A recent edi­to­r­i­al from the Aurora Sentinel in Colorado com­ment­ed on the botched exe­cu­tion of Romell Broom. The paper enti­tled its posi­tion as ​“Time for America to move past cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” In addi­tion to cit­ing the prob­lems with lethal injec­tion, the paper not­ed the risk of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent and the U.S.‘s increas­ing iso­la­tion on the death penal­ty in the world. The edi­to­r­i­al con­tin­ut­ed, ​“Even for those who believe that such heinous crim­i­nals deserve to die, our soci­ety becomes dan­ger­ous­ly base if we pro­mote these kinds of deaths.“ Read the entire edi­to­r­i­al below.

Editorial: Time for America to move past cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment
By the Voice of Aurora

How much more ghast­ly will the sto­ries of tor­ture in the Ohio exe­cu­tion cham­ber have to become before the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment steps in to pro­tect that state from itself?

It does­n’t appear to be enough that Ohio prison offi­cials spent two hours fruit­less­ly dig­ging in a con­vic­t’s arms for a vein last month to inject lethal drugs and exe­cute the man. The con­vict, Romell Broom, was con­vict­ed of rap­ing and stab­bing to death a 14-year-old girl in 1984.

Even for those who believe that such heinous crim­i­nals deserve to die, our soci­ety becomes dan­ger­ous­ly base if we pro­mote these kinds of deaths.

Now, Ohio offi­cials are look­ing at tak­ing this gris­ly reprise even fur­ther. Officials there yes­ter­day said they would inves­ti­gate a way to inject the lethal drugs direct­ly into the con­vic­t’s bones to reach bone mar­row, in case a usable vein isn’t found by exe­cu­tion­ers.

This sor­did plan is no night­mare from a Hollywood slash­er movie, it’s what gov­ern­ment offi­cials are cook­ing up to pre­vent anoth­er exe­cu­tion dis­rup­tion like the one that halt­ed the lethal injec­tion in Ohio last month.

Jabbing a nee­dle into a bone to deliv­er any kind of drug is a noto­ri­ous­ly painful pro­ce­dure. To inflict that kind of pain to deliv­er the death knell to crim­i­nals goes far, far beyond imple­ment­ing jus­tice and brings the gov­ern­ment into the busi­ness of revenge killings. State and fed­er­al law requires we treat ani­mals for slaugh­ter bet­ter than this. It does­n’t mat­ter how revolt­ing or aggra­vat­ing a crime is, we should nev­er per­mit this kind of tor­ture of any human.

Now is the time for America move beyond such bar­barism.

The United Nations and oth­ers have exhaus­tive­ly stud­ied the issue for more than 40 years. The stud­ies show that coun­tries that exe­cute crim­i­nals don’t have any bet­ter cap­i­tal crime rate than those who lock up the crim­i­nals for good.

The United States is the last mod­ern soci­ety that does­n’t admit that the death penal­ty only makes for revenge, not jus­tice, and that it’s all too easy to kill inno­cent peo­ple. The few who con­tin­ue to mete out death are coun­tries like China, Iran and Saudi Arabia, Cuba and North Korea. Surely we have pro­gressed fur­ther than those soci­eties and are ready to join the ranks of Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and even Russia.

(Editorial, ​“Time for America to move past cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment,” Aurora Sentinel, October 7, 2009). See DPIC’s pages on Lethal Injections and the case of Romell Broom.

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