Contradictory as it seems, I'm against the death penalty, but I'm all for making the firing squad the means of execution everywhere the death penalty is allowed.
My thoughts come from a fairly rare occurrence for a white man who lives in a medium sized town in a statistically safe state; I had a friend who was murdered in 1987. Over 20 years later, her killer was finally executed.
I was once all for execution, but her life and death, and her killer's life and death changed my mind.
I knew Susan before she met her husband; she was a friend of my wife's, and she had many friends. Her husband was a perfect match for her when they met; both were equally kind, quiet, gentle, intelligent and great folks to have for friends. She was beautiful, he was handsome.
They were deeply in love, loved their baby son, and were on their way to good long careers in a place that is safer than many communities in a state where the murder rate is quite low.
Susan was a teacher, and a good one. Her kids loved her, but more importantly, she had a way of making the things she taught stick with them. All of her students are adults now, but once in a while, I still come across one, and whenever it happens, it was what she taught them, not her death, that they remember the most vividly.
Her killer was a local who was well known about town, too, but not in a good way. I never knew him except by sight, but a close friend went to school with him, and said he was a bully as a child. He was a thief and an addict as an adult, and when he turned vicious, he was as bad as bad gets. We had never had a serial killer in our midst before or since, and he terrified my town while he was on the loose.
Susan was his third victim in just over a week. His first was another young woman, another pretty girl recently married, who worked at a convenience store. He shot her and robbed the store of some chump change and a carton of cigarettes. He forced her into his mother's car, drove her out to a rural dumpster area, and shot her in the head in the middle of a cold night.
His second victim was a young man a few days later who was also a newlywed, also working the night shift at another convenience store. Once more, the poor kid was shot in the head, and was dragged to the store's cooler, where he slowly died, unconscious. He was barely alive when they found him, but died on the way to the hospital. The till was gone, as were a couple of bottles of wine and another carton of cigarettes.
Susan was different. He spotted her walking into a supermarket early in the morning, and hid in her van waiting for her to come out. She had a cold, and had taken the day off so she wouldn't pass the cold onto her school kids, but needed a gallon of milk for breakfast.
He forced her to go to her bank's ATM and drain her checking account's cash, then made her drive into the sagebrush desert west of town where he raped her, then killed her. And then he drove her van back into town, where he found someone to follow him. The pair of vehicles were driven back out to the desert, where the van was abandoned after it become entangled in a barbed-wire fence, and he was driven back home. Whoever gave him the ride was never prosecuted.
After stealing his mother's car again, he took off. He drove to Nevada, where he stopped in Wells and bought a couple of bottles of whiskey, and proceeded to get drunk in a parking lot. A local cop spotted him, sprawled on the front seat of the car with the driver's door open. The pistol he used for all the murders was lying on the pavement next to the car. it was just one piece of evidence aplenty, and there never was any doubt that he was the murderer.
There were many appeals in the years to come, of course. He fought his death sentence to the end, and before he was executed, he only admitted to Susan's murder in his last words.
The two others were denied to the end, a bit of last-moment cruelty, as the loved ones of the others actively sought his sentence's ultimate end. Susan's husband didn't.
He never said anything publicly afterwards, as he was that kind of guy, and because he had a toddler to raise. He understood the damages of vengeance, and settled for justice, for the good of his son as much as the good for himself.He was the only family member who did not attend the execution.
I believe there are wild animals among us, and Susan's killer was one. His upbringing was typically misfortunate; his family was dysfunctional, and he was as brutally stupid as Susan was smart. He was a big fat hulk of a man, always filthy, and had a long record of theft and everything else that comes with being trashy. The rest of his family were industrious working poor folks who never got into trouble. He was their only bad seed.
He was a loser in life, and his execution by lethal injection was nothing special. When the drugs hit him, he went out peacefully. There were no problems. Gone for good in the typical 15 minutes it takes from first to last with death by the needle.
I thought I would feel something on the day he died. I thought I would feel some satisfaction, or a feeling of comeuppance, or a sense of completion, but I didn't. By then, all the sorrows were long in the past. I couldn't even muster up the old anger for him I once had… for a couple of years, I sometimes fantasized about killing him myself, as I've never been as gentle natured a person as Susan or her husband.
Closure never closes any murder. The best execution does is make the rest of us feel like a bad guy got what was coming to him, and lethal injection's apparent peacefulness denies us that satisfaction. The condemned appears to die peacefully asleep almost all the time, despite the reportage of the executions that don't go right. It's too quiet, too remote, too sanitary to ever assuage the deeper feelings of vengeance, righteous retribution, or anything else.
For sure, few families ever say the killer suffered like their loved ones did. They most often walk out feeling angry and unsatisfied, and this was no exception. The other families said what they all say afterward.
For me, after brooding for hours after hearing Susan's killer was dead, I decided the whole process, spread over 20 years, was nothing but a waste of money and a waste of time.
I would have been happier to know the slob was going to live out his life eating baloney sandwiches and never sucking in a free breath again. If anything, Idaho did him a favor. I would have rather had him suffer arthritis, a failing heart, and the terrors of old age if I was filled with vengeance.
There has been lots of discussion about lethal injection actually being a torturous, slow death, and I can believe it is. Being paralyzed and unable to move while the red devil courses through the veins, knowing it's bringing death, must be horrible.
But to the witnesses, it appears to only be nodding off for the last time ever. They don't see the internal agony, so we can't share it vicariously to assuage our emotions. It is too clinical, too cold, too sterile. It is the way old dogs die at the vet's office.
It robs the condemned a last little measure of dignity or any bit of humanity. The condemned may as well be a dog. The only thing left to us is all the pre-game drama, the final meal, the slow march down the Green Mile, and the last words. We love spectacles, but we want to know the drama of the game, not just the pre-game buildup.
The British had the right idea when it came to executions. They used the gallows, and made the killing quick. The condemned was quick marched to the gallows and hanged with none of our drama- no last words, no pre-game reportage. Albert Pierrepont, their notorious executioner, once carried out his job in 14 seconds flat from the second he walked in to the second he was finished. I believe this made it easier for the British to eventually give up the need for death as retribution for crime as they were denied last second moments to savor. And hanging, with all of the well-known problems associated with it, lacks any detachment or clinical sterility. It's violent and the stuff of nightmares.
If we must have our need for drama and display fulfilled by another's death, what better way than a firing squad for it?
Gunsmoke is the American perfume, and the firing squad full of drama we crave.
It's fast, cheap, and noisy, and very reliable. I think that no one who views an execution by firing squad will ever come away with any thoughts the condemned didn't get what he deserved.
At the same time, the firing squad doesn't mangle the body like hanging can, nor does the condemned's struggles disgust and horrify us as much as the gas chamber or the electric chair do. None of us want to see a person fry or convulse until dead. The firing squad is midway between vengeance and horror show. We loathe the thought of horror show as much as we love the gun.
Make it as violent as possible. And do what the old-timers did; publish pictures of the body showing the bullet holes. After all, isn't a firing squad actually a real, Honest To God first-person shooter game?
If the firing squad was used, maybe, in time, we will begin to understand how indecent all legal execution is. If nothing else, the condemned is a human being, not an old dog, in the mind's picture of his death. There will be no feeling the guy has crossed the Rainbow Bridge by anyone.
Lethal injection only continues to make the death sentence a remote clinical exercise that makes death so abstract that none of us, for the death penalty or against it, to really have much meaningful emotions. If lack of upset is to be the goal of killing someone, I don't see any difference in lethal injection and a life sentence.
Life without parole is only slower, and it is just as assured that the condemned will die. But rightfully, he will die mostly forgotten. We will remember the victims most, not the criminal, and that is how it should be. Right now, we all remember many famous murderers, but who can remember their victims as easily?
If more of the condemned were to die by the gun, who knows? Maybe we would once again begin to fall out of love with the gun and all it's attendant associations as our ancestors did once the real need for their use was no longer commonplace.
I believe that guns have taken on the same empty symbolism that execution by lethal injections has brought to our executions. Firing squads could become reverse symbols, possibly. Live by the gun, die by the gun would no longer be nothing but an old cliché.
I have no answers. But as long as we are willing to execute others, let it be violent, quick and sure. What we have now is none of those and does our society no possible good at all.
I'm also sure that if some of our politicians were required to attend an execution, a firing squad would remove all of their notions about guns.