Death Penalty Rube Goldberg Machine

Focusing on procedural details distracts from real ethical issues. source: cartoonstock.comI recently wrote a post on the value of Rube Goldberg machines as educational tools and how the checks and balances of the American system can be understood as the applied principles of Rube Goldberg.  One of the major premises of the post was that while Rube Goldberg machines are often metaphorically linked with inefficiency and other unpleasant things, a more appropriate metaphorical link is to safeguarding against human emotion by creating an elaborate code of exact steps that must be taken for something to occur.  In this way, Rube Goldberg machines operate as systemic checks against human emotions.

It's a two-sided coin: while checks and balances safeguard against Constitutional Amendments banning gay marriage, forced military conscription, and Prohibition (oops), the recent events in Utah reveal the extent to which capital punishment in America has become a Rube Goldberg Machine, the effect of which is to bureaucratize killing and eliminate the soul-searching and guilt we should all feel for taking a person's life.  

The establishment is shocked that Ronnie Lee Gardner (Why do they always include the middle names of killers?) has chosen death by firing squad over the much more humane lethal injection.  From AP:

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah is set to execute a condemned killer by firing squad shortly after midnight Thursday, reviving a style of justice that hasn't been used for at least 14 years and that many criticize as archaic.

Barring an unexpected last-minute reprieve, Ronnie Lee Gardner will be strapped into a chair, have a target pinned over his heart and die in a hail of bullets from five anonymous marksmen armed with .30-caliber rifles and firing from behind a ported wall...

...Gardner will be the third man killed by firing squad in the U.S. since a U.S. Supreme Court ruling reinstated capital punishment in 1976. Although Utah altered its death penalty law in 2004 to make lethal injection the default method, nine inmates convicted before that date, including Gardner, can still choose the firing squad instead.

Because if we're gonna kill people, we better do it "humanely", whatever that means.  I've long held the belief that lethal injection has done more to prolong the existence of capital punishment than to make it more humane, and the fact that Gardner's case is being furously covered by the media in that slant only seems to confirm my suspicions.  Apparently, the execution was "shamelessly" live-tweeted by Utah's Attorney General, but I don't really see how letting people know what goes on behind government-sanctioned killing is "shameless".

I don't think it is so much the fact that we let our government kill people that should bother Americans, but that we proscribe and mandate ritualized methodology in the name of "humane executions".  There is nothing humane about killing people, and ritualizing it is only a mechanism to psychologically distance ourselves from the guilt of taking the life of another human being.  The idea for lethal injection actually has nothing to do with "humane" executions at all, and is based on trying to simultaneously circumvent existing laws on barbiturate use and make executions more palatable for witnesses.

Frankly, I care less about the rights of murderers not to experience pain than I do about the bureaucratization of killing.  When we distance decision-making from human emotion, we do not commit ourselves to justice.  If we're going to have a system that advocates taking the lives of those who take the lives of others, then we should at least commit to it.

When I was in high school, I was on a retreat for C.C.D. where we discussed capital punishment (which the Catholic Church is very much against) abortion, drug use, and other controversial topics in candid fashion.  When my turn to offer my opinion on capital punishment came, I said if we were going to have it, we should just shoot prisoners in the head.  The reaction in the room was a mixture of shock and disgust, but I think I was misunderstood.

Today, I stand by this opinion.  In fact, I think it would be even better if we went back to stoning people to death like it says in the Bible.  If we went back to stoning people to death, and required citizens to actively participate, maybe we'd collectively realize that we aren't just pulling levers, mixing fluids, performing medical procedures, or cadence counting; we are killing people.     

If we're gonna be barbarians, we should at least be the kind that get to drink with Odin in Valhalla, and not cowardly barbarians.  We should place more value in the taking of another's life than in the trifling considerations for how we do it.  We shouldn't pretend that using the latest technology to kill people makes it less barbaric.