Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be so eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.
J.R.R. Tolkein
I find myself revisiting this long-defunct section of my blog in response to the news of Kenneth Smith’s execution, which took place on January 24th of this year. Smith was condemned for the 1988 murder of Elizabeth Sennett. He had been hired through an intermediary (who received life in prison) at the behest of Sennett’s husband, Charles (who killed himself once he learned that he was suspected). Smith committed the murder—brutally beating and stabbing Sennett to death—along with another man, John Forrest Parker, who was executed in 2010.
Smith was first scheduled to be executed via lethal injection in 2022, but the execution was botched—the third one in a row in the state of Alabama. After over an hour of trying, the execution team quit after they failed to properly place the IVs in Smith’s veins.
This is why, when Smith’s execution was rescheduled, it was decided to carry out the grim task using a novel method: nitrogen asphyxiation. During this procedure, the victim is strapped down to a gurney and fitted with a mask, which forces him to breathe in nitrogen until death occurs. It was the first execution of this kind performed in the United States—perhaps in history. And while the Alabama Attorney General insisted that the execution was “textbook,” and predicted that “many states will follow,” witnesses described Smith writhing and gasping for a number of minutes before finally succumbing.
When I read about this execution, I felt an acute sense of horror and disgust. In my moments of optimism, I like to imagine that, as the years go by, our ethical standards are becoming ever-more elevated. It is thus acutely depressing to hear that, in 2024, we are still fumbling for ways to kill our prisoners—and that asphyxiation is being regarded as, somehow, innovative and humane.
In my view, punishments can only be justified on a limited number of grounds. It is justifiable, for example, to isolate somebody who has proven dangerous to others. And legal consequences are warranted if they serve as deterrents for other potential criminals.
Yet imprisonment isolates a prisoner just as effectively as execution, while study after study has shown that the death penalty does not, in fact, deter potential criminals.
All this seems rather pedantic to say, as it is quite obvious that capital punishment is not a policy born of logic. Rather, it only exists to satisfy a primitive urge for vengeance. It is Old Testament wrath, and not New Testament mercy.
Now, anybody can certainly understand the urge to get back at someone. And perhaps executions can provide closure for the family and friends left behind by a murder. However, vengeance is not, and cannot be, justice. Indeed, our institutions of justice have been created precisely to supplant the basic law of an eye for an eye. And even if—at least in some parts of America—capital punishment is widely popular, and even if it provides some sort of consolation to some, the death penalty is impossible to justify according to any ethical framework I am familiar with.
It may be true, as Tolkein said, that there are some who “deserve death.” However, I find it disturbingly hubristic to think that any human institution, however admirable its ideals, is wise enough to mete it out. Kenneth Smith certainly deserved punishment. But I cannot see how asphyxiating him has made the world a better place.
Lotz in Translation 
I’m reminded of Nietzsche’s observation that the cruelty of the state decreases as its power increases, and that the more powerful we feel the more comfortable we become with forgiving our enemies – to be merciless is an expression of fear, and hence of weakness.
In some literal sense, of course, the American state is not weak – it is perhaps the most powerful institution in human history.
And yet the American people are terrified – and not merely because of the (admittedly quite terrifying) fact that they live in America, with declining life expectancy and gunfire their most likely cause of premature death, because people are terrified across the whole of the West. And probably beyond it as well.
Nobody really knows why this is. Is it something rational, like fear of climate change and pandemic and financial meltdown, terrorist attacks or simply the dread of household debt? Those things probably haven’t helped. Is it something diseased, perhaps malign, like the parasitical (and sometimes fifth columnist) fearmongering by media organisations? Probably hasn’t helped. Or is it something more fundamental? A psychologist might wonder whether the issue is not some cause of fear, but the absence of causes of reassurance – the atomisation of urban, late-capitalist life leading to the loss of traditional comfort blankets like constant contact with family, like the church, like unions, or even like relatively benign local employers and jobs for life, or perhaps even the loss of powerful instinctive placators like having children and spending time outside. Perhaps a civilisation increasingly consisting of single individuals living and working in small cubes for anonymous employers for unfathomable reasons for long hours every day simply lacks resources for psychological resilience. Maybe I’m speculating.
But whatever the cause, a great deal of modern politics and culture can be seen as the product of increasing fear – from nativism to antivax, to the more general common concern with maintaining bubbles of ideological purity. And the recent resurgence in the death penalty in America seems like a classic example of this. iven that the crime rate is a lot lower than it was at the time when the death penalty was on the wane.
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Wastrel! It’s great to hear from you after such a long time! A brilliant comment. I hope you’re well.
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Flattered to be remembered!
Yes, well enough. Been struggling with attention span and trying to make myself read/write with various schedule changes, hence not being online. But that’s pretty benign compared to other people’s problems, so mustn’t grumble.
[and the low attention span and increased amount of TV-watching did result in me finally going back and watching Fringe, just 10 years later than everyone else, so not entirely a loss]
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That’s good to hear! I’ve actually been gradually shifting to watching more TV and movies, too. Maybe it’s inevitable… I got terribly obsessed with The Wire (highly recommended) and then lately I burned through most of Herzog’s documentaries. Haven’t seen Fringe, though.
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The Wire is the best TV show ever. Well, the best drama; comedy and documentary are hard to compare. I first saw it in the first UK run, which was almost a cult event: every evening on BBC2 at a seemingly randomly-selected time between 10 and 12, one episode a night, no repeats (as in, I’m not sure the episodes were EVER repeated, and if so not for years). And when it first came out there were no DVDs on sale here either. Made watching it a huge hassle, but also almost like a ritual – something we can’t emulate in an era when everything is available on demand, and so nothing demands our attention.
[for documentaries, an obligatory plug for The World At War, the 1973 documentary (23 hours, divided into 26 episodes) about WWII. A documentary so valuable that it’s come to be seen as an important primary source by historians – interviewees include Mitsuo Fuchida (who led the bombing of Pearl Harbour), Karl Doenitz (Hitler’s successor as Fuhrer), Anthony Eden (British Prime Foreign Secretary during the war and later Prime Minister), and so forth. Narrated by Laurence Olivier.]
Fringe is not the best show ever, but definitely worth watching. It’s a decent show with two claims to fame: one of the most astonishingly bold attitudes to plotting ever (do try not to know anything at all before watching it!), and what’s in my opinion the greatest acting performance (taken as a whole across the 5 seasons). [it doesn’t seem that way at first, but as a whole it’s just AMAZING.] It’s a weird mixed bag, because the writers don’t understand how stories work and don’t care about them: the plot, to them, is just an excuse to put characters in interesting scenarios. Which leaves you sometimes shouting at the screen about plot holes and missed opportunities, in my opinion. It feels like it wasted a lot of its potential. But on the other hand, it had no viewership, was lucky to run as long as it did, and took some really commendably bold plot decisions along the way. If you ever saw Alias (by the same people), Fringe feels like the far-improved second edition. Or the X-Files but with the overall plot written by a science fiction author, not just the cases of the week. [very short summary: an FBI agent is assigned to a ‘task force’ (which mostly consists of managing a (literally) mad scientist) to investigate bizarre, quasi-supernatural terrorism]
Frustrating but ultimately brilliant (and gets progressively more rich and complicated, and the acting and writing improve). Definitely worth watching – there’s nothing else quite like it.
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I don’t know what else you’ve seen, but if you liked The Wire, as I did, a few other things I’d recommend would be The Americans (slow burn, high tension – soviet spies in 1980s America), Halt and Catch Fire (first season OK but sensationalist, gets much richer as it goes on – computer geeks in 1980s American), and the original three seasons of In Treatment (half-hour two-hander plays in which a therapist has sessions with different characters each day of the week. All three have great writing and performances, clever plotting, an avoidance of excessive “action” and spectacle, and intense psychological realism. Oh, and Six Feet Under, though it seems out of fashion now.
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Thanks for the recommendation! As it happens, I just bought The World at War for my brother as a Christmas present!
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