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FIRING SQUAD

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South Carolina recently became the fourth state in the nation to offer the firing squad as an alternative method to a lethal injection execution.

The change created considerable consternation among death penalty opponents and some media outlets. The general consensus of opinion is that any alternative method of execution reinforces the inherent barbarity of the death penalty itself.

I agree … but to a point.

There is nothing cruel and unusual about giving a condemned person the choice of execution method.

In fact, giving the condemned an alternative to lethal injection is actually humane. Lethal injection is the cruelest execution method ever employed in the United States—worse than hanging, the electric chair, and, yes, even worse than the gas chamber (the second worst execution method in America).

Facts bear on the tree of truth.

There have been more than 1300 lethal injection executions carried out in the U.S. since it was first used in Texas in 982. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, roughly 7 percent (or 75 altogether) of these needle executions were horribly botched inflicting immeasurable but certainly excruciating pain to the condemned person. That’s the highest botched rate of any other method of execution used in this country, with the gas chamber coming in second with a 5 percent botched rate.

Compare that to the 0% botched rate of firing squad executions—not a single botched firing squad execution over the past 140 years. The DPIC does point to an 1879 firing squad execution carried out in territorial Utah during which the shooters missed the condemned man’s heart creating a 27 minute death cycle.

The traditional firing squad involves five shooters, each armed with a 30-caliber Winchester rifle. The shooters stand behind a wall with rifles pointed through holes in it. Four of the rifles are armed; the fifth is not. This practice is done so no one in the firing squad will know for sure which fired the fatal shot. The condemned person is restrained in a chair in front of a wooden panel 25 feet from the wall. A target is placed over their heart. Four bullets, any one of which is capable of killing, will simultaneously rip through the heart, producing an almost instantaneous death. The condemned person will never hear the explosion of the rifles.

It is virtually impossible to botch a firing squad execution—even with three blind shooters. The 30-caliber Winchester rifle was not made until 1895—some 16 years after that 1879 botched execution in the Utah territory.

There will be more executions carried out in this country. The appetite for violence, especially state-sanctioned violence, is rooted in the American DNA.

Giving a person facing execution a choice in how that execution will be carried out is not cruel or unusual.

It is a humane grace.

There is ample space in the public marketplace for a continuing honest debate about either the humanity or morality of the death penalty.

The firing squad issue in South Carolina is rather simple: a condemned inmate is given a choice of how they want to die. There is no cruel or unusual debate in the exercise of that freedom. No one to my knowledge has ever argued the cruelty of a Last Meal. It has always been considered an societal acknowledgement of a condemned person’s humanity in their final hours. The individual choice of execution method should be viewed through the same social lens.

I am opposed to the death penalty. I spent six years on Louisiana’s death row followed by another 34 years in the state’s prison system. Had I been given a choice in 1966 between death in the electric chair or 40 years of imprisonment, I may well have chosen the electric chair.

Somehow, through the grace of God, I survived both fates. I entered death row in 1966 at age twenty and walked out of prison in 2006 at age sixty-one. I know about which I speak. All anyone must do is research the 1983 electric chair execution of John Lewis Evans in Alabama to know that the firing squad is a more humane method of execution.

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DEATH

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Like the tick of a clock, death inevitably visits each of us and then vanishes like silence into the night.

In a simple word, death follows each of us throughout our lives. Some, like Thomas Wolfe, say death is a “proud brother” while others say it is a grim reaper. Whatever one’s perspective, each of us at a certain age of vulnerability understands that any sudden sharp pain casts an immediate pall over the certainty of our lives.

Death indeed makes each of us fragile. When it enters of life’s orbit, it too often marries us to a stricken grief still our last day on this earth.

More than 600,000 people have died from the Covid pandemic—and they left behind millions of grieving family and friends. These family and friends will never truly heal just as the families of the Surfside collapse will never view the sun as brightly as before the collapse. They know this now as they stand before shrines, photos, and flowers gifted to those who death claimed without rhyme or reason that dark early morning.

Gun violence has turned our cities into war zones, claiming lives of the guilty and the innocent. The blood is spilled and wiped away leaving no trace of life except in the memories of those left behind.

We know not why a deranged person walks into a former workplace and slaughters former friends and associates. We know not why teenage gang members trade gunfire in the streets where innocent children play.

The six o’clock news brings us after dinner a steady diet of stabbings, shootings, car crashes, and neighbor attacking neighbor—all of which brings the reminder of death into our living rooms forcing us to confront our own fragile existence.

We have been forced to collectively realize that at least one-third of this nation—more than one hundred million people—either advocate for or express an acceptance of civil war on our soil. These civil war buffs want to transform the landscape of all our lives into boiling hot volcanic lava with no end in sight.

And for what?

Half of this country hates the other half, so the warped one-third believes the best way to resolve the half-on-half dispute is to have a bloody civil war.

All the parades, fireworks displays, and holiday celebrations offer no real solace and peace. They are mere interludes that momentarily take us away from the rage, frustration, and anger that now resides in the soul of this nation.

And all the while death sits at the river’s edge, smiling and waiting for all these lost souls to come his way.

The French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre said that we come from nothing, live for nothing, and pass into nothingness.

But how does something come from nothing?

Scientists say we came from the Big Bang.

Okay, so where the fuck did the Big Bang come from?

Rest assured of one thing: death does not give a plug nickel about any of this philosophical mind-tingling shit. It simply feasts off mankind’s primal instinct to destroy, plunder and kill off all life forms.

Some at the CDC say that the Covid pandemic made us more prone to violence.

That raises the interesting question of how many people have died because of the pandemic, not by it.

A philosopher once wrote that the world will never know peace until the last general is strangled by the entrails of the last priest.

Perhaps so – but I think this world will never know peace until death has summoned its last victim across the river.

That does not mean life cannot be better. It can be. But first we must learn how to make a better future and dislodge the grip of our violent, evil past. Good can triumph over evil but it must earn the right to do so.

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HOSPITALS

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Forbidding places until you need one.

I needed one recently in a critical, emergency way.

I had all the symptoms of Covid, even though I have been vaccinated. ER doctors and personnel determined I had a major infection. They suspected the infection was in my heart—a lethal condition.  I was rushed by ambulance to a major heart hospital (Methodist Tex-San) in San Antonio. An immediate round of tests and blood work determined I had bacterial pneumonia instead. It was nonetheless, serious.

A week of surgical procedures, tests and exams took me out of harm’s way. I now face a six-month pneumonia recovery—not a welcoming adventure.

During my stay in the hospital I was treated by a host of doctors, nurses, technicians, support personnel, and a gracious religious chaplain. They were all extremely professional as well as compassionate and caring.

Hospital protocol required mask wearing by everyone. I had no problem with that. In fact, I both welcomed and appreciated this patient safety protocol.

But some nurses and medical personnel in Houston and Indiana have recently stolen an unfair share of public attention with their petulant refusal to undergo Covid vaccination as mandated by their hospital employer. These professional yokels believe that their “right” not to be required to undergo vaccination supersedes medical safety protocols. In other words, selfish “me, me, me” over everything else.

I did not ask any nurse if they had been vaccinated. I assumed a responsible health care delivery system would make sure that my “right” to safe medical care is a priority over that of any health care provider assumed rights.

If health care personnel do not want to wear a mask in the interest of individual patient safety and general public safety, then, please, by all means go take up truck driving. There is a growing demand for truck drivers and there is a critical need in the health care delivery system to replace irresponsible medical personnel.

Three days before the bacterial pneumonia hit me like a Covid train I sat for three hours in a surgical center waiting room while my wife underwent an outpatient procedure. I’m convinced I picked up the pneumonia bacteria in that waiting room—a bacteria left by a patient, a relative, or some medical personnel.

My point is this: hospitals can be life-saving places as I recently experienced or they can be potentially life-threatening places as I also recently experienced (as I am convinced).

The first, and most essential responsibility of a hospital is to protect the safety of the patient, and at any point that medical personnel feel that this employer responsibility conflicts with their self-created “rights,” then by all means these employees should be swiftly and irrevocably shown to the door with directions to the nearest truck driving academy.

Copyright © 2019 Jodie Sinclair| Author