[fla-left] Bloody execution photos draw gamut of responses(fwd)

W. Kiernan WKiernan at concentric.net
Sun Oct 10 18:22:34 PDT 1999


Max Sawicky wrote:
>
> > . . .
> > Her comment as well as Max's is as disturbing to me as the
> > execution itself.
> > Yoshie
>
> I was disturbed by the picture. I think
> people who are pro-capital punishment
> are obliged to view a few executions, to
> get some idea of what's involved.
>
> But I was much more disturbed by the crime,
> something I'm sure would be unbearable to
> watch.

It would be for sure. (Not that that stops explicit murder from being the number-one box office attraction in U.S. cinema.) But the point is that not I, not you, but a disgusting vicious madman is responsible for committing the crime, unbearable to watch certtainly but not our fault; whereas you and I as taxpayers and voters are responsible in common for performing the execution.

I'm one to talk! since I am in favor of the death penalty for clear cut convictions for first-degree murder, but my feeling is that the electric chair, the gas chamber, lethal injection are all too bureaucratic, responsibility-free, mechanical, distant and inhuman. The leather head-mask, how revolting. If I were dictating the laws, I would offer a choice of self-administered poison or a firing squad. That way the subject of the execution would stand up straight and look his killers in the eye.

Yours WDK - WKiernan at concentric.net



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