At 6pm on August 29, murderer Eric Allen Patton was given a lethal injection. Decca Aitkenhead was there to witness it - and to discover why America finally seems to be turning against the death penalty
http://www.guardian.co.uk./usa/story/0,,1877856,00.html Most family pets are put down with greater sense of occasion than the execution of Eric Patton managed to marshal. You would be forgiven, therefore, for thinking American prisons must be killing their inmates every day. Before becoming president, George Bush executed more than any other state governor, and under him the country's moral politics have shifted farther and farther right. One would expect the death penalty to be enjoying an all-time high. In fact, the figures tell a different story.
In 1999, America executed 98 people - a record total for a single year. The annual figure had been climbing steadily since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976 - as had the number of death sentences issued every year, which reached a peak in 1996. Public support had grown from an average of around 65% to more than 80%.
But in 2000 the numbers changed direction. Executions fell that year, and have continued to fall ever since, so sharply that this year's total may not even pass 50. Death sentences have more than halved, and support for capital punishment has slumped back to around 65%. The US Supreme Court has removed entire categories of criminals from death row. Two states have imposed moratoria while they review their death penalty, and moratoria legislation has been introduced in over 20 more. New York has abolished its death penalty altogether, and New Jersey is expected to follow suit. Even in Oklahoma, one of the more prolific states left, Patton was only the third inmate to be executed this year.
The execution of George Allen Patton took place in my home state, Oklahoma. An ironic note is that the modern method of execution, lethal injection, was introduced by an Oklahoma legislator, Bill Wiseman, who was actually an opponent of the death penalty. Wiseman knew that opposing the death penaly would lose him his seat in the State House. So, he tried to make carrying out the death penalty "more humane" than the electric chair.
Wiseman worked with the state medical examiner, a person with "
no specialist pharmacological training," to use the Guardian's wording to help him devise a new method for executing criminals with injections. The mix of lethal drugs and the sequence in which they were to be given was written "on the back of an envelope."
I met Bill Wiseman, years ago, when I worked at a cable television outlet in Tulsa, OK. Bill impressed me as an intelligent well-meaning young man. I don't think he intended to make it easier to carry out capital sentences; but, that's been the result. That illusion that lethal injection is painless and clinical makes it easier for judges, juries, and witnesses.
However, there is a lot of doubt that lethal injection is painless. In many cases, the victim is not anesthesized properly, or he wakes up when the paralytic drug to stop breathing and the potassium chloride to stop the heart, is administered. But, since the person is paralyzed, there's no sign of any suffering on his or her part.
Bill has owned up to his responsibility for the nearly 800 people put to death with his formula. His current career is as an Episcopal priest in Tulsa.
http://www.guardian.co.uk./usa/story/0,,1877856,00.html
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