There’s a great op-ed in the Times about the Supreme Court’s historical struggles (or lack thereof) with the death penalty, and I think it’s worth reading, because it is fairly short, and I think that it makes some great points.

Basically, the crux of the article is a condemnation of the Supreme Court’s recent approval of Kentucky’s death penalty method, drawing upon a history of the Supreme Court’s previous involvement in death penalty cases. The Supreme Court has been asked to rule on whether various methods of punishment are “cruel and unusual” before, and they’ve also been wrong before.

Death itself is not all that unusual, and I assume that’s why the death penalty is still permitted in this country under the “unusual” part of the clause, although I might argue that an execution is a rather unusual way to die, and I believe that it’s also a cruel one, although apparently the Supreme Court doesn’t share my feelings on the matter. Given that the justices on the Supreme Court are supposed to defend and interpret the Constitution while also dealing with changing social mores and interpretations of the Constitution, I think that the Court’s record on the death penalty is particularly interesting, because the Court tends to reflect social values, albeit about 40 years behind. The last officially recorded lynching in the United States was 40 years ago, incidentally.

In the 19th century, the Supreme Court gave the thumbs up to both death by firing squad and death by electric chair (two methods which are still in use today), despite evidence which suggested that such deaths were hardly humane or usual. I’m curious to see if these methods would be supported today, if the Court was asked to rule on them. The lethal injection is clearly cruel and unusual, as ample people have testified, and it’s odd, to me, that it got the vote of approval; maybe in 40 years, the furor over the lethal injection will finally catch up with the Court?

Of course, the multiple-drug method starts with a drug that basically paralyzes the prisoner, so there’s no way to tell if the prisoner is in agony or not during the administration of the subsequent drugs. Rather convenient, isn’t it? I think that the issue might be brought to the forefront of the public mind if execution witnesses saw the truth of the matter, rather than a sanitized version. People seem to have this vision that it’s like putting a dog to sleep, but it’s not quite that simple.

And it’s obviously quite a moral quandary for people other than myself, such as physicians, many of whom (rightly) refuse to participate in executions. In some states, physicians can even be sanctioned for offering their services to executioners. And while one might argue that the presence of a doctor makes the process more humane, I think that taking a stance on the entire procedure as totally foul is pretty important, and it does delay executions, which is good.

It disappoints me that the Supreme Court supports the death penalty, and that a lot of Americans seem to do so as well. It also reminds me of the fundamental divides in this country. Personally, I find the thought of taking another human life unconscionable, no matter what the crime is. Yes, there are people on Death Row who have done terrible, evil things, and I think that they should never be released, but I don’t see how killing them solves anything.

And, honestly, if you’re all about retribution, I think that rotting away in prison is a far more fit punishment than moldering on Death Row for awhile and then snuffing it. I’m pretty well versed in vengeance, if I do say so myself, and I think that people take this whole “eye for an eye” thing way too literally. Why take an eye and have done with it when you can slowly break someone down over the course of years? But I digress.

We already have a fairly clogged, inefficient, and deeply flawed justice system. American prisons are overcrowded, and I suspect that a fair number of people in prison really don’t belong there. It makes me wonder why it is that we continue to waste money on an antiquated and barbarian method of punishment in the 21st century, especially when our government is eager to criticize other nations for using the death penalty. Banning the death penalty seems like a moral imperative, to me.

In Iran, people get executed for being homosexual, which is awful. But in the United States, you get executed for being too black or too poor to defend yourself, and, in a way, that’s more awful, because we pretend that it is justified and reasonable. Defensible, even. After all, it’s justice, right?