today in history

From Executed Today:

On this date in 1955, murderer Gerald Albert Gallego became the first client of Mississippi’s new gas chamber.

It was a botched job, though that didn’t stop Mississippi from retaining the gas chamber into the 1990s.

Gallego coughed, choked, and wheezed on a less than lethal cloud of cyanide poisoning. Finally, after some forty-five minutes while officials feverishly worked to correct the problem, the repairs were completed and Gallego quickly died. An additional step was then added to the required testing of the chamber prior to an execution: an animal, usually a rabbit, would be placed in a cage in the chamber chair and cyanide gas was released to make sure the mixture was sufficiently lethal.

Words fail me.

Supposedly the technology got better, but not in enough time for Jimmy Lee Gray in 1983, who spent eight minutes flailing and gasping before dying-from banging his head against the steel pole behind the chair. Or Donald Harding, who in 1992 took eleven minutes to die, gasping, shuddering and desperately making obscene gestures with both strapped-down hands.

Who else used the gas chamber? Nazi Germany, and North Korea.



The gas chamber was last used in the U.S. in 1999, and as of 2009 only five states (Arizona, California, Maryland, Missouri, Wyoming) still have it as a method, with lethal injection available as an alternative in all five states.

...to the natural end

I don't support the death penalty.

I find it a cruel, barbaric practice that should not continue to be practiced in any civilized society. From Amnesty International's website, The death penalty is the ultimate denial of human rights. It is the premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the state. This cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment is done in the name of justice.

It violates the right to life as proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

A culture that values life cannot abide the death penalty. A culture that embraces violence will practice it openly. What do we know about it?

We know it doesn't stop crime. We know it doesn't serve justice or bring peace to anyone. It cannot be reversed if the accused was indeed innocent. It is discriminatory-those who can afford a good lawyer are more likely to be spared death, and minority prisoners are significantly more likely to be given a death sentence than whites. This cannot be acceptable.

Even the most 'humane' methods employed (lethal injection being the preferred method in most states) do not guarantee a painless death. And that's just the practice in the United States--overseas the atrocities are yet worse. They make no secret of this-videos of public executions are all over YouTube. They are very difficult to watch, but if they won't sway a heart against capital punishment, then I don't know what will!

Whose body is it, anyway?

A rallying cry of the pro-choice movement is "hands OFF my body!". The child growing within them is not treated as a separate being, but as the woman's property.

Sound familiar?