Death Sanctioned

There is something sadistic and perverted about strapping someone to a gurney and injecting them with fluid and watch them descend into death. I always wondered what goes through the minds of those who are invited to view this ghastly ritual, let alone the person sinking. What solace does it bring to those who have lost loved ones to witness the death of the person who brought them misery? What gratification can be drawn from viewing the controlled death of another human being no matter how soulless that individual may have been? People say it brings closure, but at what cost and what purpose? Can the death of another person seared into one's memory ease the pain? I personally have not experienced the murder or rape of a loved one to walk in the shoes of those who have. But I cannot fathom being a spectator to the death of another, to quench my thirst for justice or seek closure. 
 
Sanctioned death as a form of justice was instituted since murder began and it has always been a spectacle. From  medieval times to the wild west, going to see public executions was a family outing. Even in recent times public executions in totalitarian states were used to instill fear and were often carried out in stadiums or city squares for all to witness. Hanging, stoning, decapitation, burning, boiling, crushing, dismemberment by horses, shooting, gassing, electrocution and lethal injection were some of the methods devised to kill. Death by hanging, shooting and lethal injection is still common around the world.

When the world emerged from the horrors of World War II, the move to abolish capital punishment began to gain ground. Taking someone's life by state sanction was seen as a gross violation of one's human right. As a result most developed nations abolished the death penalty, either in law or in practice. The United States is the only western nation that continued to put people to death. Out of the 50 states that make up the United States, 31 use the death penalty and so does the federal government. Today there are approximately 2900 inmates on death row across the nation, and 1400 have been executed since 1976.

On April 25, two prisoners were put to death by lethal injection in Arkansas in a single day. A double execution on the same day had not occurred since 2000 in the United States. On April 20th, another inmate had been executed and there were five more to follow. The state of Arkansas had not carried out a death sentence since 2005 and there seemed to be a sudden rush to put eight people to death who were condemned more than a decade ago. The reason, the drugs that are used to carry out the executions, were to expire. The drug of choice Midazolam was hard to come by, and the state was not willing to let it go to waste. So they scheduled to kill eight over a span of eleven days, the fastest pace of executions in decades. In all they managed to execute four. An injunction from a federal judge halted the executions citing, that the method of execution violated the inmates eighth amendment rights, which guaranteed a painless death. And the drugs being used to carry out the executions could not guarantee that. The Judge wrote "If Midazolam does not adequately anesthetize plaintiffs, or if their executions are 'botched, ' they will suffer severe pain before they die". Many drug manufacturers have objected to having their products used in executions and have refused to sell to prisons for this very reason. Previous botched executions by lethal injection around the country had created a climate of bad PR for the drug companies.

 A family member of one of the victims thanked the Arkansas Governor and the Department of Corrections for "flawlessly carrying out" the executions. According to an Associated Press reporter who witnessed one of the executions, the person "lurched and convulsed 20 times during the lethal injection".

All those who were sentenced to die, had no doubt committed horrific crimes. Their public death was no less horrific.

The debate around capital punishment and its use has always been a contentious one. Those who support the death penalty are seen as conservative in their viewpoint and those who oppose liberal. Those who support it offer a narrative which states that it deters crime, and some crimes warrant swift justice. Those who oppose it say, it is inhuman for a state to oversee the death of an individual as murder is murder either way. And statistics show that having the death penalty has not deterred crime and caused any significant dent in the murder rate. Amnesty International, the human rights organization that meticulously documents every execution around the planet, states that "the death penalty is the ultimate, irreversible denial of human rights. It violates the right to life as proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the right to be free from cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment". Also the death penalty disproportionately befalls those who belong to racial and ethnic minority groups, the poor and people with mental illness.

Capital punishment is a popular position to take on the conservative side, as it sends a signal that they are tough on crime and therefore care for society at large. But what creates a criminal is seldom addressed. It is paradoxical that on one hand a gun culture is promoted and endorsed, which to a large extent leads to violent death, and then the death penalty is seen as a solution to deter crime.

The gravest problem with the death penalty is that it is so absolute that it is irreversible. Since 1973, about 150 prisoners have been sent to death, who were later exonerated of their crime. Others have been executed despite serious doubts about their guilt. Some of those who were executed in Arkansas claimed they were wrongly convicted. DNA testing has exonerated many on death row and it is routinely denied in many cases.

A very important question to ask is, what is achieved in tangible terms by executing someone other than maybe some sense of closure to those violated. An often expressed heartless comment is, "well it saves tax payer dollars". The upkeep of a prisoner is a drain on the system. In reality what saves tax payer dollars is an investment in society that provides better mental health to those in need and not executions. While politicians squabble over health care and gun control, peoples lives are constantly put at risk.  The American prison system is overburdened disproportionately by African American inmates. Violent death from guns in the United States is the highest in the developed world. Investing in addressing these societal problems actually saves tax payer dollars and improves the health of a nation.

The debate on what kind of punishment suits a crime is an old and fierce one, around which complex laws have been formulated. The depraved custom of state sanctioned death is always seen as the final solution to extreme criminality. Two films Dead Man Walking and Into the Abyss, captured the complexity and humanity of a system that puts people to death with great dramatic effect, nuance and weighty introspection. To me the most profound commentary on capital punishment in popular culture was made by Anthony Burgess in his 1962 dystopian novel, The Clockwork Orange. The book follows the life of a deviant, antisocial, delinquent Alex, who engages in "ultra-criminal" behavior. After he is arrested, as an alternative to being executed, he is put through a controversial psychological rehabilitation program to cure him of his criminality. Alex plays along as he is subjected to various invasive experiments and is later proclaimed cured. As he walks out of the prison a free man, he briefly relapses into contemplating images of violence in his mind in front of an applauding audience and says "I was cured, all right"!. What Anthony Burgess conveys, is that the onus of creating a better human being is on all of us. There is no absolute antidote to prevent aberrant human behavior. But the legalized killing of someone for their crime is pointless and barbarous. Rehabilitation may not be totally possible, but for a humane society, it is a goal worth pursuing. State sanctioned executions are unethical and immoral in any society as they only bloody the system. It is what it is.

Historical Blindness

On February 27, 1933 there was a fire at the Riechstag Building (German parliament) in Berlin. A few weeks earlier, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party had swept into power in a democratic election, forming a coalition government. A young Dutch communist was found at the scene of the fire and was arrested for the crime. Hitler framed this incident as an attack on the German nation and its sovereignty and urged the president to suspend all civil liberties and penalize the communist party of Germany, which was a sizable opposition in parliament. With a vengeance, communists across the nation were arrested enmasse, including parliamentary delegates. With the opposition seats emptied, this very moment paved the path for Hitler to consolidate power and become the dictator that he became.

Who started the Riechstag fire still remains an area of much controversy, debate and mystery. Many historians believe the arson was planned and executed by the Nazis to gain absolute control and suspend democracy and push their tribal fascist agenda. Whether the Nazis started the fire or not, they used this moment effectively to spread fear and hate and achieved one of the most diabolical political goals in human history.

The echoes of what happened then are ever present. They have become a text book example of how tyranny can take root in a democracy. Many hope that institutions built to defend democracy from tyranny are there to safeguard its fragile nature. But it is the people who make the institutions strong by being vigilant and proactive. Institutions by themselves can be compromised from within if there is no oversight and if people do not perform their sacred duty by being active participants in their democracy.

What always amazes me is that "History" has an uncanny way of resurfacing to remind us of our follies. This is partly because humanity suffers from amnesia. When the embers of insecurity rise on the horizon, humans gravitate to their most basic instinct and become "tribal". The comfort the tribe offers becomes very enticing. And those who blow their bullhorn offering a vision of tribal preservation, homogeneity and dominance, suddenly become appealing and things that were abhorrent in the past become acceptable. The recent rise in hate against immigrants and a love for parochialism across the globe, is largely driven by tribal insecurity and a fear of losing tribal identity. From the color of one's skin, to one's religious beliefs and imaginary geographical lines that separate the haves from the havenots, anything that seems foreign is seen as suspect and a threat to the tribe and its glory.

America's Riechstag Fire in some ways, was when the Twin Towers in Manhattan fell on September 11, 2001. Soon after, the Patriot Act was passed and many civil liberties were suspended. While the reaction was not as extreme as Hitler's, the wars that ensued led America down a dark path from which it is still to return. The fear of another terrorist attack is constantly used as a reason to undermine democracy and the freedoms of its citizens. This trend still continues almost two decades later with a demand for more defense spending and less on social programs.

Vladimir Putin became the president of Russia in 2000. Since then he has successfully managed to undermine democracy be steadily dismantling all opposition and gaining a tight grip on the Russian media. The state has successfully demolished all dissent and elevated Vladimir Putin to the stature of  president for life. Using the media the state has successfully programmed the Russian population into believing that only a "strongman" like him can guide them through the turbulence of globalization in an increasingly dangerous world, where the balance of power shifted since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The control of the national media is so absolute, that the recent anti-corruption protests across the nation have been completely blacked out.

Vladimir Putin is said to enjoy high approval ratings, and is again foretasted to win the upcoming election, even though he has officially not disclosed his intention to run. It is hard to gauge how much of his popularity is real, as independent media has but all been extinguished. Anyone who opposes Putin either dies or is arrested as in the case of Alexei Navalny this week. Vladimir Putin has effectively rewritten the book on tyranny, and shown how an authoritarian system can emerge inside a democracy through corruption and deceit.

Russia played a prominent role in the recent American elections, and the US intelligence community strongly believes Vladimir Putin was at the helm of devising a strategy to undermine one of the world's largest democracy's four year ritual. His personal, vindictive, disapproval of Hillary Clinton they say was the driving force behind this action. The meddling brought the most unlikely candidate Donald Trump to the presidency and two months in, the shadow cast by Russia still looms large. Whether Donald Trump and his associates did Putin's bidding is a sordid tale whose conclusion is still chapters away. As the powers rattle sabers and the media refuses to let up, it is becoming more and more apparent that there is more to this murky affair than earlier thought.

Whether Vladmir Putin and Donald Trump had a back room deal, is a question for history to answer. But there is very little doubt, that the way the American president behaves, it seems he would rather be a strongman than a democratic leader who believes in consensus building. The slew of executive orders he has issued, have shown a desire to strike things with little regard for procedure and evidence. But unlike Putin, it did not take Donald Trump long to realize that institutions in America have more power than the president. What Putin took decades to do, Donald Trump wanted to achieve in a few months and realized this nation cannot be run like the Trump organization. Letting off steam on twitter, disparaging everyone who stood up to him, he showed the true colors of a man with an authoritarian bent. The despicable and shameful collapse of the healthcare bill put forth by an incompetent speaker of the house and an even more incompetent chief executive could not have been more telling on the limits to his power.

In his recent book On Tyranny, Twenty Lessons from Twentieth Century,  Timothy Snyder proposes a survival guide to protect oneself and democracy, when signs of tyranny rise. Donald Trump's rise to the presidency have made many around the world uncomfortable. Primarily for the rhetoric he used during his campaign and the way he has behaved and continues to do so as president. In his book Snyder says "History does not repeat but it does instruct. Plato believed demagogues exploit free speech to install themselves as tyrants. It is thus an American tradition to consider history when our political order seems imperiled". According to Snyder, the Founding Fathers of America sought to avoid the kind of tyranny Plato and Aristotle warned us about, by establishing a system of checks and balances. The resilience of America's institutions are under scrutiny under Donald Trump's presidency. If he suffers from historical blindness, then as citizens it will be our duty to defend all that we hold sacred, with all our might.

It is what it is.