Oklahoma's barbaric execution of Clayton D. Lockett is a gruesome example of the brutal manner in which our country responds to crime. While most American media have focused on the method of execution in this case — lethal injection gone horribly wrong — world reaction to the fiasco reflects disbelief that the United States imposes capital punishment at all. The excruciating death of this African-American citizen calls into question whether any method of execution can be considered anything other than cruel and unusual.
Most inmates facing execution are nonwhite; death row is the most glaring illustration of the inequity of our criminal justice system. Beyond the discriminatory manner in which the death penalty is imposed, the inherent immorality of killing another human being, and the painful deaths experienced by those executed, there is another reason to abolish the death penalty: Many of those executed are innocent. Eighteen people have been exonerated by DNA testing after serving time on death row, and a recently released study from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that 1 of every 25 death row inmates may have been falsely convicted.
Thirty-two states now impose the death penalty. New York had been effectively without the death penalty since 1984 but, in 1994, George Pataki campaigned for governor on a death penalty platform. In 1995, Governor Pataki signed legislation reinstating the death penalty and designating lethal injection as the method of execution. Before anyone could be put to death, however, the state Court of Appeals ruled the death penalty statute unconstitutional due to a defective protocol it determined was coercive to jurors. The court also ruled the law can only be fixed by the Legislature, which has never done so.
New York's death row has been cleared, but more than 3,000 people remain on death row across America. They are there largely because they are poor, illiterate and members of minority groups. And we, as a nation, continue to search for the most humane way to kill them. After the killing in Oklahoma, the White House proclaimed that "...even when the death penalty is justified, it must be carried out humanely." But the word "humane" is defined as "marked by compassion, sympathy, or consideration for humans or animals;" thus, "humane execution" is an oxymoron. When will we acknowledge, as most of the world has, that the death penalty can never be justified and there is no humane way to execute anyone?
The death penalty is inherently immoral, racially discriminatory, arbitrary and ineffective. America should view the horrific death of Clayton Lockett not as cause to search for "humane execution" modalities, but as a call to join the civilized world and ban state-sanctioned executions — now.