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.