Dortell Williams is an inmate at the Los Angeles County California State Prison in Lancaster, California. Dortell has been published in a number of community newspapers, including the San Francisco Bay View, The Final Call and The Los Angeles Sentinel. He mentors at-risk kids through San Francisco's The Beat Within and is an inside correspondent for Families to Amend Three Strikes. You can email Dortell at: dortellwilliams@yahoo.com. For more information about the Honor Yard Program, visit: www.prisonhonorprogram.org

Desperately Seeking a Humane Way to Kill People

Commentary by Dortell Williams, recorded 11/1/07

1) 2:55 MP3 Radio Essay

Desperately Seeking a Humane Way to Kill People

Seeking a humane way to kill people. It just sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? We think of murdererd in society as deranged, somehow mentally deficient. We’re taught in civil societies from an early age that “you can’t kill people.” Human life is sacred, and it is.

Still, every killer has his justification. The robber kills his disobedient victim. Vicitms seek revenge – like street gangs, or the mob come to think of it. The politicians say it’s what the people want. It’s a circular cycle of killing, and everybody’s got their reasons. What they all have in common is a lack of repect or compassion for the next of kin of those they kill.

So, is there a humane way to kill a human being? That is the grand question before the U. S. Supreme Court as I speak. At issue is whether a three-drug concoction used in lethal injections is cruel and unusual punishment, or to be more on point: Does the lethal mix cause unconstitutional suffering?

I guess the idea is to kill painlessly. If criminals come up with a way to do that first, will that make killing excusable? Okay, I’m being facetious. Because no matter how we rub a person out, their next of kin are gonna agonize.

The two Kentucky prisoners who brought the suit say the chemicals, used by 37 of 38 death penalty states, violate their constitutional rights. Other nations, the majority of which forbid the death penalty, say executions violate their human rights, let alone constitutional rights.

According to a study released in April by the online journal PLoS Medicine, sodium thiopental (an anesthetic), pancuronium (designed to stop the heart), can mask excruciating pain.

Evidence concurrent with this assertion was argued in a California case after the execution of Stanley “Tookie” Williams, put to death in December 2005, amid a torrent of controversy surrounding his proclaimed innocence. He was accused of killing four people. Others say the co-founder of the infamous Crips street gang was the most redeemed prisoner in all of America, having brokered several gang truces and authoring a series of anti-gang children’s books.

During Williams’ Execution, a nurse failed to start a backup line to his right vein, then left the chamber in frustration without fixing it. As she exited, a member of the execution team warned that “It isn’t flowing, the drip [isn’t] flowing.” After the chamber door was shut the warning was repeated. Warden Steven Orinski ignored the warnings and said, coldly: “Proceed.” It took Williams almost three times the average period to expire.

According to PloS Medicine, no scientific groups have ever validated that lethal injection is humane. In fact, medical ethics bar doctors and other health professionals from participating in executions.

Those with a zeal to kill argue that lethal injection is better than the firing squad. In 1878, the U. S. Supreme Court actually upheld that method as humane, almost a hundred years after Europe introduced the guillotine as a humane means of execution. What will this court do?

Sources:

Marilyn Machione (AP medical writer), “Study: Execution Drugs Sometimes Fail, Causing Pain” Antelope Valley Press, April 24, 2007

Henry Weinstein, “Problems Alleged in Williams, Execution” Los Angeles Times (henry.weinstein@latimes.com)

Joan Biskupic, “Justice to Weigh Lethal Injection” USA Today, September 26, 2007: 1A

NPR News, September 25, 2007 (1878 U.S. Supreme Court Upheld Death by Firing Squad)

R. R. Palmer with Joel Colton, “A History of the Modern World: Since 1815, Seventh Edition” (McGraw-Hill, Inc. New York, N.Y., 1992):p. XXXII

Update:

Senate Bill 299 sailed unscathed through the Senate Public Safety Committee, the Senate Public Safety Commission, Senate Appropriations and the full Senate. The bill is scheduled to go before the Assembly Public Safety Committee, August 31st, where it is expected to hit turbulence. Old fashioned, traditional letters are requested of the public for legislative supporters of the bill to offset expected opposition.