Not Dead? No Problem!

There is no research behind this proposition.

I don’t even know which of all the States (members of the United States of America) might be the intended users of my proposition.

I think a few of them are Oklahoma, Texas and Missouri.

There are probably, but may not be, many others.

Whatever the number, or whatever their names and locations in the USA, they all share the same vexing problem: they all like to execute some of their citizens who have been convicted of certain capital crimes.

It is an odd fact that there aren’t many civilized lieus where that sort of outcome still occurs.

But the US is one of the few.

Given the perceived need to indulge in human housekeeping, the places in the United States that still have capital punishment all do it with great god fearing  humanity.

They all use drugs injected into the about-to-be-dispatched offenders.

Apparently that isn’t as easy as one might think, or one might hope – if one thought that the whole thing was a good idea in the first place.

In a nation in which a cat or dog can be “put to sleep” with dispatch, celerity and swift certainty it is not so easy to dispatch a human miscreant.

I’m not just asserting that.

As Bert, my 22 year old cat, lay on my lap last October, just prior to his life terminating injections, I asked the veterinarian why the human execution chambers didn’t seem to work as well as what Bert and I were about to go through.

He gave me a mealy-mouthed, no meaning, answer.

“My, my” I thought.

Moments later Bert slipped into non-existence without a whimper.

The only whimpers were mine.

So – going back to the main stem of this musing – why is it so hard to replicate that outcome in humans?

I just don’t know.

And I really don’t care.

But it is hard for me to ignore the fact that recent American applications of justice via lethal injection have not gone well in the states that have applied them.

I think I have heard that there has been a lot of thrashing around and twitching and unattractive stuff like that.

When I thought I had heard that I made the mental note that I was really glad that Bert had had an apparently much more competent application of life terminating lethal injection.

I loved that cat.

I wouldn’t have wanted him to have had a moment of life-transition fear or pain.

And he didn’t as best as I was able to divine from his exit demeanor; and I was glad.

But for humans recently things have not gone so swimmingly.

So I have a suggestion.

And it is simple and it might even add American jobs.

A baseball bat, as a mandatory piece of equipment for all lethal drug injections in America, would solve the problem.

The minute an about-to-be-dispatched prisoner begins to twitch and moan someone can take the bat and beat him the rest of the way to death.

The only question remaining is who should be the bat swinger.

Since in most cases, the states with aggressive capital punishment regimens have republican, loudly pro-death-to-the-criminals governors, I suggest that each execution be attended by the governor of the state where said execution is taking place.

Think of the political advantage:

The governor can emerge from one of these events spattered with brains and blood and shout with Nixon-like uplifted arms to his or her faithful: “One less threat to our christian faith and beliefs; another unclean spirit has been dispatched”.

That will make re-election hard to deny.