A communist insurgent is blindfolded and executed by firing squad, Cuba 1956./Wikipedia
We’ve discussed this before, but now we have a fresh reason. From last week:
COLUMBIA — South Carolina’s death penalty history could be rewritten March 7 if condemned state inmate Brad Sigmon is executed by firing squad, as he has chosen.
Though the firing squad is authorized as an execution method in five states, it has been used only three times since the U.S. reinstated the death penalty in 1976. All three took place in Utah, with the last one in 2010.
Sigmon, 67, has picked a shooting death over electrocution or lethal injection, according to documents he filed Feb. 21.
He was given a death sentence for killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents, Gladys and David Larke, at their home in Taylors in April 2001. Gladys Larke was 59 and her husband 62…
When we’ve talked about firing squads in the past, I’ve brought it up in large part because of people saying how “barbaric” it is. Which, within the context of other such practices in which our state engages, is nonsense. I’ve gone into that before:
Between the lines of the reporting and comments I’m hearing what I perceive as a flavor of “Firing squad? How awful! How barbaric!”
To which I’m going, Yeah, so? My God, who wouldn’t choose that? I know I would. In fact, of all the forms of execution current in this country, the firing squad is by far the least objectionable from the point of view of the condemned. It’s quicker and more certain than hanging.
And to me, lethal injection is by far the worst, the most blood-chillingly terrifying, the most cruel and unusual way to take a man’s life.
It’s so cold, so sterile, so deliberate, so clinical, so pseudo-nonviolent and therefore most morally chilling. Like, we’re going to kill you, casually and dispassionately, in a staged setting that makes a mockery of the healing process.
This, of course, is related to my fear of giving blood, which I overcome every time I go to the Red Cross. It’s the cold, clinical, deliberateness of that that has always chilled me. What if the point of slipping that needle into my vein was to kill me, deliberately and legally, with all due ceremony?
Maybe it doesn’t strike you that way, but it seems the most evil, Room 101 thing you could do to another human being.
But a firing squad, the straightforward, quick, honestly retributive violence of it, is to me the most morally defensible form of capital punishment. I don’t believe in ANY form of execution, but if I were king and had to choose for someone else, or if I were given the devil’s own choice of deciding for myself, that’s definitely the way I’d go.
When I started my newspaper career, executions were banned in every state in the union. We had followed other civilized countries (and in the ’70s, this was a civilized country, disco aside) in putting that behind us. Then Gary Gilmore was executed in Utah in 1977 — by firing squad.
You young folks might find it hard to imagine, but it was a huge deal when the country took that big, atavistic step. Norman Mailer wrote a book about it, which was made into a movie starring Tommy Lee Jones as Gilmore. I never read the book or saw the movie. I felt I knew enough about it.
The most vivid memory for me comes from a time in, I believe, 1979, when I went to Death Row in Nashville (at the old state prison that looked like something out of an old movie, or perhaps a nightmare) to interview some of the condemned. After a long interview with one, I paused in front of the cell of another of the condemned and chatted for a moment. He had a picture of Gilmore attached to his cell wall. This prisoner agreed to my taking a picture of him. It’s pretty creepy, and if I run across that image, I’ll share it with you. The guy I was talking to was standing in exactly the same position in his cell as Gilmore was in the picture on the wall.
Oh, by the way, before you folks who think it’s A-OK for the state to kill people by the numbers cry that I’m “romanticizing” the condemned or ignoring what they did to their innocent victims, you’re wrong. Those two guys I just mentioned were as bad as anyone I’ve ever met. The guy posing like Gilmore wanted his wife dead, and had hired the guy I interviewed at length to kill her — which he and an accomplice did, in a particularly brutal and inept manner. She was still barely alive when, after raping and choking her, they stuffed her into the trunk of a car and left the car in the parking lot of the main Memphis public library, where she was found dead days later.
They both got the chair for it, and if ever anyone deserved it, they did. But whatever anyone deserves, the state has no business degrading itself to their level by killing them — not when they’re safely locked away, and present no danger to the public.
But if the state is going to do it, the firing squad is the way. At least that way, we all know what it is we’re doing, and no one can pretend it’s “humane.”
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“…and Jesus don’t like killin’ no matter what the reason for.”
It seems there’s something in the Bible that says Thou Shalt Not Kill. But what door does “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” open up?
I believe that commentators on this verse state that it has to do with proportionality, that you cannot ask for more than was lost. So if someone damages you eye or knocks out your tooth you cannot demand their life in recompense.
Yep, it was considered a very progressive position back in about 550 BC, a way of containing man’s retributive savagery. And I understand that it had roots in Hammurabi’s code 12 centuries earlier, although the oral traditions may go further back than that.
And yet executions for theft were the law in Britain until the 1830s. Yep, that was in our enlightened mother country…
Not to argue for the other side’s position here, Bob, but… in the original Hebrew, the Mosaic commandment was “you shall not murder,” not “kill…”
By the way, I saw this from Jeffrey Collins with the AP:
So I checked with Jeffrey to make this killing is still scheduled. He replied, “Yes. What is likely Sigmon’s last appeal was rejected late Tuesday by the SC Supreme Court.”
As you see above, Jeffrey will be there to see it. I don’t envy him, but I’m glad he’ll be there to witness.
I almost added one more line to this post: “In fact, I think these spectacles should be public, perhaps on the State House grounds. Then no one can deny what we’re really doing.”
But I didn’t. Ten years ago I might have said that. But not now. Not after the way I’ve seen my country go stark, raving mad. In a country that could elect Donald Trump as president of the United States AGAiN — after the four previous years, the two impeachments, the civil and criminal convictions, and the WORSENING personal and public behavior, which everyone would have to know would be completely uninhibited this time….
In a country like that, public executions might become as thrillingly popular among the masses as Gamecock football…
I’m told the shooting will happen at 6 p.m. on Friday.
Well, executions *were* public in the past, and degenerated into the spectacles you fear. That was part of the reason for going “private” in the first place. And they were not much of a deterrent; in Great Britain pickpocketing at one time was punishable by death, yet pickpockets came out in droves to prey upon the crowds present during executions.
“Let’s do it.” Infamous last words. But I believe without darkness, there’s no greatness and without darkness, there’s no light.
I was literally born in the military and I wonder if Brad ever heard the Captain say Navy stands for Never Again Volunteer Yourself. Brad will understand me saying I’m a sheepdog because my guess is he was raised by a man with a similar nature.
It seems I’ve been fighting evil all of my life, but now it feels like I’m playing whack-a-mole. In this upcoming age of artificial intelligence and quantum computing, humankind must find a way to proactively solve this problem of good versus evil.
I’m not sure how we help people understand that we have to spend some money to invest in our future. I understand the concept of return on investment in a very hard Capital money way, but also in a softer more human services way. We must somehow integrate the two to move forward in this new Anthropocentric Revolution.
Long live The Industrial Revolution!
I never heard that about “NAVY,” and I always thought “never volunteer” was more of an Army admonition!
Yes, I know what a sheepdog is, and yes, my father was one. But I don’t think he used that term. My Dad grew up during the war years — the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on his 13th birthday — and the war was over months before his 17th. He was the youngest of five, and he watched his brother and at least one sister don uniforms in the quest to defeat Hitler and Tojo.
His brother, who had been in the construction business (like his father and grandfather), became an officer in the Army Corps of Engineers. He was in the Philippines when Dugout Doug made his much-touted return. Uncle Gerald liked to say he was building a barracks for WACs when MacArthur dramatically waded ashore.
One of his older sisters was a WAVE.
His oldest sister’s husband flew B-17s over Europe. He was shot down three times. The last time, he came down behind German lines. After making contact with the Resistance, he managed to get back to England. Of course, having had contact with the Resistance, he was sent home to a training base. He never volutarily flew again. He had had enough of airplanes.
Anyway, my Dad had that all around him as an example, and I think he wanted to serve, and never got his chance in the struggle that shaped our world today. So he went into the Navy, and did what he could during the Cold War. He had already been serving for about 8 years when JFK said “ask what you can do for your country,” but I think of that as the point of view that guided him. I guess it’s fitting that Kennedy was a Navy man…
I was born in the Air Force. Both my mother and father met in the Young Air Force. My mother could be pregnant with me, but the moment I was born, she had to separate from the service. She never did handle that very well.
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I’m Navy and I have my wife in the Philippines – there is that strong connection. But talk about politics. The Marco’s family (Bong Bong Marcos) fighting with the Duterte family.
It’s all Abby Normal. On which side is the hump?
What hump?
In case you’ve been too inundated with other “news,” such as coverage of the latest idiotic thing Trump has done or said… yes, we shot a man to death Friday night.
Here’s Jeffrey Collins’ eyewitness account from the AP.
Violent Death is Grotesque.