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As Ohio puts a pause on death penalty, let’s press play on questioning our morals

Milam's Musings

If I was slated to be systematically killed by the government, I am not sure what my last meal would be. I imagine I wouldn't have much of an appetite visualizing the gurney, the site of "humane" lethal injection.

Worse yet, I am in Ohio. Sure, the upside is they've delayed all 2015 executions until 2016, according to NBC News. The downside: it's only because they're trying to find drug supplies willing to give them their killing agents.

Dennis McGuire last January was put to death by the state of Ohio and he struggled for breath for the 26 minutes it took the "humane" execution to kill him. The state reportedly used the untested new concoction of midazolam and hydromorphone, according to The Guardian.

Despite that drug combination no longer being used, House Bill 663 signed by Gov. Kasich, according to The Columbus Dispatch, will "shield from public disclosure the supplier of drugs used in future lethal injections effective on March 20."

That is to say, the pharmacy companies supplying the drugs will not be identified for 20 years and those involved in the execution will forever be shielded from public record.

After all, when you kill someone with an untested concoction of drugs, the next best move is to shroud the future process in secrecy, so nobody knows if the drugs will work and be effective.

I especially imagine such a visualization of that gurney would be crushing if I were innocent.

According to the Innocence Project, 20 people have been proven innocent and exonerated in the U.S. after serving time on death row. Combined, they spent 289 years in prison for crimes they didn't commit. That's only just in the last 15 years.

Such a fact of the system should be unconscionable.

Kelly Renee Gissendaner, slated to be killed by the state of Georgia as their only female death row inmate Feb. 25, requested as her last meal two cheeseburgers, two large orders of fries, cornbread with a side of buttermilk, popcorn, lemonade and a salad with boiled eggs, tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, carrots, cheese and buttermilk dressing; then a cherry vanilla ice cream for dessert, according to the New York Daily News.

Go big or go home when you're going dead.

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This ritual is another facet of euphemistically covering up what the death penalty is: the systematic killing of another human being.

Medical drugs, swabs, making sure the inmate is comfortable, shrouding it in secrecy, performing it at midnight; all of this adds to the euphemistic sheen behind killing.

While it's true that American support for the death penalty is at a 40-year low, according to Gallup, of just 60 percent support, down from a high of 80 percent in 1994; that's still a majority of Americans supporting an indisputably flawed system that's ineffective, inefficient, we know has killed innocents (or would have, save them being exonerated) and is above all, immoral.

Most troubling, it's not at all clear that the botched executions, like here in Ohio, or in Oklahoma with Clayton Lockett and Arizona's Joseph Wood would compel people to oppose the death penalty.

Lockett took 43 minutes to die; Wood an hour with 15 lethal injections needed to ensure his death. No matter.

Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport, according to the Washington Post, doesn't think these cases will alter that majority opinion on the death penalty. Proponents, after all, want the inmate to suffer for their crime.

"The fact that the killer suffered for one or two hours more at the end may not affect those underlying attitudes," Newport said

Some, like Robert Blecker writing for CNN, have argued that, if we're going to use the death penalty, then let's use the firing squad. At least, then, we're removing the euphemistic sheen and exposing state-killing for what it is.

Utah's state house recently brought forth legislation to do just that, in fact. Oklahoma is the other state that still uses the practice.

I agree with Blecker. While my ultimate goal is abolition of the death penalty, if we're going to do it, let's at least own up to our deed. Enough with the medicinal procedures, the macabre good-will of "last meals" and using anesthesia on a dying person.

A bullet to the brain stem erases the concern over mixing lethal cocktails. Once the firing squad is back, let's return to Gallup and we'll see the true makeup of America's moral character.

Yeah, yeah, I know the death penalty is one of those issues, like abortion, where battle lines are drawn and the arguments seem exhausted at this point, but it's important that in the year 2015, we address this inane system.

Not only for the innocent people surely awaiting their systematic death, but for our own moral framework, as a country and a people.

By the way, the answer to my last meal, I've decided, is a Chipotle burrito (white rice, black beans, steak, sour cream, cheese and guacamole) with a tall Blue Moon with an orange slice.

The answer to most things is Chipotle. And don't even talk to me about preferring Hot Head Burritos.

Now, that would be absurd.

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