A recent Newsweek arti­cle by Evan Thomas and Martha Brant com­pares the his­tor­i­cal search for humane meth­ods of exe­cu­tion with the cur­rent decline in the use of the death penal­ty in the U.S.:

The new reluc­tance to pun­ish by killing is part of a his­tor­i­cal trend. There was a time when death and tor­ture were spec­ta­tor sports, when crowds flocked to see pris­on­ers drawn and quar­tered or behead­ed. In some parts of the world, flog­ging and ston­ing are still pub­lic spec­ta­cles. But in the 19th cen­tu­ry, sup­pos­ed­ly ​“enlight­ened” states began look­ing for more-humane ways to serve final jus­tice — to kill peo­ple with­out caus­ing too much suf­fer­ing to either the vic­tims or their exe­cu­tion­ers. The author­i­ties tried hang­ing, fir­ing squads, elec­tro­cu­tions, gas cham­bers and, more recent­ly, lethal injec­tion. Each method was sup­posed to be an improve­ment over the last.

The arti­cle reflects on the recent chal­lenge to lethal injec­tion which is pend­ing before the Supreme Court, pos­ing the ques­tion of whether improv­ing the pro­ce­dures will only bring the stan­dards for killing humans up to those for killing animals:

The Supreme Court has imposed a de fac­to mora­to­ri­um on lethal injec­tion while it waits to hear oral argu­ments this January in Baze v. Rees, a case that could deter­mine whether, or under what con­di­tions, lethal injec­tion can be used as cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. It may be that states will resort to giv­ing pris­on­ers a mas­sive dose of bar­bi­tu­rates — the pre­ferred method for putting down sick pets. In the­o­ry, at least, the high court will uphold a ​“bet­ter” form of lethal injec­tion, set­ting off a wave of exe­cu­tions. But whether state offi­cials and juries will want to dis­pose of humans like dogs remains to be seen. A sin­gle drug might take longer to work — pro­long­ing the death throes.

The arti­cle focus­es on the new dis­trict attor­ney of Dallas, Texas, Craig Watkins, who says that at times he sup­ports the death penal­ty, ​“But when I come out of church on Sunday morn­ing, I’m against it.” Watkins attrib­ut­es the decline in Texas death sen­tences to a change in men­tal­i­ty amongst pros­e­cu­tors. ​“We’ve had a lot of folks com­ing out who did­n’t com­mit crimes and that gives peo­ple pause,” Watkins states. Dallas has had the high­est num­ber of DNA exon­er­a­tions (14) of all coun­ties in the United States. He says, ​“In the near future, we will see the death penal­ty rarely.”
(​“Injection of Reflection,” Newsweek, November 10, 2007). See Articles and Lethal Injection.

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