tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/executions-12249/articlesExecutions – The Conversation2023-02-06T12:19:57Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1989042023-02-06T12:19:57Z2023-02-06T12:19:57ZWhat historic executions in London can tell us about our contemporary appetites for pain and vulnerability<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507600/original/file-20230201-10326-bz77s1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Jacobite broadside depicting the execution of lords Kilmarnock and Balmerino at Tower Hill in London.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Jacobite_broadside_-_View_of_Tower_[…]ace_of_execution_of_the_Lords_Kilmarnock_and_Balmerino.jpg">National Library of Scotland</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Until the mid-19th century in Britain, watching someone die was considered a form of <a href="https://theconversation.com/think-entertainment-is-violent-today-the-victorians-were-much-much-worse-66714">entertainment</a>. Indeed, this shared experience shaped the landscape of London and bound the city together. </p>
<p>Entitled <a href="https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/museum-london-docklands/whats-on/exhibitions/executions">Executions</a>, the current exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands tells the stories of tens of thousands of Londoners <a href="https://theconversation.com/forget-gory-gunpowder-jacobean-england-had-a-bloodcurdling-appetite-for-violence-86647">executed</a> in public spaces across the city over almost 700 years, from 1196 to 1868 – the official recorded dates of its first and last public execution. </p>
<p>From <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Gibbet_cages#:%7E:text=English%3A%20A%20gibbet%20cage%2C%20iron,it%20from%20a%20high%20post.">gibbet cages</a> erected on the main streets along the Thames, to <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/pillory-penology">pillories</a> displayed for all to see at Charing Cross, and gallows at Tyburn (what is now Marble Arch) and Tower Bridge, public executions were <a href="https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryMagazine/DestinationsUK/ExecutionSitesinLondon/">a ritual</a> which served several purposes. Learning about this history can offer insight into our contemporary appetite for – and apathy towards – the suffering of others. </p>
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<img alt="An overhead shot of a metal plaque with an inscription amid paving stones." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507567/original/file-20230201-16-dmnifx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507567/original/file-20230201-16-dmnifx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507567/original/file-20230201-16-dmnifx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507567/original/file-20230201-16-dmnifx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507567/original/file-20230201-16-dmnifx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507567/original/file-20230201-16-dmnifx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507567/original/file-20230201-16-dmnifx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Plaque commemorating the 16th-century site of Tyburn gallows near Marble Arch in central London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/plaque-london-located-near-marble-arch-136589456">Chris Dorney</a></span>
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<h2>Material expressions of state power</h2>
<p>Executing someone in public and leaving corpses and other decaying body parts on display for several days (or years, in the case of gibbet cages) worked as a deterrent to crime and rebellion. The gruesome sight and the smell shaped collective memory and were a reminder that nobody could escape the dire consequences of crime. The exhibition shows that no one was spared – from the common man to public figures of the time and, indeed, <a href="https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item103698.html">the King</a>.</p>
<p>In his 1975 book Discipline and Punish, French philosopher Michel Foucault <a href="https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.psu.edu/dist/d/37602/files/2016/01/Discipline-and-Punish.pdf">explains</a> that public execution was not just about the “theatre of punishment”. It was also about the material expression of state power – a ceremony through which the hold that the state, the crown and the church exercised over the life and death of citizens was made clear. </p>
<p>Different typologies of crime called for different methods of execution. By the end of the 18th century, in England there were <a href="https://newjurist.com/history-of-capital-punishment.html">220 offences</a> – from treason to pick-pocketing – that were punishable by death. This ruthless penal system became known as the “<a href="https://hummedia.manchester.ac.uk/schools/law/main/research/MSLR_Vol2_3(Evans).pdf">bloody code</a>”. </p>
<p>These executions could be attended by up to 50,000 spectators, bringing significant <a href="https://www.geriwalton.com/a-hanging-known-as-english-open-air-entertainment/">economic gain</a>. Hawkers sold fruit, pies and beverages to the public queuing for hours at the gallows. Window views over the site of the execution were rented to those spectators who could afford them. Print shops distributed “<a href="https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:4787716$1i">execution broadsides</a>” throughout the country, reporting the last dying speeches of the condemned and reflecting, often in satirical terms, on the nature of their crimes. </p>
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<img alt="An 18th-century print from a satirical journal depicting two portraits above an engraved scene." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507593/original/file-20230201-7613-vyv5pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507593/original/file-20230201-7613-vyv5pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507593/original/file-20230201-7613-vyv5pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507593/original/file-20230201-7613-vyv5pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507593/original/file-20230201-7613-vyv5pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1184&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507593/original/file-20230201-7613-vyv5pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1184&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507593/original/file-20230201-7613-vyv5pl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1184&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A satirical execution broadsheet from 1767.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/The_Duumvirate_%28BM_1868%2C0808.9764%29.jpg">British Museum</a></span>
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<p>In 1722, printer Thomas Gent <a href="https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/search?searchCode=LCCN&searchArg=91046370&searchType=1&permalink=y">wrote</a> that, as he was printing the dying speech of Christopher Layer, who had been hanged for treason, he was besieged by hawkers anxious for the publication and was unable to step outside his office until he had finished. </p>
<h2>Public gratification</h2>
<p>Public executions were not just about the sentencing of criminals. They were viewed as events that lasted several days where the hangman, the condemned, the priest and the governor were actors playing roles in a bigger collective spectacle – and where audience gratification was as important an element as the punishment itself. </p>
<p>In 1783, English writer Samuel Johnson was asked where he stood on the subject of public hanging, and whether he would favour the alternative of executing criminals right after the sentence and without public announcement. He did not, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3483581">replying</a>: “The old method was most satisfactory to all parties; the public was gratified by the procession, the criminal supported by it. Why is all this to be swept away?”</p>
<p>Less than a century later in 1849, however, Charles Dickens witnessed the hanging of <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/80690472.pdf">Marie and Frederick Manning</a>, a Swiss maid and her publican husband who were condemned for the murder of Irish customs officer Patrick O'Connor. The letter Dickens subsequently <a href="https://www.charlesdickenspage.com/public-execution.html">wrote</a> to The Times was lamentful:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I believe that a sight so inconceivably awful as the wickedness and levity of the immense crowd collected at that execution this morning could be imagined by no man, and could be presented in no heathen land under the sun. The horrors of the gibbet and of the crime which brought the wretched murderers to it faded in my mind before the atrocious bearing, looks, and language of the assembled spectators.</p>
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<p>We know from <a href="https://www.cambridgescholars.com/resources/pdfs/978-1-4438-1963-3-sample.pdf">literature</a>, poetry and also <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientists-prove-it-really-is-a-thin-line-between-love-and-hate-976901.html">science</a> that the line between repulsion and attraction, horror and thrill, sublime and grotesque is fine. What sets the spectacle of public executions apart from these configurations is the staged, yet real, sensationalisation of an authentic tragedy. </p>
<h2>The commodification of pain</h2>
<p>Nowadays, images of death and suffering are routine in <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-tarantino-to-squid-game-why-do-so-many-people-enjoy-violence-170251">popular culture</a>. In the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/097325861000400301">age of tele-trauma</a>, pain has been commodified. The suffering individual is lost and repackaged into a fictional other for our consumption.</p>
<p>French philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s <a href="https://eprints.walisongo.ac.id/id/eprint/3868/4/104111026_Bab3.pdf">work</a> shows that consumption has nothing to do with gratifying our needs. Rather, it is the contemporary way in which we relate to one another and to society at large. In processing information from the media, we transform objects (reality) into signs (virtuality) to create alternative value-systems. These form a falsified reproduction of reality which alters public consciousness. </p>
<p>In other words, the media articulation of violent images and language produces specific meaning about the suffering of others. It shapes up specific ways in which we – the audience – engage with those distant and mediated vulnerabilities. This produces a shift in our response to pain and suffering. We move from empathy to apathy.</p>
<p>In the mid-19th century, Dickens was already noting how the spectacle of public execution triggered a collective disconnect from the suffering of others. In his letter to the Times he wrote: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>When the day dawned, thieves, low prostitutes, ruffians, and vagabonds of every kind flocked on to the ground, with every variety of offensive and foul behaviour. There was no more emotion, no more pity, no more thought that two immortal souls had gone to judgement.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Today we continue to both demonise and crave the vulnerability of others. The difference is that we no longer do it collectively in the public square, but intimately in our homes. It is an exercise which Baudrillard describes, in his 2000 book Screened Out, as a “<a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/1561-screened-out">great laundering</a>”. By falsely identifying with distant victims of pain from our position of safety, we are able to condone our indifference and overwrite a more edifying, self-absolving story.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198904/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caterina Nirta does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Learning about the history of public executions offers insight into our contemporary appetite for – and apathy towards – the suffering of others.Caterina Nirta, Lecturer in Criminology, Royal Holloway University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1975342023-01-13T03:28:36Z2023-01-13T03:28:36ZIran executions: the role of the ‘revolutionary courts’ in breaching human rights<p>The Iranian government has attempted to brutally suppress the widespread protests sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody in September 2022. </p>
<p>Central to Iran’s response have been the country’s “revolutionary courts”. They have conducted heavily-criticised trials resulting in <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-64209452">at least four executions</a>, while over 100 protesters are in considerable danger of imminent execution. </p>
<p>Criminal trials in these courts often occur behind closed doors presided over by clerics, with none of the standard guarantees of criminal procedure such as allowing time and access to lawyers to prepare a defence.</p>
<p>Submissions to the United Nations <a href="https://upr-info.org/en/review/iran-islamic-republic">from Iranian civil society organisations</a> report that lawyers are routinely denied access to clients, and that coerced confessions, often obtained by torture, are used as evidence.</p>
<p>Tara Sepehri Far, senior Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch, <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/12/13/iran-death-sentences-against-protesters">describes the trials</a> as “a total travesty of justice”.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/iran-executes-first-protester-as-human-rights-abuses-come-under-international-scrutiny-195699">Iran executes first protester as human rights abuses come under international scrutiny</a>
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<h2>Unfair trials</h2>
<p>Criminal trials that are <a href="https://theglobepost.com/2018/02/22/iran-revolutionary-courts/">unfair by international standards</a> have been a feature of the Iranian legal system since the 1979 <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2014/2/11/iran-1979-the-islamic-revolution-that-shook-the-world">Islamic revolution</a>.</p>
<p>The courts <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34550377">were established</a> to try opponents of the regime who face ill-defined national security charges that carry the death penalty. Such <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/12/13/iran-death-sentences-against-protesters">vague charges</a> include waging war against God (“Moharebeh”), corruption on Earth (“Ifsad fel Arz”), and armed rebellion (“baghi”).</p>
<p>The courts are integral to the consolidation of Islamist power which began within a few months of the revolution. As is apparent from the <a href="https://www.cfr.org/article/islamic-republics-power-centers">structure of the Iranian government</a>, the courts complement the role of para-state organs such as <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-13/what-we-know-about-the-basij-in-iran/101534184">the Basij</a>.</p>
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<p>The Basij is a paramilitary organisation formed very soon after the revolution. It supports the <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/mena/iran/2022/12/05/who-are-irans-morality-police-and-what-do-they-enforce/">guidance patrol</a>, known colloquially as the morality police.</p>
<p>The Basij is essential to the Iranian authoritarian state. It sits under the command of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, and is fiercely loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.</p>
<p>The United States Treasury has imposed sanctions on senior members of the Basij, and on a <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm524">network of businesses</a> it believes is financing the organisation. </p>
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<h2>Human rights obligations</h2>
<p>The revolutionary courts’ secret trials, vague charges, denial of lawyers, and evidence obtained by coercion and torture have focused attention on Iran’s flagrant and persistent breaches of its international human rights obligations.</p>
<p>In 1975, Iran ratified the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-civil-and-political-rights">International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights</a>, which guarantees the right to life and the right to live free from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The United Nations Human Rights Committee <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/topic/death-penalty">has stated</a> the death penalty is not consistent with these guarantees, putting Iran in breach of its international human rights obligations. </p>
<p>The guarantee of a right not to be tortured is repeated in the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-against-torture-and-other-cruel-inhuman-or-degrading">Convention Against Torture</a>, which Iran has not ratified. It’s the only country in the Middle East to not have done so, and <a href="https://indicators.ohchr.org/">one of only 20 in the world</a>.</p>
<p>In a periodic review of Iran’s human rights compliance, the UN <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/upr/ir-index">recommended in 2020</a> that Iran ratify the treaty, end the use of torture, and credibly investigate and prosecute all allegations of torture. <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/03/12/iran-universal-periodic-review-outcome-statement">Iran rejected</a> these recommendations.</p>
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<p>The <a href="https://iranhumanrights.org/2022/12/lynching-in-iran-majidreza-rahnavard-23-publicly-hanged-in-state-sponsored-murder/">Center for Human Rights in Iran warns</a> the executions are “a prelude to more state-sponsored murders of young people in the absence of a strong and coordinated international response”.</p>
<p>Hangings such as these have been characterised by <a href="https://www.ncr-iran.org/en/ncri-statements/statement-human-rights/iran-desperate-to-save-his-regime-in-its-final-phase-khamenei-resorts-to-more-executions/">opposition parties in exile</a> as desperate efforts to forestall the inevitable overthrow of the regime, and by the US Department of State <a href="https://www.state.gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-december-12-2022/">as</a> efforts to intimidate Iranians and suppress dissent. </p>
<h2>Will sanctions help?</h2>
<p>Australia’s response to two executions late last year was to <a href="https://www.skynews.com.au/world-news/foreign-minister-penny-wong-criticises-iran-over-execution-of-mohsen-shekari-as-regime-cracks-down-on-protesters/news-story/d36b051ee6e6cf1d3d8832fc2b6ab9e9">condemn the executions</a>, issue a <a href="https://www.foreignminister.gov.au/minister/penny-wong/media-release/joint-statement-foreign-ministers-australia-canada-and-new-zealand-execution-protesters-iran">joint statement</a> with Canada and New Zealand, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/dec/10/australia-imposes-sanctions-on-irans-morality-police-and-13-russians-and-iranians?amp">subject</a> Iran’s morality police and the Basij to international sanctions.</p>
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<p>Despite widespread <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/12/iran-un-experts-condemn-execution-protestor-raise-alarm-about-detained">international condemnation</a>, Iran is <a href="https://www.econotimes.com/Iran-Ebrahim-Raisi-pledges-to-continue-crackdown-on-protests-1647032">following through on its pledge</a> to continue to crackdown on the protests. </p>
<p>We can condemn the country’s conduct and enact sanctions, but sadly, Iran is free to persist despite sanctions if it wants.</p>
<p>At the very least, what international sanctions and global outrage may do is give heart and hope to the protesters, and help signal to them that the world is watching and standing with them. </p>
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<p><em>Simon would like to acknowledge an Iranian-born colleague who requested anonymity for their contributions to this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197534/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon would like to thank an Iranian-born colleague who requested anonymity for their contributions to this article.</span></em></p>Criminal trials in these courts often occur behind closed doors presided over by clerics, and there’s often no evidence beyond a confession extracted by means of torture.Simon Rice, Professor of Law; Kim Santow Chair of Law and Social Justice, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1952512022-11-29T13:35:15Z2022-11-29T13:35:15ZAlabama’s execution problems are part of a long history of botched lethal injections<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497724/original/file-20221128-5230-q7icct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C5%2C3457%2C2175&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In some cases, death row inmates have been strapped to the gurney for hours.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/DeathPenaltyProblemsExplainer/86ba64530aa64b6ba241c943b619f14a/photo?Query=alabama%20execution&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=68&currentItemNo=2">AP Photo/Sue Ogrock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/11/21/1138357929/alabama-executions-pause-lethal-injection">announced</a> a pause in her state’s use of capital punishment. It follows a run of botched lethal injection executions in the state, including two where the procedure <a href="https://eji.org/news/kenny-smith-alabama-execution/">had to be abandoned before the inmates succumbed to the cocktail of death drugs</a>.</p>
<p>The last straw appears to have been the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/17/us/alabama-execution-kenneth-smith.html">failed attempt to put Kenneth Smith to death</a> on Nov. 17, 2022. The state had to call off the procedure after difficulty in securing an IV line.</p>
<p>But that was just the latest execution not to go as planned. In September, Alabama had to stop <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/alabama-inmate-execution-alan-miller/671620/">the execution of Alan Eugene Miller</a> after prison officials poked him with needles for more than an hour because they could not find a usable vein in which to secure an IV.</p>
<p>Even when the execution was carried out resulting in death, the manner has been problematic. When the state executed <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/joe-nathan-james-jr-alabama-apparently-botched-recent-execution-anti-death-penalty-group-asserts/">Joe Nathan James</a> on July 28, 2022, the process – which is normally supposed to be over in a matter of minutes – <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/joe-nathan-james-execution-alabama/671127/">took more than three hours</a>. During that time, officials tried repeatedly to insert the IV lines necessary to carry the deadly drugs and jabbed James with needles. </p>
<p>In a statement on Nov. 21, Ivey <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/21/politics/alabama-executions-pause-review-ivey">ordered</a> the state Department of Corrections to do a thorough review of the procedures used in executions and asked the state’s attorney general, Steve Marshall, to stop the process for two upcoming executions.</p>
<p>Alabama officials <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/us/alabama-executions-lethal-injection.html">have blamed</a> their problems on what they have described as frivolous, last-minute legal maneuvers by death penalty defense lawyers. In the cases of Miller and Smith, state officials claimed that they ran out of time before the death warrant was due to expire.</p>
<p>But whatever the cause, Alabama’s execution difficulties are not unique to that state. </p>
<p>My <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=23979">research shows</a> that since 1900, in states across the country, lethal injections have been more frequently botched than any of the other type of execution methods used throughout that period. This includes hanging, electrocution, the gas chamber and the firing squad – even though these approaches are not without their problems.</p>
<h2>The early history of lethal injection</h2>
<p>Lethal injection <a href="https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a25689/gerry-commission-report-methods-of-execution/">was first considered by the state of New York</a> in the late 1880s when it convened a blue ribbon commission to study alternatives to hanging. During its deliberations, Dr. Julius Mount Bleyer <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=E7S3C4_IYmYC&pg=PA73&lpg=PA73&dq=that+%E2%80%9Cthe+condemned+could+be+executed+on+his+bed+in+his+cell+with+a+6-gram+injection+of+sulfate+of+morphine.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=DX7rmZpYKi&sig=ACfU3U2t-1PK08QmFL3jwZ63iRWRO6URAw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiOpYe52Zv4AhWBZjABHbQKD00Q6AF6BAgCEAM#v=onepage&q=that%20%E2%80%9Cthe%20condemned%20could%20be%20executed%20on%20his%20bed%20in%20his%20cell%20with%20a%206-gram%20injection%20of%20sulfate%20of%20morphine.%E2%80%9D&f=false">invited the commission to envision</a> a future in which a person condemned to death “could be executed on his bed in his cell with a 6-gram injection of sulfate of morphine.”</p>
<p>Bleyer and his allies <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/medlejo5&div=43&g_sent=1&casa_token=">argued</a> that the procedure would be painless. They said that unlike hanging, the method could not be messed up. It also would be cheap, they claimed – all that was needed was a needle and a small amount of morphine.</p>
<p>Lethal injection’s critics told the commission that the method would actually be easily botched, especially if doctors did not conduct the procedure. And even when done right, those in favor of the death penalty as the ultimate sentence further argued that it would be too humane. It would take the dread out of death and dampen capital punishment’s deterrent effect.</p>
<p>Ultimately, lethal injection’s opponents prevailed, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Executioners-Current-Westinghouse-Invention-Electric/dp/037572446X">aided by the medical community’s unwavering stance against it</a>. Doctors “did not want the syringe, which was associated with the alleviation of human suffering, to become an instrument of death.”</p>
<p>For nearly 100 years after New York’s decision, no jurisdiction in the United States authorized execution by lethal injection. But the early debate over lethal injection foreshadowed arguments that were heard in 1977 during Oklahoma’s consideration of this execution method.</p>
<p>Proponents echoed Bleyer and <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2005/09/guilty-man/">declared</a> that executions using this method could be accomplished with “no struggle, no stench, no pain.”</p>
<p>This time they won.</p>
<p>The specific drugs to be used in lethal injection – the anesthetic <a href="https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/molecule-of-the-week/archive/s/sodium-thiopental.html">sodium thiopental</a> and <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/339801/">pancuronium bromide</a>, a muscle relaxant – would not be chosen until four years later. Although the original law only called for those two drugs, a third drug was soon added: <a href="https://www.hrw.org/reports/2006/us0406/4.htm#:%7E:text=Potassium%20chloride%20is%20the%20drug,within%20a%20minute%20of%20injection.">potassium chloride</a>, which causes cardiac arrest. </p>
<p>Together, these three drugs would <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-alper-3-drug-cocktail-20170420-story.html">make up what became the “standard” three-drug, lethal injection protocol</a>. And what started in Oklahoma spread quickly. Lethal injection soon became the execution method of choice across the United States in every state that had the death penalty. </p>
<h2>Lethal injection’s troubles</h2>
<p>But right from the start, administering lethal injections proved to be a complex procedure that was difficult to get right. In fact, the <a href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/charlie-brooks-last-words/">first use of lethal injection by Texas in 1982</a> gave a foretaste of some of the problems that would later come to characterize the method of execution.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black and white photo shows a white gurney with straps in a bricked room." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497726/original/file-20221128-13-taimz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497726/original/file-20221128-13-taimz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497726/original/file-20221128-13-taimz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497726/original/file-20221128-13-taimz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497726/original/file-20221128-13-taimz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497726/original/file-20221128-13-taimz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/497726/original/file-20221128-13-taimz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lethal injection chambers have remained relatively unchanged since being introduced in Texas in 1982.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/TexasDeptofCorrectionsExecutionRoom1982/00ea6690975145cca2dfd711504ce77e/photo?Query=lethal%20injection%201982&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=14&currentItemNo=13">AP Photo/Ed Kolenovsky</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Texas team charged with executing a prisoner named <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-execution-by-lethal-injection#:%7E:text=The%20first%20execution%20by%20lethal,when%20administered%20in%20lesser%20doses.">Charles Brooks</a> repeatedly <a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1982/12/16/painful-questions-pbtbhe-execution-of-charles/">failed in their efforts to insert an IV</a> into a vein in his arm, splattering blood onto the sheet covering his body. And after the IV was secured and the drugs began to flow, Brooks seemed to experience considerable pain.</p>
<p>The difficulties in Brooks’ execution and in subsequent lethal injections result from the fact that medical ethics <a href="https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4294&context=flr">do not allow</a> doctors to take part in choosing the drugs or administering them. In the place of doctors, prison officials are responsible for the lethal injection procedure. In addition, dosages of the drugs used are <a href="https://people.howstuffworks.com/lethal-injection5.htm">standardized</a> rather than tailored to the needs of particular inmates as they would be in a medical procedure. As a result, sometimes the lethal injection drugs don’t work correctly. </p>
<p>Despite the effort to medicalize executions, the history of lethal injection has been anything but smooth, sterile and predictable. In fact, my research reveals that of the 1,054 executions carried out from 1982 to 2010 using the standard three-drug lethal injection protocol, more than 7% were botched.</p>
<p>Since then, owing in part to <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/04/12/how-the-drug-shortage-has-slowed-the-death-penalty-treadmill">difficulties death penalty states have had in acquiring drugs</a> for the standard three-drug protocol, <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=35871">things appear to have gotten worse</a>. States have turned to questionable drug suppliers, including compounding pharmacies that are <a href="https://www.fda.gov/drugs/human-drug-compounding/compounding-and-fda-questions-and-answers#:%7E:text=Are%20compounded%20drugs%20approved%20by,safety%2C%20effectiveness%2C%20and%20quality.">not subject to extensive regulation by the Food and Drug Administration</a>.</p>
<p>In the last decade, states have used no less than 10 different drug combinations in lethal injections. Some of them were used multiple times, while others were used just once.</p>
<p>As states have experimented in the hope of finding a reliable drug protocol, <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=35871">my research shows</a> that botched executions have occurred as much as 20% of the time, depending on which of the newer drug protocols is employed. </p>
<p>During some of those executions, inmates have cried out in pain and repeatedly gasped for breath long after they were supposed to have been rendered unconscious.</p>
<p>In September 2020, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/09/21/793177589/gasping-for-air-autopsies-reveal-troubling-effects-of-lethal-injection#:%7E:text=Most%20states%20use%20three%20drugs,as%20cruel%3F%22%20says%20Zivot.">an NPR investigation</a> helped explain the high rate of bungled executions. It found signs of pulmonary edema fluid filling the lungs in many of the post-lethal injection autopsies it reviewed. Those autopsies reveal that inmates’ lungs failed while they continued to try to breathe, causing them to feel as if they were drowning and suffocating.</p>
<h2>Responding to lethal injection’s problems</h2>
<p>Alabama now joins <a href="https://sanquentinnews.com/gov-mike-dewine-halts-executions-in-ohio/">Ohio</a> and <a href="https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2022/05/02/tennessee-governor-pauses-2022-executions-lethal-injection-review/9612950002/">Tennessee</a> as states that have paused executions and launched investigations after lethal injection failures. Other states <a href="https://account.thestate.com/paywall/subscriber-only?resume=251151894&intcid=ab_archive">have resurrected</a> previously discredited methods of execution – like electrocution or the firing squad – and added them to their menu of execution options on the books. </p>
<p>Lethal injection’s problems also have contributed to <a href="https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/state-and-federal-info/state-by-state">the decision of 11 states to abolish the death penalty since 2007</a>.</p>
<p>Reviewing the history of the different execution methods used in this country, Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/16-602_n758.pdf">wrote in 2017</a>: “States develop a method of execution, which is generally accepted for a time. Science then reveals that … the states’ chosen method of execution causes unconstitutional levels of suffering.”</p>
<p>And, referring specifically to lethal injection and its problems, she observed, “What cruel irony that the method [of execution] that appears most humane may turn out to be our most cruel experiment yet.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195251/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Austin Sarat does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Alabama has paused the carrying out of death sentences after a series of cases in which the state struggled with the procedure.Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1893652022-09-01T12:25:12Z2022-09-01T12:25:12Z50 years after landmark death penalty case, Supreme Court’s ruling continues to guide execution debate<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482104/original/file-20220831-4904-nyopg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3462%2C2184&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The execution chamber inside Oklahoma State Penitentiary</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/DeathPenaltyOklahoma/cbf64b4cb0af4222a53b90da28d68f08/photo?Query=death%20penalty%20Oklahoma&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=220&currentItemNo=29">AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The state of Oklahoma <a href="https://apnews.com/article/executions-oklahoma-mcalester-albert-hale-207f11efd600ce46c00315c9c077c321?taid=630797576450cd0001573de5&utm_campaign=TrueAnthem&utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter">put James Coddington to death</a> on Aug. 25, 2022, for the 1997 murder of a 73-year-old friend who refused to give him money to buy drugs.</p>
<p>It marks the beginning of a busy period at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary’s execution chamber. Last month, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/us/oklahoma-executions-scheduled.html">state announced plans</a> to carry out the death sentence of 25 people over the next couple of years. </p>
<p>As a scholar who has long <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691102610/when-the-state-kills">followed the capital punishment debate</a> in the U.S., I know that Oklahoma’s plan runs against the grain of the death penalty’s recent history. Over the past several years both the number of death sentences imposed and executions carried out across the U.S. <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/12/30/22187578/death-penalty-united-states-executions-decline-gregg-georgia-bucklew-precythe">has declined sharply</a>. </p>
<p>Since 2007 more states have <a href="https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/state-and-federal-info/state-by-state">abolished the death penalty</a> than in any comparable 15-year period in American history. And in November 2020 America elected its <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/01/biden-death-penalty-agenda.html">first president ever to openly oppose capital punishment</a>.</p>
<p>Today, fewer jurisdictions are using the death penalty, but some – like Oklahoma – seem to be doubling down. America’s death penalty is now defined, as the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center <a href="https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-and-research/dpic-reports/dpic-year-end-reports/the-death-penalty-in-2021-year-end-report">noted</a> in a 2021 report, “by two competing forces: the continuing long-term erosion of capital punishment across most of the country, and extreme conduct by a dwindling number of outlier jurisdictions to continue to pursue death sentences and executions.”</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A video screen shows death row inmate James Coddington dressed in prison clothes." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482118/original/file-20220831-8166-wmmp7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482118/original/file-20220831-8166-wmmp7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482118/original/file-20220831-8166-wmmp7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482118/original/file-20220831-8166-wmmp7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482118/original/file-20220831-8166-wmmp7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482118/original/file-20220831-8166-wmmp7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482118/original/file-20220831-8166-wmmp7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The execution of James Coddington was the first of 25 planned executions to be carried out over a 28-month period in Oklahoma.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/OklahomaExecutionCoddingtonClemency/064e4bdeae794b5db0f0a067f719164b/photo?Query=death%20penalty%20Oklahoma&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=220&currentItemNo=13">AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That “extreme conduct” includes imposing death sentences arbitrarily and sometimes <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/sentenced-to-death-but-innocent-these-are-stories-of-justice-gone-wrong">sentencing innocent people to death</a>. Moreover, it includes <a href="https://harvardcrcl.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/07/07.30.2020-Phillips-Marceau-For-Website.pdf">carrying out executions</a> in a racially discriminatory way. </p>
<p>Looked at as a whole, capital punishment in the United States, as Amnesty International <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/death-penalty/the-death-penalty-your-questions-answered/">puts it</a>, is used “against the most vulnerable in society, including the poor, ethnic and religious minorities, and people with mental disabilities.”</p>
<p>Indeed, <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7616&context=jclc">framing the argument against the death penalty</a> in ways that appeal to American’s sense of procedural fairness and equal treatment has been a tactic of death penalty abolitionists for decades – and may help explain the <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/1606/death-penalty.aspx">gradual decline in popular support for executions</a> since the early 1990s.</p>
<p>Yet the U.S. appears to be at something of a <a href="https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr/vol62/iss1/2/">stalemate</a> when it comes to the death penalty – the country is seemingly unable to either achieve fairness in capital sentencing or to abolish the death penalty once and for all.</p>
<p>My research on capital punishment <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814762189/the-road-to-abolition/">suggests</a> that both <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1192427">the arguments of today’s abolitionists</a> and the current stalemate can be traced back half a century to the Supreme Court’s 1972 decision in a landmark death penalty case: <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1971/69-5030">Furman v. Georgia</a>. For a time, that decision <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-1711-1.html">stopped the death penalty in its tracks</a> and offered a stinging critique of its unfairness. Yet it left the door open for states to implement or reform their own laws – and some chose to preserve capital punishment.</p>
<h2>The Furman framework</h2>
<p>The Furman litigation was the culmination of a campaign <a href="https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/cruel-and-unusual-supreme-court-and-capital-punishment">conducted</a> by a group of lawyers under the auspices of the <a href="https://www.naacpldf.org/">NAACP Legal Defense Fund</a>. They hoped the Supreme Court would strike down the death penalty because of its demonstrated racial discrimination and other inequities.</p>
<p>What they got instead was something less.</p>
<p>The court <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/408/238/">issued a cryptic and unusual “per curiam” decision</a> – one which is a <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/per_curiam">given in the name of the court rather than any specific judges</a>.</p>
<p>It read: “The Court holds that the imposition and carrying out of the death penalty in these cases constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.” The ruling was narrow in scope. It set out that if a death sentence was handed out in a capricious or discriminatory nature, then it would be unconstitutional.</p>
<p>But the NAACP lawyers <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/A-Wild-Justice/">were unable</a> to get a majority of the court to agree on a set of reasons for this judgment. In fact, five justices each wrote separate opinions concurring in the judgment of the court. The other four justices each wrote separate dissenting opinions.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.oyez.org/justices/william_o_douglas">Justice William Douglas</a>, who <a href="https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/justice-douglas-and-death-penalty-demanding-view-due-process">did not think the death penalty was always unconstitutional</a>, used his opinion to condemn the arbitrary and discriminatory way in which death sentences were imposed under laws that gave complete discretion to the sentencing judge or jury.</p>
<p>Because judges or juries rarely handed down death sentences, <a href="https://www.oyez.org/justices/potter_stewart">Justice Potter Stewart</a> wrote that any particular capital defendant would have to be very unlucky to get one. It was, Stewart said, like “being struck by lightning.” <a href="https://www.oyez.org/justices/byron_r_white">Justice Byron White</a> agreed and concluded that, because they were rarely imposed, they could serve no legitimate punitive purpose.</p>
<p>Justices <a href="https://www.oyez.org/justices/william_j_brennan_jr">William Brennan</a> and <a href="https://www.oyez.org/justices/thurgood_marshall">Thurgood Marshall</a> both <a href="https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1432&context=ndjlepp">announced that the death penalty was, in their view, always unconstitutional</a>.</p>
<p>The dissenters were similarly split in their views, though they generally agreed that the question of whether the death penalty should be ended was a legislative and not a judicial question.</p>
<p>The Furman decision <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0098261X.2008.10767891">was both</a> a remarkable achievement for the NAACP lawyers and a disappointment for those seeking to abolish capital punishment in this country. </p>
<p>It was remarkable because, for the first time in American history, the court <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/A-Wild-Justice/">insisted</a> that if the U.S. were going to use death as a punishment, the government had to take extraordinary steps to ensure that it was administered fairly. It was a disappointment because the court did not say, once and for all, that capital punishment could not be squared with the Constitution.</p>
<h2>The return of capital punishment</h2>
<p>Reaction to the Furman decision <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/books/review/a-wild-justice-by-evan-j-mandery.html">was swift</a>. Death penalty states <a href="https://repository.uchastings.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=hastings_journal_crime_punishment">worked hard to discern</a> its meaning and to ascertain what they could do to restore capital punishment. </p>
<p>Some states, such as Louisiana and North Carolina, enacted mandatory death penalty statutes, eliminating discretion entirely from the death penalty system. Others – Georgia, Florida and Texas – chose a different path, retaining the punishment but guiding discretion by narrowing and specifying the class of death-eligible crimes. </p>
<p>Four years after Furman, the death penalty was back before the Supreme Court. The question was whether either of those approaches adequately addressed the concerns expressed by the justices who concurred with the Furman decision.</p>
<p>This time the court’s verdict was less equivocal, though no less divided. In a 5-4 decision, it <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/428/280/#tab-opinion-1951897">struck down</a> mandatory death sentencing statutes. In addition, a seven-justice majority <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/428/153/#tab-opinion-1951891">found</a> guided discretion statutes to be constitutional.</p>
<p>Despite compelling evidence that narrowing and specifying the class of death-eligible defendants did not cure the problems of unfairness identified in Furman, the Supreme Court <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/481/279/#tab-opinion-1957081">again upheld the death penalty</a> in 1987. In <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1986/84-6811">McCleskey v. Kemp</a>, it ruled that statistical evidence could not be used to prove that racial discrimination persisted even after the implementation of the Furman-inspired reforms.</p>
<h2>Furman’s legacy</h2>
<p>Fifty years after Furman, arbitrariness and discrimination remain <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/us/racial-gap-death-penalty.html">persistent features of America’s death penalty system</a>. Today Americans <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/02/most-americans-favor-the-death-penalty-despite-concerns-about-its-administration/#:%7E:text=Yet%20%22%22">are still arguing about fairness in that system</a>. And the case against the death penalty continues to be made on the terms that Furman’s concurring opinions articulated.</p>
<p>But Furman also initiated a process that <a href="https://www.ncsc.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0023/17474/give-him-a-fair-trial-then-hang-him.pdf">lent a veneer of legal respectability</a> to the death penalty system. It has allowed states such as Oklahoma to keep the machinery of death running by making procedural changes rather than addressing the injustices that continue to plague capital punishment in the United States. </p>
<p>Sociologist and law professor <a href="https://its.law.nyu.edu/facultyprofiles/index.cfm?fuseaction=profile.overview&personid=19938">David Garland</a> <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674066106">rightly observed</a> that Furman and the court decisions that took up its mantle have served “to enhance the perceived lawfulness and legitimacy of capital punishment” and acted “as a force for its conservation.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189365/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Austin Sarat does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In 1972, justices handed down a decision that attacked discriminatory and capricious death sentences. But it left the door ajar for states to continue the practice.Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1876712022-07-26T20:53:43Z2022-07-26T20:53:43ZTop democracy activists were executed in Myanmar – 4 key things to know<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476125/original/file-20220726-21-93tuny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Activists including Myanmar citizens protest in Tokyo on July 26, 2022, against Myanmar's recent execution of four prisoners </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/activists-including-myanmar-nationals-take-part-in-a-rally-to-protest-picture-id1242118205?s=2048x2048">Philip Fong/AFP via Getty Images </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The current conflict in Myanmar raised new <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/us-all-options-on-table-to-punish-myanmar-junta-over-executions-/6673458.html">international concern</a> when the country’s military <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/25/world/asia/myanmar-executions.html">announced on</a> July 25, 2022, that it had executed four pro-democracy activists and political prisoners. </p>
<p>The high-profile killings were the latest signal that the civil conflict in the Southeast Asian country is deepening, almost 18 months after the military <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/myanmar-news-protests-coup.html">staged a coup</a> and overtook the democratically elected government in February 2021.</p>
<p>The military killed two leading political leaders who opposed the junta – Kyaw Min Yu, a writer and activist known as Jimmy, and Phyo Zeya Thaw, a hip-hop musician turned lawmaker under the old political regime – citing counterterrorism charges. </p>
<p>Two other people – Hla Myo Aung and Aung Thura Zaw – <a href="https://apnews.com/article/myanmar-terrorism-democracy-aung-san-suu-kyi-government-and-politics-ca87f032cb6c7407b1d776574f15c5a8">were executed after they were convicted of</a> killing a woman who they reportedly thought was a military informer. </p>
<p>The executions follow a recent report from human rights group Amnesty International that the military is <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/20/amnesty-accuses-myanmar-of-war-crimes-over-landmines">laying land mines</a> in residential areas to hurt and kill civilians. </p>
<p>I am a scholar of Myanmar <a href="https://www.niu.edu/clas/world-languages/about/directory/than.shtml">politics and culture</a>. Here are four key points to help untangle the country’s complicated conflict and the meaning behind the executions. </p>
<h2>The military government is sending a message</h2>
<p>The political executions of these activists were the first <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/25/myanmar-junta-executes-democracy-activists-state-media">in many decades</a> for Myanmar, which has vacillated from military control to emerging democratic leadership over the past few decades. The military wants to send a message to other citizens – and to the world – that it is in charge. </p>
<p>But behind a thin veneer of control, the military’s fears of public opposition and uprisings can be detected by people in Myanmar and outside observers alike.</p>
<p>Soldiers overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi, the former leader and foreign minister of Myanmar, in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/06/aung-san-suu-kyi-sentenced-to-four-years-in-prison-for-incitement">early 2021</a> and first placed her under house arrest. </p>
<p>The coup <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/myanmar/myanmar-s-spring-revolution">sparked a wave of protests</a> across the country – over 4,700 anti-coup events were reported by the end of June 2021. The military responded with conducting mass arrests and killing civilians. </p>
<p>The military then sent Aung San Suu Kyi to prison on multiple corruption charges <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-61239881">in April 2022</a> that the nonprofit Human Rights Watch <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/27/world/asia/myanmar-coup-trial-aung-san-suu-kyi.html">has called “bogus</a>.”</p>
<p>Executing four revolutionary leaders will likely escalate nationwide resistance to the military.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476127/original/file-20220726-32598-qs6ath.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Protesters in Bangkok hold photos of Aung San Suu Kyi as they march through the streets, with umbrellas and flags." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476127/original/file-20220726-32598-qs6ath.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476127/original/file-20220726-32598-qs6ath.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476127/original/file-20220726-32598-qs6ath.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476127/original/file-20220726-32598-qs6ath.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476127/original/file-20220726-32598-qs6ath.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476127/original/file-20220726-32598-qs6ath.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476127/original/file-20220726-32598-qs6ath.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protesters in Bangkok hold photos of Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s detained former leader, on July 26, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/protesters-shout-slogans-and-hold-photos-of-detained-myanmar-civilian-picture-id1242117862?s=2048x2048">Manan Vatsyayana/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The conflict’s complicated back story</h2>
<p>When the military staged the 2021 coup, the generals made a miscalculation. </p>
<p>Aung San Suu Kyi’s political party, the National League for Democracy, had won a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-54899170">landslide victory</a> against the military-backed opposition in November 2020. Military generals demanded another election, offering little evidence of irregularities, but recognizing that power was slipping from their hands. </p>
<p>Military representatives still held an <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-35457290">allocated 25% of parliament seats</a> because of <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/03/10/myanmar-democracys-dead-end">the constitution</a>, but without their allied political parties, their political leverage was limited. </p>
<p>At the time, there was a global pandemic. The <a href="https://www.adb.org/countries/myanmar/economy">economy slowed down</a>. </p>
<p>The generals likely hoped that the coup would be merely a smooth transition back to the old system – before Aung San Suu Kyi’s party was first elected in 2015 – when the different generations of generals had controlled everything, <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/myanmar-history-coup-military-rule-ethnic-conflict-rohingya">from 1962</a> onward.</p>
<p>But the National League for Democracy’s ascension to power brought about many positive changes, particularly in the country’s heartland, where a <a href="https://www.stimson.org/2021/the-importance-of-ethnic-minorities-to-myanmars-future/">major ethnic group, Bamar</a>, lives. The country’s <a href="https://tradingeconomics.com/myanmar/gdp">gross domestic product, an indicator of economic growth</a>, was also at an all-time high in 2020. </p>
<p>Many could see life was improving for them and for their children. The generals did not foresee the outrage that would follow the coup.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476132/original/file-20220726-34052-r36mpc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An assault weapon and the uniformed legs of a soldier are visible in the back of a truck as seen through the window of a bus on a busy city street." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476132/original/file-20220726-34052-r36mpc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476132/original/file-20220726-34052-r36mpc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476132/original/file-20220726-34052-r36mpc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476132/original/file-20220726-34052-r36mpc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476132/original/file-20220726-34052-r36mpc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476132/original/file-20220726-34052-r36mpc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476132/original/file-20220726-34052-r36mpc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Women look out the window of a bus at armed soldiers patrolling a street in Yangon, Myanmar.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/two-women-look-out-the-window-of-a-bus-as-armed-soldiers-patrol-a-picture-id1242116402?s=2048x2048">STR/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How political resistance has played out</h2>
<p>Early days of peaceful demonstrations after the coup quickly turned to armed resistance when the army did not respect the people’s demands to return power to the government they elected.</p>
<p>U.N. human rights experts <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/06/1120292">have said</a> the military junta is a “criminal enterprise” that is systematically committing murder, torture and forced disappearances. The junta <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/06/myanmar-un-experts-condemn-militarys-digital-dictatorship">has also blocked access</a> to many social media sites, like Facebook, and engaged in <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/06/1120292">widespread human rights violations</a>, including attacks on civilians, according to the U.N.</p>
<p>Many young people joined ethnic revolutionary groups, many of which had been fighting <a href="https://theconversation.com/myanmars-brutal-military-was-once-a-force-for-freedom-but-its-been-waging-civil-war-for-decades-158270">the army since 1948</a>, when Myanmar – then known as Burma – <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Myanmar/The-initial-impact-of-colonialism">became independent</a> from British rule.</p>
<p>Ethnic armies supported the young people who decided to join the resistance, and housed, fed and trained them. </p>
<p>Some Myanmar citizens, meanwhile, have donated their incomes, houses and cars to help support revolutionary groups. It’s become popular for people to visit websites and play <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/video-game-allowing-players-to-shoot-junta-soldiers-online-funds-resistance-efforts-in-myanmar/ar-AAZP7MQ">online games</a> created by Myanmar tech developers – generating money that goes to these groups. </p>
<p>This bypasses the military’s crackdown on mobile <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-east-asia/myanmar/b167-cost-coup-myanmar-edges-toward-state-collapse">money transfers</a> to members of the armed groups, and the <a href="https://restofworld.org/2021/myanmars-military-coup-has-pushed-its-fledgling-digital-economy-to-the-brink-of-collapse/">closure of many banks</a>. </p>
<p>The military is also <a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/myanmars-military-losing-ground-rebels-and-ethnic-armies-part-1">losing some territorial control</a>, as more and more regions slowly form their own <a href="https://www.myanmar-now.org/en/topics/5052">administrations</a>, which the military does not recognize.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476129/original/file-20220726-10345-iwahmg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A cat walks in front of a row of men holding guns. Only their bodies are shown." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476129/original/file-20220726-10345-iwahmg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476129/original/file-20220726-10345-iwahmg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476129/original/file-20220726-10345-iwahmg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476129/original/file-20220726-10345-iwahmg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476129/original/file-20220726-10345-iwahmg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476129/original/file-20220726-10345-iwahmg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476129/original/file-20220726-10345-iwahmg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A cat walks in front of members of the People’s Defense Force – a armed group in Myanmar that opposes the military government.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/cat-walks-in-front-of-the-peoples-defence-force-members-lining-up-picture-id1241835141?s=2048x2048">David Mmr/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Other countries are mostly staying out of it</h2>
<p>The United States and other major powers have largely been absent as Myanmar has experienced a coup and subsequent political and economic crisis. </p>
<p>While the Myanmar army <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/27/holdstronger-togethermyanmarrussiaparademilitary-relationship">continues to get support and military supplies from Russia</a>, other countries have taken a wait-and-see approach. </p>
<p>One reason is that Myanmar’s situation is internal, and its military is not fighting other countries. Now, hundreds of internal groups in Myanmar are fighting over their vested interests, including territory. </p>
<p>I believe no clear winner will walk away from this civil war – and staging little to no interference has been the <a href="https://hir.harvard.edu/why-has-the-world-forgotten-about-myanmar/">international community’s general position</a>. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-61243316">People of Myanmar</a> have interpreted this stance as willful ignorance to their plight. </p>
<p>There are, however, some symbolic victories for the opposition by way of international engagement. </p>
<p>Ousted political leaders from the National League for Democracy and others against the junta formed a new shadow government, <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/myanmars-national-unity-government-and-its-prospects-military-victory">the National Unity Government</a>, in May 2021. Most of their top members operate “undercover or through members based abroad,” <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/07/asia/myanmar-nug-peoples-war-intl-hnk/index.html">according to CNN</a>.</p>
<p>The U.N. has not formally recognized the National Unity Government but has allowed representatives to speak at the U.N. on behalf of Myanmar.</p>
<p>The U.S. has hosted National Unity Government <a href="https://www.state.gov/the-deputy-secretarys-meeting-with-nug-representatives/">delegations</a> <a href="https://www.usip.org/publications/2021/10/myanmars-unity-government-meets-nsa-sullivan-gains-further-traction">several times</a> – but <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-politics-usa-fed-exclusive/exclusive-u-s-blocked-myanmar-junta-attempt-to-empty-1-billion-new-york-fed-account-sources-idUSKCN2AW2MD">it has yet to unfreeze</a> the US$1 billion the previous Myanmar government held at a U.S. Federal Reserve bank. </p>
<p>Both the National Unity Government and <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Myanmar-Crisis/US-hits-Myanmar-junta-with-1bn-asset-freeze-and-other-sanctions">the military</a> claim rights to this money. </p>
<h2>An uncertain future</h2>
<p>The coup triggered <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/myanmar-on-brink-of-economic-collapse-one-year-after-military-coup/a-60621514">an economic collapse</a>, plunging Myanmar’s currency to <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2021/09/myanmars-currency-falls-to-all-time-low-amid-post-coup-turmoil/">an all-time low</a>. </p>
<p>Many Myanmar citizens <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56356213">feel trapped</a> in the entrenched war. </p>
<p>The country is fast-forwarding into the past, when it was <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/04/a-rare-glimpse-into-burma/390567/">deeply isolated</a> from the world. And there is no clear end in sight to the conflict. </p>
<p>The military hosted <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-23/myanmar-s-ruling-military-offers-minorities-new-peace-talks/101010628">peace talks </a> in April and May, but fewer than half of the <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/myanmar-leader-begins-peace-talks-ethnic-militia-groups-84861289">country’s major 21 ethnic armed groups</a> attended. </p>
<p>Many of these groups together with the newly formed armed People’s Defense Forces, part of the National Unity Government, have vowed to fight on, especially after the executions. Because of their determination, many people in the country feel that the future is uncertain – but not hopeless.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187671/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tharaphi Than does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Myanmar’s military junta is losing some control over the country, but its execution of four high-profile leaders and prisoners sends a warning to Myanmar citizens and the rest of the world.Tharaphi Than, Associate Professor, Department of World Cultures and Languages, Northern Illinois UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1760432022-01-31T17:16:55Z2022-01-31T17:16:55ZMyanmar coup one year on: military junta threatens first executions in decades<p>Prisons in Myanmar have been ordered to <a href="https://twitter.com/DVB_English/status/1487002808557895682">clean the gallows</a>, in an apparent preparation for the execution of 101 political prisoners who have been <a href="https://www.rfa.org/burmese/news/yangon-death-penalty-01272022061209.html">sentenced to death</a> since the military coup one year ago. These would be the first official executions in the country in over three decades.</p>
<p>It is almost a year to the day since newly elected members of parliament were supposed to take their seats following the National League for Democracy’s landslide victory the previous November. Instead, they were arrested by the military together with President Win Myint and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi. </p>
<p>Since then, the military junta has oppressed the population through forced disappearances, torture, arrests, killings and intimidation, including forcing people from their homes and burning villages. According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, an organisation set up by former political prisoners from Myanmar, 1,503 people have been killed and 11,838 <a href="https://aappb.org/?p=19931">arrested by the junta</a> for taking part in the resistance movement. While many have already lost their lives in the fight for democracy, the order to clean the gallows marks a shift from battlefield deaths or extrajudicial killings in torture and interrogation, to killings condoned by the justice system.</p>
<p>This escalation of state violence and intimidation is significant, as the last executions to be carried out in Myanmar occurred in 1988. While the death penalty has remained part of the legal system and is occasionally used by judges, Myanmar has <a href="https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-and-subject-groups/death-penalty-research-unit/blog/2021/04/death-penalty-post-coup-myanmar">de facto abolished</a> it. Those who have received the sentence for the past 30 years have later seen it commuted to life imprisonment, or been <a href="https://teacircleoxford.com/research-report/rioting-for-rule-of-law-prison-amnesties-and-riots-in-myanmar/">released on amnesties</a>. </p>
<p>While the gallows have not been in use for decades, they represent extreme fear and horror within Myanmar prisons, where people have been kept on death row under multiple political regimes. In <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340023000_We_are_Like_Water_in_Their_Hands_-_experiences_of_imprisonment_in_Myanmar">my research</a>, I have found that authoritarian practices are still carried out in the prisons today. These practices are the legacy from former authoritarian regimes and indicate the weakness of the democratic transition of recent years, which has now abruptly come to an end. </p>
<p>In a 2018 interview for this research, a former prison officer described how when the gallows were last in use, most prison staff tried to avoid tasks concerned with the executions. Taking part in these traumatic experiences <a href="https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/death-penalty-paradox-buddhist-myanmar">clearly violated</a> their Buddhist religion. Military staff were stationed in the prisons to do these tasks instead. Even without being in charge of the executions, the same former officer described how he and his colleagues would get drunk on the nights after executions to erase the traumatic memory of them.</p>
<h2>Legality of executions</h2>
<p>A return to the use of the gallows in Myanmar would be a tragedy not only for those executed and their families, but also for the executioners and for all the people who would live in fear of execution. However, when I spoke with two former political prisoners who had themselves served time on death row under the previous military junta about the possibility of a return of executions, fear was not the first emotion that came to mind.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1487002808557895682"}"></div></p>
<p>One, who had spent years on death row before his sentence was commuted to life, then release, said that the process of conducting executions legally could take years. Prisoners sentenced to death would have the right to appeal, a process that would have to be carried out before executions could take place. </p>
<p>He concluded that the prison authorities might very well have been ordered to clean the gallows, but they would have to clean them again in a couple years’ time if the authorities were to use the standard legal process that was followed when he was on death row. In spite of the atrocities committed by the current military junta, he still expected them to respect some rules.</p>
<p>The other former prisoner questioned the legality of a return to executions by a government that is not democratically elected. This, he said, was the reason executions had not been carried out by the previous junta. However, he added, there were differences between the current and former military juntas. When he was tortured by the previous junta, he said they avoided hitting and kicking him in the face and other places where it could be lethal. </p>
<p>Now, people are being tortured to death. Their bodies are being handed over to their families with <a href="https://www.myanmar-now.org/en/news/detained-at-night-lifeless-by-morning-arrests-under-myanmars-junta">clear marks</a> of torture, and yet the authorities lie about the cause of death, but do not seem to care enough to cover up their marks. </p>
<p>While on one hand, this could be seen as an expression of an even more brutal military regime, this former political prisoner also read something else into it. He said that while the military junta might carry out executions, they will receive an even stronger pushback from the population of Myanmar and the international society. To him, the extreme brutality and disregard of legal standards by the military regime is a sign of their lack of understanding for how to rule a country: “They are digging their own grave”, he said.</p>
<p>The order to clean the gallows in Myanmar illustrates the extreme brutality of the current military junta. Time will tell whether this order is purely meant to spread fear among the resistance movement or whether the junta is ready to carry out executions. It will also show whether the junta is tightening its iron fist around the population or if this is a sign of the desperation of a regime waiting to fall apart.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176043/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liv Stoltze Gaborit has previously received funding from the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through the research project Legacies of Detention in Myanmar (<a href="http://drp.dfcentre.com/project/legacies-detention-myanmar/">http://drp.dfcentre.com/project/legacies-detention-myanmar/</a>). Liv Stoltze Gaborit is also a volunteer board member and spokesperson for Myanmar Action Group Denmark.</span></em></p>One year after the military coup, a possible return to executions threatens the lives of dozens of political prisoners.Liv Stoltze Gaborit, Postdoctoral researcher in Social Anthropology, Lund UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1522072021-01-12T13:22:28Z2021-01-12T13:22:28ZExecutions don’t deter murder, despite the Trump administration’s push<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375948/original/file-20201218-15-1q1ckxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C0%2C1986%2C1488&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The federal death chamber at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, as seen in April 1995.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Chuck Robinson</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Three more federal inmates are <a href="https://www.bop.gov/resources/federal_executions_info.jsp">slated to be executed</a> before the end of President Donald Trump’s term, though the first <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/12/us/lisa-montgomery-execution-stayed/index.html">received a stay</a> hours before she was slated to die on Jan. 12. <a href="https://www.bop.gov/about/history/federal_executions.jsp">Ten have already been put to death</a> since the Trump administration announced in July 2019 that it would <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-government-resume-capital-punishment-after-nearly-two-decade-lapse">resume executions</a> after a 17-year suspension.</p>
<p>It’s not clear why the administration has done so many in such a short time after a long break. Officially it claims to be “<a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-government-resume-capital-punishment-after-nearly-two-decade-lapse">bringing justice to victims of the most horrific crimes</a>.”</p>
<p>Capital punishment has a long history, which may even <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/530240/the-goodness-paradox-by-richard-wrangham/">extend to prehistoric times</a>, when early humans sought ways to rid their communities of incorrigible troublemakers.</p>
<p>In modern times, governments use what German social theorist Max
Weber called their “<a href="https://open.oregonstate.education/sociologicaltheory/chapter/politics-as-a-vocation/">monopoly on legitimate force</a>” to conduct executions. From my decades as a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=l0YWBN8AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">psychologist and biologist</a>, I identify four basic justifications governments use for killing their citizens:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2257123">Removing dangerous people</a> from society,</li>
<li>Justice (or revenge), and the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780195395143.001.0001">satisfaction it can bring</a> to a victim’s family,</li>
<li><a href="http://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199592692.001.0001">Demonstrating the power of the state</a>, and</li>
<li>Deterrence, or <a href="https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/deterrence">discouraging others from committing heinous crimes</a> for fear they too may be executed.</li>
</ul>
<p>Death penalty advocates <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/deterrence-the-legal-threat-in-crime-control/oclc/491789667">most frequently focus on deterrence</a> – but as research including <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/threats-9780190055295">my own work</a> shows, it has not been shown to be effective.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375951/original/file-20201218-21-1eqg3q7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An 18th century scene of an execution in England" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375951/original/file-20201218-21-1eqg3q7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375951/original/file-20201218-21-1eqg3q7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375951/original/file-20201218-21-1eqg3q7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375951/original/file-20201218-21-1eqg3q7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375951/original/file-20201218-21-1eqg3q7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375951/original/file-20201218-21-1eqg3q7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375951/original/file-20201218-21-1eqg3q7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A depiction of a public execution in London in 1746.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/execution-on-tower-hill-london-1746-scene-showing-william-news-photo/464489507?adppopup=true">Guildhall Library & Art Gallery/Heritage Images/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A brief history</h2>
<p>By the end of the 18th century, England specified 220 different offenses – mostly thefts of different kinds of property – that were punishable by death. The expressed intent of England’s “<a href="https://www.nationaljusticemuseum.org.uk/what-was-the-bloody-code/">Bloody Code</a>” was deterrence. </p>
<p>“Men are not hanged for stealing horses,” wrote the Marquess of Halifax, a 17th-century British nobleman, “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/complete-works-of-george-savile-first-marquess-of-halifax/oclc/125019">but that horses may not be stolen</a>.” Nevertheless, horses were stolen, and poor people were hanged for stealing them – or a quill pen or a bolt of cloth.</p>
<p>The idea of deterrence lasted another couple hundred years: In the 1970s, economist Isaac Ehrlich claimed that <a href="http://doi.org/10.3386/w0018">every execution saved eight innocent lives</a> by preventing other murders. His hugely influential work has subsequently <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/contradictions-of-american-capital-punishment/oclc/50334054">been challenged</a>, not least because it <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/795412">relied on national trends and did not distinguish</a> between crimes in states that had, or lacked, capital punishment.</p>
<p>In 2020, the U.S. government still has the death penalty on the books for certain crimes, as do 30 states. These laws face ethical and logical criticism, such as the idea of a government killing people to reinforce the idea that people shouldn’t kill people. They also are often <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/wmbrts9&div=12">found to be unjust</a>, sometimes executing innocent people and used disproportionately in cases involving racial minorities and poor people. But most importantly, and, despite what its advocates say, capital punishment doesn’t deter murders.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375771/original/file-20201217-19-1tgavjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An aerial view of the execution building at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375771/original/file-20201217-19-1tgavjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375771/original/file-20201217-19-1tgavjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375771/original/file-20201217-19-1tgavjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375771/original/file-20201217-19-1tgavjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375771/original/file-20201217-19-1tgavjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375771/original/file-20201217-19-1tgavjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375771/original/file-20201217-19-1tgavjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Federal executions happen inside this building at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/FederalDeathPenaltyHistoryQA/546165ed8d924397b42e60697dc85c64/photo">AP Photo/Michael Conroy</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Research and evidence</h2>
<p>Research has shown that, while there have been changes in murder rates over time, those changes aren’t related to whether a government <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahp024">has – or doesn’t have – the death penalty</a>. By far the most authoritative report to date came from the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, in 2012. It found there was <a href="https://www.nap.edu/read/13363/chapter/2#2">no credible evidence that capital punishment has any effect on homicide rates</a>.</p>
<p>Of course, there is no ethical way to devise a scientific experiment to test whether capital punishment deters murder. But an impressive array of correlations exists, which together are enough to make a highly credible, informed judgment. For example:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>In 1976, Canada abolished capital punishment and the U.S. restored it. <a href="http://doi.org/10.3386/w11982">Yet Canada’s murder rate remained roughly the same as that of the U.S.</a>. </p></li>
<li><p>Hong Kong and Singapore are two demographically and economically comparable city-states. Hong Kong abolished executions, whereas Singapore did not, yet <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1436993">murder rates have remained remarkably similar</a> in both.</p></li>
<li><p>New York and Texas had comparable murder statistics and execution rates as of 1992. As crime peaked nationally, the <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/threats-9780190055295">two states’ responses differed</a>: Texas ramped up its executions, while there were no executions in New York from 1992 to 2003. Their results were different, too: New York’s homicide rate declined by 62.9%, far more than the drop in Texas of 49.6% over those years.</p></li>
<li><p>Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn are broadly similar demographically, and also share the same police force and local and state legal systems. From 1995 to 2004, county prosecutors in Manhattan and the Bronx did not enforce capital punishment, but those in Brooklyn did. <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/threats-9780190055295">Homicides declined in all three boroughs of New York City</a>, consistent with nationwide trends, but the <a href="https://www.criminaljustice.ny.gov/crimnet/ojsa/crimereporting/ucr.htm">Manhattan and Bronx declines were significantly greater</a>.</p></li>
<li><p>If the threat of capital punishment were an effective deterrent, then homicides would tend to decline immediately following executions, especially those that received substantial public attention. Yet evidence indicates that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F001112878002600402">executions may actually increase the frequency of murders</a>.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>It is tempting to think that severe penalties would effectively reduce crime, with the most extreme penalty – death – reducing the most serious crime, notably murder. But there is simply no compelling evidence that it does.</p>
<p>[<em>Get our most insightful politics and election stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/politics-weekly-74/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=politics-most">Sign up for The Conversation’s Politics Weekly</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152207/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David P. Barash does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The most commonly used justification for capital punishment is not actually supported by evidence.David P. Barash, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1513582020-12-03T18:38:48Z2020-12-03T18:38:48ZTrump plan to revive the gallows, electric chair, gas chamber and firing squad recalls a troubled history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372834/original/file-20201203-13-xkghzw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C0%2C2991%2C2083&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Empty, but for how long?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/ExecutionAccess-History/84abe222995444d19e70c21723c311ca/photo?Query=electric%20AND%20chair&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=295&currentItemNo=95">AP File Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The way the federal government can kill death row prisoners will soon be expanded to ghoulish methods that include hanging, the electric chair, gas chamber and the firing squad.</p>
<p>Set to take effect on Christmas Eve, the new regulations <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/doj-allows-firing-squad-execution/2020/11/27/a9b65e38-30eb-11eb-860d-f7999599cbc2_story.html">authorizing</a> an alternative to lethal injections – the method <a href="https://www.bop.gov/about/history/federal_executions.jsp">currently used in federal executions</a> – were announced by the Justice Department on Nov. 27.</p>
<p>The federal move follows the example of several states, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/5175a3250b0443eeb05071ef5a25b465">including Oklahoma and Tennessee</a>, that have revived alternative methods in the face of challenges to their lethal injection protocols and <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/04/12/how-the-drug-shortage-has-slowed-the-death-penalty-treadmill">problems in the supply of drugs</a> needed in the process.</p>
<p>It is not clear whether the administration actually intends to employ the newly announced methods. It may only want to have them in reserve if any of the individuals scheduled for execution before January’s inauguration – five, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/25/politics/barr-trump-federal-executions/index.html">according to the Department of Justice</a> – should succeed in challenging the current execution protocol. </p>
<p>What is clear is that these new regulations send a message about the lengths the administration will go to kill as many death row inmates as possible before Joe Biden takes office and, as expected, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-prisons-inaugurations-coronavirus-pandemic-executions-365258989e6be8d7077b2f67d8c3e190">halts the federal death penalty</a>. </p>
<p>If the president and Department of Justice succeed in their plan, the period from July 14, 2020, the date of the first of Trump’s federal executions, through January 20, 2021 will be <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/25/us/politics/executions-firing-squads-electrocution.html">the deadliest</a> in the history of federal capital punishment in nearly a century.</p>
<p>As someone who has studied <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=23979">execution methods in the U.S.</a>, I see in the new regulations echoes of a troubled history of less-than-perfect execution methods. </p>
<p>To grasp their full significance, it is necessary to look at the record of hanging, the electric chair, the gas chamber and firing squads. Each of them has been touted as humane only to be sidelined because its use was found to be gruesome and offensive. Given that history, there are questions over whether the administration’s plans serve any purpose other than continuing a death penalty system deemed to be a cruel outlier among modern societies.</p>
<h2>The noose and the chair</h2>
<p>Let’s start with hanging.</p>
<p>Hanging was the execution method of choice throughout most of American history, and it was used in America’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr67aYbaHzQ">last public execution</a> in 1936, when Rainey Bethea was put to death in Owensboro, Kentucky. When done correctly, the noose <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/06/a-brief-history-of-american-executions/392270/">killed by severing the spinal column</a>, causing near instantaneous death.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372829/original/file-20201203-21-11r1ask.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372829/original/file-20201203-21-11r1ask.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372829/original/file-20201203-21-11r1ask.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372829/original/file-20201203-21-11r1ask.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372829/original/file-20201203-21-11r1ask.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372829/original/file-20201203-21-11r1ask.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372829/original/file-20201203-21-11r1ask.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Crowds watch as attendants adjust a black hood over Rainey Bethea.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/ExecutionAccess-History/77a90efd8d0447a18168e93ebaf6789b/photo?Query=Rainey%20AND%20Bethea&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=8&currentItemNo=1">AP File Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But, all too often, hanging resulted in a slow death by strangulation and sometimes even a beheading. Given this gruesome record and <a href="https://www.legendsofamerica.com/ah-lynching/">hanging’s association with the lynching of mainly Black men</a>, by the end of the 19th century the search for other execution methods began in earnest.</p>
<p>The first of those alternatives was the electric chair. At the time it was adopted, it was regarded as a truly modern instrument of death, a technological marvel in the business of state killing. Hailed by penal reformers as a humane alternative to hanging, the electric chair was first <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/116966/executioners-current-by-richard-moran/">authorized</a> in 1888 by New York state following the <a href="https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a25689/gerry-commission-report-methods-of-execution/">report of a commission</a> that <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/983796?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">concluded</a>, “The most potent agent known for the destruction of human life is electricity…The velocity of the electric current is so great that the brain is paralyzed; it is indeed dead before the nerves can communicate a sense of shock.”</p>
<p>Yet, right from the start, electrocution’s potency was a problem. Its first use in the 1890 execution of convicted murderer William Kemmler <a href="https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/125-years-ago-first-execution-using-electric-chair-was-botched">was horribly botched</a>. <a href="https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/stories/botched-executions-in-american-history#:%7E:text=On%20August%206%2C%201890%2C%20New%20York%20executed%20William%20Kemmler.&text=Then%20Kemmler%20let%20out%20a,2%20of%20the%20witnesses%20fainted.">Reports of the execution</a> say that “After 2 minutes the execution chamber filled with the smell of burning flesh.” Newspapers called the execution a “historic bungle” and “disgusting, sickening and inhuman.” </p>
<p>In spite of the Kemmler debacle, the electric chair <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/116966/executioners-current-by-richard-moran/">quickly became popular</a>, being seen as more efficient and less brutal than hanging. From the start of the 20th century until the 1980s, the number of death sentences carried out by this method far outstripped those of any other method.</p>
<p>But electrocutions continued to go wrong, and eventually several dramatic botched executions in Florida helped turn the tide. Included were two executions, one in 1990, the other in 1997, in which the condemned inmates <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/18/us/florida-s-messy-executions-put-the-electric-chair-on-trial.html">caught fire</a>.</p>
<h2>The gas chamber</h2>
<p>By the start of the 21st century, states all over the country were abandoning the electric chair. As Justice Carol W. Hunstein of the Supreme Court of Georgia <a href="https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ga-supreme-court/1216340.html">explained</a>, “Death by electrocution, with its specter of excruciating pain and its certainty of cooked brains and blistered bodies,” was no longer compatible with contemporary standards of decency.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372831/original/file-20201203-13-g4vm1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372831/original/file-20201203-13-g4vm1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372831/original/file-20201203-13-g4vm1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372831/original/file-20201203-13-g4vm1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372831/original/file-20201203-13-g4vm1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372831/original/file-20201203-13-g4vm1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372831/original/file-20201203-13-g4vm1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=743&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A gas chamber at San Quentin prison from 1959.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/SanQuentinGasChamber1959/cff0724541f6411f9381056ce9b9a5c4/photo?Query=gas%20chamber%20prison&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=51&currentItemNo=48">AP Photo/Clarence Hamm</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One alternative to electrocution was the gas chamber, but it too has its own <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Last-Gasp-Rise-American-Chamber/dp/0520271211">history of problems</a>. First adopted in Nevada in 1922, executions using lethal gas were to take place while the condemned slept. Death row inmates were supposed to be housed in airtight, leak-proof prison cells, separate from other prisoners. On the day of the execution, valves would be opened that would fill the chamber with gas, killing the prisoner painlessly.</p>
<p>This plan was soon abandoned because officials decided it would be impractical to implement it, and states constructed special gas chambers fitted with pipes, exhaust fans and glass windows on the front and back walls for witness viewing. But deaths by lethal gas were never pretty or easy to watch.</p>
<p>Inmates regularly fought against breathing the gas as it entered the chamber. They convulsed, jerked, coughed, twisted and turned blue for several minutes before they died.</p>
<p>Far from solving the problems associated with hangings or electrocutions, lethal gas introduced its own set of horrors to the institution of capital punishment. In fact, by the end of the 20th century, <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=23979">5% of executions by lethal gas had been botched</a>. </p>
<p>As a result, states used gas as the sole method of execution only from 1924 to 1977, and it was last used in 1999. By then, the gas chamber had become a relic of the past because of its <a href="https://news.law.fordham.edu/blog/2016/02/21/return-of-the-gas-chamber/">inability to deliver on its promise to be “swift and painless”</a> and its association with the Nazi use of gas to kill millions during the Holocaust.</p>
<h2>The firing sqaud</h2>
<p>Finally, the firing squad. Of all of America’s methods of execution, it has been least often used. From 1900 to 2010, only 35 of America’s 8,776 executions were carried out using this method, and since 1976 just <a href="https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/methods-of-execution">three people have faced a firing squad</a>, with the last one carried out in Utah in 2010.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372832/original/file-20201203-21-4vl6ns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372832/original/file-20201203-21-4vl6ns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372832/original/file-20201203-21-4vl6ns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372832/original/file-20201203-21-4vl6ns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372832/original/file-20201203-21-4vl6ns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372832/original/file-20201203-21-4vl6ns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372832/original/file-20201203-21-4vl6ns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The execution chamber at Utah State Prison used in the U.S.’s last firing squad execution.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/FiringSquad-Appeal/607069faa7ea4355b6a0646ff1f0efdd/photo?Query=firing%20squad%20prison&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=197&currentItemNo=11">AP Photo/Trent Nelson, Pool, File</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Critics point out that because death by guns evokes images of raw, frontier justice in a society awash in gun violence, this method mimicked something that the law wished to discourage. Nonetheless, Utah <a href="https://www.npr.org/2015/04/05/397672199/utah-brings-back-firing-squad-executions-witnesses-recall-the-last-one">revived the firing squad</a> in 2015 due to challenges to the state’s lethal injection protocol.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>While it has some <a href="https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjlr/vol49/iss4/1/">contemporary proponents</a> who claim it is the least cruel of all execution methods, the history of the firing squad is marked by <a href="https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/stories/botched-executions-in-american-history">gruesome mistakes when marksmen missed their target</a>. In the 1951 execution of Eliseo Mares, for example, four executioners all shot into the wrong side of his chest, and he died slowly from blood loss.</p>
<h2>A cruel history, revived</h2>
<p>While Trump’s Department of Justice is now holding out the prospect of using these previously discredited methods of execution, it cannot erase the cruelty that marks their history. That history stands as a reminder of America’s failed quest to find a method of execution that is safe, reliable and humane.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151358/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Austin Sarat does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Justice Department has approved alternatives to lethal injections for federal executions. But no method of capital punishment has been without gruesome stories of what went wrong.Austin Sarat, Associate Provost and Associate Dean of the Faculty and Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1419592020-07-09T15:25:40Z2020-07-09T15:25:40ZFederal executions to resume, posing a new test for lethal injection<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346145/original/file-20200707-194418-i0309j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C0%2C2389%2C1559&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The lethal injection chamber at a California prison.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/view-of-the-new-lethal-injection-chamber-at-san-quentin-news-photo/566030939">Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Now that the U.S. <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/06/29/federal-death-penalty-supreme-court-allows-executions-resume/3199174001/">Supreme Court has refused to hear four inmates’ challenge</a> to the specifics of the lethal injection process, federal executions are <a href="https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/upcoming-executions#year2020">expected to resume</a> next week. In July 2019, Attorney General William Barr declared an end to a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/us/politics/federal-executions-death-penalty.html">federal moratorium on executions</a> that had been in effect since 2003.</p>
<p>The inmates <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/judges-scrutinize-federal-death-penalty-law-in-condemned-inmates-challenge-11579133380">alleged</a> that the Justice Department’s <a href="https://files.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/Federal-Execution-Protocol-Addendum-7-25-19.pdf">execution instructions</a>, which call for the use of a single dose of <a href="https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Pentobarbital">pentobarbital</a>, a barbiturate that is normally used as a sedative, violates the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-II/chapter-228">Federal Death Penalty Act</a>.</p>
<p>They claimed that the law requires federal executions to be carried out “in the manner prescribed by the state” in which the prisoner was convicted. Pentobarbital is not used in Arkansas, Iowa or Missouri, the pertinent states in their cases. They were hoping their executions would have to be carried out using drugs the federal government does not possess, sparing them at least temporarily.</p>
<p>My <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=23979">research on America’s methods of execution</a> indicates that the promised benefits of lethal injection – a quick, painless death – have never come true. And there is no longer a national consensus about what drugs, or drug combinations, are best for putting people to death.</p>
<h2>The history of lethal injection</h2>
<p>Lethal injection has been legal in the U.S. since 1977, although its history can be traced back to the late 19th century.</p>
<p>At that time, a state commission in New York <a href="https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a25689/gerry-commission-report-methods-of-execution/">looked at alternatives to hanging</a>, which was then the most common method of execution. Hanging had been discredited because of several gruesome botched executions. The commission discussed lethal injection, but the state ultimately chose electrocution as its preferred method.</p>
<p>In 1953, <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4198&context=jclc">Great Britain’s Royal Commission on Capital Punishment</a> also considered lethal injection as a possible replacement for the gallows, but ultimately chose not to recommend its use. The Royal Commission heeded medical experts’ warnings that the drugs could cause problems and that it might be hard to find the veins of the condemned – fears that have become reality in the U.S. in recent years.</p>
<p>[<em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=experts">Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter and get expert takes on today’s news, every day.</a></em>]</p>
<p>Others have continued to advocate for lethal injection – including people who oppose government executions altogether. Albert Camus, the French philosopher who was one of the 20th century’s leading opponents of the death penalty, famously argued that that if France was to continue using capital punishment, it should do so with “decency” by using an “<a href="https://libcom.org/files/Reflections%20on%20the%20Guillotine.pdf">anesthetic that would allow the condemned man</a> to slip from sleep to death.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346150/original/file-20200707-194405-1g7mgrr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346150/original/file-20200707-194405-1g7mgrr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346150/original/file-20200707-194405-1g7mgrr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346150/original/file-20200707-194405-1g7mgrr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346150/original/file-20200707-194405-1g7mgrr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346150/original/file-20200707-194405-1g7mgrr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=632&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346150/original/file-20200707-194405-1g7mgrr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=632&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346150/original/file-20200707-194405-1g7mgrr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=632&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An 1834 depiction of the 1793 execution of French King Louis XVI shows the guillotine, once believed to be a more humane execution method but later viewed as barbaric.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/execution-of-louis-xvi-illustration-from-the-book-news-photo/1084709370">Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Replacing the electric chair</h2>
<p>During the last quarter of the 20th century, <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-execution-by-lethal-injection">similar beliefs</a> about the allegedly more humane nature of lethal injection surfaced in U.S. state legislative debates seeking an alternative to the electric chair.</p>
<p>Oklahoma became the first state formally <a href="http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1815535,00.html">to adopt lethal injection</a> as its method of execution. At the time, it chief legislative proponents <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3393017">claimed</a> that it would be a dramatic improvement over the “inhumanity, visceral brutality, and cost” of the electric chair.</p>
<p>Oklahoma chose lethal injection, as legal scholar Deborah Denno writes, “despite the fact that the procedure had <a href="https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol76/iss1/3">never been medically or scientifically studied on human beings</a>.” </p>
<p>By 2002, 20 years after Texas became the first state to carry out an execution by lethal injection, <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674010833">37 states</a> had made it their default method. </p>
<h2>How lethal injection works</h2>
<p>Over that period, a consensus <a href="https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1022&context=penn_law_review_online">emerged</a> among death penalty states about the exact mix of drugs that would be most effective. A three-drug protocol was developed, combining an anesthetic (usually sodium thiopental) with a paralytic agent (pancuronium bromide), and a drug to stop the heart (potassium chloride). </p>
<p>However, since 2010, shortages of those drugs have caused the consensus to disintegrate. Death penalty proponents complained that the shortages resulted from opponents’ efforts to end the death penalty by any means, saying the activists had <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2524124">pressured companies to stop making those drugs</a>. </p>
<p>Complaints about an artificially created drug shortage also found their way onto the pages of Supreme Court opinions. In the 2015 <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-7955_aplc.pdf">Glossip v. Gross</a> decision upholding lethal injection, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the court should not let condemned inmates delay their dates with death, because “anti-death-penalty advocates pressured pharmaceutical companies to refuse to supply the drugs used to carry out death sentences.”</p>
<h2>States search for alternatives</h2>
<p>Since 2010, states <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/04/12/how-the-drug-shortage-has-slowed-the-death-penalty-treadmill">have gone their own ways</a> in search of supposedly humane and efficient methods for carrying out death sentences.</p>
<p>The Death Penalty Information Center, a national clearinghouse for analysis and information on issues concerning capital punishment, <a href="https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/lethal-injection/overview-of-lethal-injection-protocols">reports</a> that in the past decade eight states have used just one drug, usually a lethal dose of an anesthetic. Fourteen states have employed pentobarbital. Seven have used midazolam as part of a three-drug protocol. Nebraska has used <a href="https://theconversation.com/fentanyl-widely-used-deadly-when-abused-60511">fentanyl, a powerful opioid</a>, and Nevada has authorized its use.</p>
<p>Other states have chosen <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/can-executions-be-more-humane/388249/">nitrogen hypoxia</a>, which an inmate inhales and which kills by depriving the body of oxygen, as an alternative to lethal injection. Additional alternatives condemned inmates can choose include the electric chair in Tennessee, firing squad in Utah and hanging in New Hampshire. Of these, only <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/08/15/tennessee-execution-stephen-michael-west-dies-electric-chair/2026482001/">Tennessee’s electric chair</a> has been used recently.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346148/original/file-20200707-194409-1supd6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346148/original/file-20200707-194409-1supd6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346148/original/file-20200707-194409-1supd6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346148/original/file-20200707-194409-1supd6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346148/original/file-20200707-194409-1supd6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346148/original/file-20200707-194409-1supd6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346148/original/file-20200707-194409-1supd6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346148/original/file-20200707-194409-1supd6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 2017 photo shows the three-chemical mixture used by Texas prison officials for lethal injections in the state from 1982 until 2012.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Multiple-Executions/81d77c7822e648ddaa9c1c6398e77384/53/0">AP Photo/Michael Graczyk</a></span>
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<h2>Lethal injection’s continuing problems</h2>
<p>From 1982 to 2010, 7% of all lethal injections were <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=23979">botched</a>, making it the most error prone of America’s execution methods.</p>
<p>Since then <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/07/26/745722219/lethal-injection-drugs-efficacy-and-availability-for-federal-executions">difficulties</a> associated with lethal injection have multiplied. </p>
<p>They <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/is-this-the-end-of-lethal-injection-in-america/453564/">include</a> cases in which guards have had trouble finding a usable vein for an IV line, cases in which inmates have suddenly gasped for air or shown signs of consciousness long after the drugs started flowing, and others in which it took much longer than the expected time for the condemned person to die.</p>
<p>There have also been several badly botched lethal injections involving different drugs and protocols. Three of them occurred in 2014 alone. </p>
<p>Dennis McQuire <a href="https://www.dispatch.com/article/20140812/NEWS/308129896">gasped for air</a> for 25 minutes while the drugs Ohio used in his execution, hydromorphone and midazolam, slowly took effect. </p>
<p>Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/06/execution-clayton-lockett/392069/">died of a heart attack</a> – not the drugs – 43 minutes after the start of his execution. Joseph Wood repeatedly <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/07/23/arizona-supreme-court-stays-planned-execution/">gasped for one hour and 40 minutes</a> before his death was pronounced in Arizona.</p>
<p>In 2018 executioners in Alabama <a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/03/03/doyle-hamm-alabama-execution-lethal-injection/">tried for two and a half hours</a> to find a vein, leaving Doyle Lee Hamm with 12 puncture marks, including six in his groin and others that punctured his bladder and penetrated his femoral artery, before his execution was called off. </p>
<p>Such deeply troubling failures <a href="https://www.npr.org/transcripts/308363674?storyId=308363674?storyId=308363674">have not</a> moved a majority on the current Supreme Court to recognize that they are constitutionally problematic. Yet they are evidence that lethal injection has not been the answer to America’s centurylong quest to find a method of execution that would be safe, reliable and humane.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141959/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Austin Sarat does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The promised benefits of lethal injection – a quick, painless death – have never come true. There’s not even agreement about which drugs are best for executions.Austin Sarat, Associate Provost and Associate Dean of the Faculty and Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1210342019-10-16T11:25:34Z2019-10-16T11:25:34ZWhy the guillotine may be less cruel than execution by slow poisoning<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296722/original/file-20191011-96208-ur76yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Could using the guillotine be more humane than execution by lethal injection?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/guillotine-bottom-view-against-blue-sky-1323991673">AlexLMX/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Concerns about the drugs used for executions are being raised again after the federal government announced it will once again execute <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/us/politics/federal-executions-death-penalty.html">inmates convicted of capital crimes</a> almost 16 years after the last execution was carried out. </p>
<p>International drug companies will no longer sell <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/14/us/pfizer-execution-drugs-lethal-injection.html">drugs for use in lethal injections in the United States</a>. But Attorney General William Barr has authorized the federal justice system to use the widely available drug pentobarbital, <a href="https://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/secret-sedative-how-missouri-uses-pentobarbital-executions#stream/0">despite concerns</a> about whether that method violates the <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-viii">Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment</a>. In common use, the drug controls seizures in humans and is often used to euthanize pets.</p>
<p>In 2014, several executions carried out by states with untested methods using a mixture of drugs caused <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/118833/2014-botched-executions-worst-year-lethal-injection-history">suffering and took hours to end prisoners’ lives</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296725/original/file-20191011-96226-1bt2zbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296725/original/file-20191011-96226-1bt2zbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296725/original/file-20191011-96226-1bt2zbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296725/original/file-20191011-96226-1bt2zbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296725/original/file-20191011-96226-1bt2zbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296725/original/file-20191011-96226-1bt2zbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296725/original/file-20191011-96226-1bt2zbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296725/original/file-20191011-96226-1bt2zbf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One of the three drugs used in the botched execution of Clayton Lockett in 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Oklahoma-Execution/6cf3cd81b59642029d18d97c84b18c3e/3/0">AP/File photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Among them was the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/06/execution-clayton-lockett/392069/">botched execution of Oklahoma inmate Clayton Lockett</a>, who thrashed around in pain for 43 minutes before dying, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/03/us/flawed-oklahoma-execution-deeply-troubling-obama-says.html">prompted President Obama to call for a moratorium</a> on the death penalty for federal inmates.</p>
<p>While the death penalty is the ultimate punishment meted out by the state, it is not meant to be torture. </p>
<p>From the stake to the rope to the firing squad to the electric chair to the gas chamber and, finally, to the lethal injection, over the centuries the methods of execution in the United States have evolved to make execution <a href="https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2636&context=ulj">quicker, quieter and less painful</a>, both physically and psychologically.</p>
<p>It wasn’t always so. And there are, perhaps, lessons in history that could provide an answer to current concerns about the unusual cruelty of execution methods in the U.S.</p>
<h2>Spectacles of physical torment</h2>
<p>Under the French monarchy in the 17th and 18th centuries, execution was meant to be painful. That would purify the soul of the condemned before his final judgment, deter others from committing crime, and showcase the power of the king to <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/seeing-justice-done-9780199592692?q=Paul%20Friedland&lang=en&cc=us">impose unbearable suffering on his subjects</a>. </p>
<p>Public executions were spectacles that were part public holiday, part grim warning. Crowds gathered to watch the prisoner endure physical torments almost <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/discipline-and-punish-the-birth-of-the-prison/oclc/32367111">too dreadful to imagine</a>: hot pokers, boiling lead poured into wounds, dismembering hooks, and of course, the horses readied to draw and quarter.</p>
<p>Not everybody suffered so terribly, however. This parade of horrors was the fate of commoners. For nobles, a quick, relatively painless, and more <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/seeing-justice-done-9780199592692?q=Paul%20Friedland&lang=en&cc=us">dignified beheading replaced an hours-long public display</a>. </p>
<p>One of the many goals of the French Revolution, which took place from 1789 to 1815, was to level society, to take away the <a href="https://www-jstor-org.proxy.lib.wayne.edu/stable/744131">privileges</a> of the nobility, who lorded over commoners.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296730/original/file-20191011-96208-icavr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296730/original/file-20191011-96208-icavr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296730/original/file-20191011-96208-icavr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296730/original/file-20191011-96208-icavr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296730/original/file-20191011-96208-icavr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296730/original/file-20191011-96208-icavr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296730/original/file-20191011-96208-icavr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296730/original/file-20191011-96208-icavr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Execution by guillotine in France, 1793.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror#/media/File:Octobre_1793,_supplice_de_9_%C3%A9migr%C3%A9s.jpg">La Guillotine en 1793 by H. Fleischmann (1908), Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Medium is the message</h2>
<p>The solution to disparate forms of execution and social equality was first presented to the French National Assembly on Oct. 10, 1789 by Dr. Joseph Guillotin, who presented plans for a <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5788381v">bladed machine to execute criminals</a>. </p>
<p>It would be easy to use, work quickly and offer the same treatment to all condemned, regardless of social standing. His ideas finally became law in March 1791 and the guillotine was used for an execution the following year. </p>
<p>The so-called “<a href="https://www.themorgan.org/blog/national-razor-collecting-heads-french-revolution">national razor</a>” took off the heads of the royal family as well as the humblest thief. It leveled bodies and society, with all citizens subject to the same punishment. And it ended the capricious torment of the condemned by the monarchy as well as the privilege that nobles had, even regarding the manner of their deaths. </p>
<p>The guillotine was a killing machine that provided not just a convenient method of execution but the proper political and ideological message for the Revolution.</p>
<h2>Less cruel and unusual?</h2>
<p>Eventually, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/French-Revolution">French Revolution became more politically radical</a>, moving from a system where the king would continue to govern within a constitutional system to a republic where the people’s representatives would wield political power to a de facto dictatorship. As the Revolution became more radical, and politicians saw plots everywhere, increasing numbers of citizens were sentenced to death.</p>
<p>With the need to execute many prisoners the guillotine was pressed into greater use. The most careful estimate for the number of French executed during the Terror, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Reign-of-Terror">the height of the radical Revolution, was 17,000</a>. This number included almost exclusively those charged with political crimes. </p>
<p>It was the guillotine’s plummeting blade that took off head after head with just a bit of cleaning and sharpening in between, answering the need of the moment. <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/terror-the-shadow-of-the-guillotine-france-1792-1794/oclc/70335347">Thus it came to symbolize state terrorism</a> but also <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781466849310">swift and equal justice</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296723/original/file-20191011-96262-1iirn2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296723/original/file-20191011-96262-1iirn2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296723/original/file-20191011-96262-1iirn2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296723/original/file-20191011-96262-1iirn2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296723/original/file-20191011-96262-1iirn2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296723/original/file-20191011-96262-1iirn2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296723/original/file-20191011-96262-1iirn2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296723/original/file-20191011-96262-1iirn2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The guillotine remained in use in France well into the 20th century. Here, workmen in the Sante Prison clean and dismantle a guillotine in Paris on May 25, 1946, after the execution of Dr. Marcel Petiot, who was convicted of mass murder during World War II.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-International-News-France-PETI-/79a8c39394e6da11af9f0014c2589dfb/140/0">AP</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Terrifying – but brief</h2>
<p>The guillotine remains a quick method of execution – it takes about half a second for the blade to drop and sever a prisoner’s head from his body.</p>
<p>While the moment of execution could be nothing but terrifying, that second of suffering was brief in comparison to the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/30/clayton-lockett-oklahoma-execution-witness">43 minutes it took for Lockett to die</a> after lethal drugs were administered. </p>
<p>In the same year, 2014, convicted double murderer <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/07/23/arizona-supreme-court-stays-planned-execution/">Joseph Rudolph Wood of Arizona suffered</a> for two hours before succumbing to the jerry-built drug cocktail dreamed up in a warden’s office. In 2018, an <a href="https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/2018/03/05/execution-attempt-so-painful-inmate-hoped-get-over-report-states/397304002/">Alabama execution had to be halted</a> after 12 attempts to place an IV line in Doyle Hamm failed. </p>
<p>The current technology of execution does not <a href="https://law.justia.com/constitution/us/amendment-08/09-methods-of-execution.html">reliably provide the humane death demanded by the Constitution</a>. In requiring an IV line and medical personnel to administer drugs it also involves medical practice with the death penalty.</p>
<p>Although the guillotine may be the <a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/04/06/the-bloody-family-history-of-the-guillotine/">bloodiest of deaths</a> – the French used sand bags to soak up the blood – it does not cause the prolonged physical torment increasingly delivered by lethal injections.</p>
<p>Should the U.S. consider using the guillotine to administer capital punishment? </p>
<p>It has advantages – no secret recipes for lethal injections, no botched placement of IV needles, no conflation of medicine and execution.</p>
<p>While the guillotine provides a death that is not easy to witness, the death it delivers to the condemned is quick and does not cause the extended pain of bespoke lethal injections. </p>
<p>Could such a death, as bloody as it is, pass muster with the Eighth Amendment’s mandate against cruel and unusual punishment?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121034/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janine Lanza does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many recent executions in the US by lethal injections have resulted in prolonged suffering before death. A historian asks: Could the guillotine be a preferable method?Janine Lanza, Associate Professor of History, Wayne State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/872212017-11-13T17:22:50Z2017-11-13T17:22:50ZWhy Nevada’s new lethal injection is unethical<p>Nevada has temporarily <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/nevada-execution-doubt-paralytic-drug-51049570">called off</a> its first inmate execution in 11 years. Scott Dozier, sentenced for the 2002 murder of his 22-year-old drug associate, Jeremiah Miller, <a href="http://www.theforgivenessfoundation.org/index.php/scheduled-executions/4321-nevada-reschedules-execution-of-scott-dozier-from-october-16-2017-until-november-14-2017">was to be put to death</a> on Nov. 14. Dozier instructed his lawyer in August <a href="http://mcindependentnews.com/2017/08/nevada-death-row-inmate-drops-appeal-wants-execution/">not to file</a> any more appeals. </p>
<p>On Thursday, Nov. 9, however, Judge Jennifer Togliatti <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/nevada-execution-doubt-paralytic-drug-51049570">temporarily postponed</a> the execution. Judge Togliatti said she was “loath to stop” Dozier’s execution, but she did so because she was concerned about the <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/08/30/nevada-plans-to-use-fentanyl-in-upcoming-execution">untested and controversial</a> drug protocol that would be used to put him to death. She wanted to give the state Supreme Court a chance to evaluate. </p>
<p>From my perspective as a scholar of capital punishment, Nevada’s new drug protocol sheds a glaring light on the troubled <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/14/pfizer-blocking-use-of-its-drugs-for-lethal-injections/">state of lethal injections</a> in the United States. It also raises some serious ethical questions.</p>
<h2>Lethal injection’s crisis</h2>
<p>The first lethal injection protocol was developed by Oklahoma’s medical examiner, Jay Chapman, in the late 1970s. Back then, Oklahoma was looking for an alternative to electrocution, which was considered <a href="http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=23979">inhuman and brutal</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194056/original/file-20171109-13323-rays9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194056/original/file-20171109-13323-rays9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194056/original/file-20171109-13323-rays9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194056/original/file-20171109-13323-rays9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194056/original/file-20171109-13323-rays9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194056/original/file-20171109-13323-rays9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194056/original/file-20171109-13323-rays9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dr. Jay Chapman, creator of the lethal injection.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Ben Margot</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The protocol Chapman developed called for the <a href="http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=23979">use of three drugs</a>: The first, sodium thiopental, would anesthetize inmates and put them to sleep before the lethal drugs were administered. The second drug, pancuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant, was meant to render the inmate unable to show pain. The third drug, potassium chloride, led to a cardiac arrest and eventual death. This protocol soon became the standard and was adopted by all death penalty states – <a href="https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/states-and-without-death-penalty">now numbering at 31</a>. </p>
<p>However, by the start of this decade, pharmaceutical companies, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/14/us/pfizer-execution-drugs-lethal-injection.html?_r=0">“citing either moral or business reasons,”</a> refused to allow their products to be used in executions.</p>
<p>The difficulty of securing the drugs that had been part of the standard protocol led death penalty states to <a href="https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/state-lethal-injection">experiment with many different drugs</a> in many different combinations.</p>
<p>States likes Alabama and Arkansas, for example, maintained the three-drug protocol but replaced sodium thiopental in the standard drug cocktail with midazolam or pentobarbital, which doctors normally use as sedatives or for anesthesia. Other states, including Arizona and Ohio, started using a two-drug protocol, while a few, such as Georgia, Missouri and South Dakota, adopted a single drug. </p>
<p>Nevada’s new protocol involves a <a href="https://www.rgj.com/story/news/2017/08/17/nevada-announces-lethal-injection-drugs-used-upcoming-execution-las-vegas-murderer/578741001/">three-drug combination</a> – the sedative diazepam (better known as Valium), the muscle relaxant and paralytic cisatracurium and the opioid fentanyl. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=23979">My research on methods of execution</a> reveals that this combination of drugs has <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/08/30/nevada-plans-to-use-fentanyl-in-upcoming-execution">never been used in an execution</a>. </p>
<h2>What is the problem with this</h2>
<p>Execution by a lethal injection, even when it follows the standard protocol, is a surprisingly complicated procedure. Finding usable veins and getting the drug dosages right has proved to be particularly difficult. As I found out, it has often been an <a href="http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=23979">unreliable method of execution</a>. Since its introduction, 7 percent of all lethal injections have been botched.</p>
<p>Those complications and <a href="https://news.vice.com/story/lethal-injections-using-midazolam-may-be-americas-most-cruel-experiment-yet-says-sotomayor">difficulties increase</a> when states try out new, untested drugs or drug combinations. Convicts have taken a leading role in opposing such experimentation. In February 2017, a death row inmate in Alabama appealed to the United States Supreme Court saying that he preferred death by firing squad to an injection of midazolam. While it recognized lethal injection’s history of problems, the majority held that since Alabama did not offer the firing squad as an execution method, his preference could not be honored. In a <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/16-602_n758.pdf">dissenting view</a>, however, Justice Sonya Sotomayor called the use of new drugs in lethal injection the “most cruel experiment yet.” </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194055/original/file-20171109-13296-fr8ejt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194055/original/file-20171109-13296-fr8ejt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194055/original/file-20171109-13296-fr8ejt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194055/original/file-20171109-13296-fr8ejt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194055/original/file-20171109-13296-fr8ejt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194055/original/file-20171109-13296-fr8ejt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194055/original/file-20171109-13296-fr8ejt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nevada death row inmate Scott Dozier, right, confers with Lori Teicher, a federal public defender.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Ken Ritter, File</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nevada’s Dozier too has said that <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-dozier-drug-execution-20171108-story.html">he is opposed</a> to “the state’s plan to kill him using a drug protocol that has never been used in an execution.” </p>
<p>There are other troubling issues as well. Using fentanyl, a drug that is killing thousands of Americans annually during the current opioid crisis, is horrifying, to say the least. </p>
<p>In addition, figuring out the right dosage of diazepam and fentanyl in Nevada’s new protocol will not be easy. And if this is not done correctly, Dozier could even <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/08/30/nevada-plans-to-use-fentanyl-in-upcoming-execution#.S4nW1mNce">wake up</a>
in the middle of the execution, as <a href="http://nyulangone.org/doctors/1710970447/susi-u-vassallo">Susi Vassallo</a>, a New York University professor of emergency medicine, has written on lethal injection notes. In the <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/nevada-execution-doubt-paralytic-drug-51049570">words of Judge Togliatti</a>, he could be “aware of pain” and struggle to breathe.</p>
<p>Employing the powerful paralytic cisatracurium in this new drug protocol raises other ethical concerns. </p>
<p>If the combination of diazepam and fentanyl fails to work, cisatracurium will prevent Dozier from signaling to his executioners that they are botching the execution even as it happens. As <a href="http://www.childrenshospital.org/doctors/david-waisel">David Waisel</a>, an anesthesiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital, <a href="https://www.reviewjournal.com/crime/courts/doctor-questions-drug-planned-for-nevada-inmates-execution/">claimed</a>, “Cisatracurium can hide signs of inadequate anesthesia.” That is its only purpose.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194059/original/file-20171109-13329-1eqcz0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194059/original/file-20171109-13329-1eqcz0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194059/original/file-20171109-13329-1eqcz0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194059/original/file-20171109-13329-1eqcz0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194059/original/file-20171109-13329-1eqcz0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194059/original/file-20171109-13329-1eqcz0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194059/original/file-20171109-13329-1eqcz0f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Use of a new drug protocol raises many questions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/469979537?src=pVnKswBAZlEF-aPi9uC17w-1-0&size=medium_jpg">Samrith Na Lumpoon?Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In other lethal injection protocols, the muscle relaxant was also designed to stop the heart. Thus, those who conduct the execution and those who witness it will not be able to see the visible signs of Dozier’s suffering if it occurs.</p>
<h2>Do citizens have a duty?</h2>
<p>In my view, if Nevada and other death penalty states insist on experimenting with new drugs to keep the machinery of death running, citizens and government officials alike need to take responsibility to prevent any cruelty.</p>
<p>Writing about the use of the guillotine in France more than half a century ago, Albert Camus, philosopher, author and journalist, <a href="http://users.clas.ufl.edu/burt/deathsentences/CamusGuillotine.pdf">said</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Society must display the executioner’s hands on each occasion, and require the most squeamish citizens to look at them, as well as those who, directly or remotely, have supported the work of those hands from the first.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>While lethal injection is different from the guillotine, in modern times the imperative remains the same.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87221/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Austin Sarat does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Nevada plans to use a new drug protocol for executing Scott Dozier, who murdered a 22-year-old. A scholar explains why this is problematic.Austin Sarat, Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/713672017-01-19T15:01:03Z2017-01-19T15:01:03ZA triple execution in Bahrain has provoked national outrage – and international silence<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/153466/original/image-20170119-26577-1e2fjqf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Executed in Bahrain.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reprieve</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the middle of the night, on January 15 2017, three citizens of Bahrain were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/15/bahrain-three-men-death-sentence-shia-muslims-gulf">executed by firing squad</a>. Abbas al-Samea, 27, Ali al-Singace, 21, and Sami Mushaima 42, had all been found guilty of planting a bomb which killed three policemen – but their convictions were <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/01/bahrain-first-executions-in-more-than-six-years-a-shocking-blow-to-human-rights/">widely seen as unsafe</a>. </p>
<p>Rumours of their 3am deaths had been circulating on the social media of those with links to the government. Once the state news agency confirmed the news, many Bahrainis took to the streets in protest, confronting riot police, who used tear gas and birdshot in response. Human rights organisations condemned the killings, not simply because they oppose the death penalty, but because these executions were viewed as being political and extrajudicial. </p>
<p>The UN Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial executions tweeted: </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"820532830744772608"}"></div></p>
<p>Nicholas McGeehan of Human Rights Watch added on <a href="https://twitter.com/NcGeehan">social media</a>: “These men’s convictions were based on retracted confessions and mired in allegations of serious torture.” It was a sentiment reflected poignantly by many Bahrainis, who formed huge queues to pay their respects to the executed men’s families. </p>
<p>The national controversy surrounding the executions is the latest demonstration of the political turmoil in Bahrain, and popular opposition to what is a democracy in name only. Since 2011, when widespread pro-democracy protests broke out, over a hundred civilians have been killed – many by teargas and torture. An independent <a href="http://www.bici.org.bh/">report</a> (the BICI report) documenting the events of that year revealed systematic torture, arbitrary detentions, and extra judicial killing in the streets. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152910/original/image-20170116-9062-12rkgaz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152910/original/image-20170116-9062-12rkgaz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152910/original/image-20170116-9062-12rkgaz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152910/original/image-20170116-9062-12rkgaz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152910/original/image-20170116-9062-12rkgaz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152910/original/image-20170116-9062-12rkgaz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152910/original/image-20170116-9062-12rkgaz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Image from social media showing the bullet hole patterns in the bodies of the shot men, with their initials in Arabic letters.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since the report, which the King accepted to much international acclaim, the Bahrain government has emphasised its commitment to reforms. Yet implementation of the recommendations has been frequently documented as inadequate. Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) <a href="https://www.adhrb.org/2015/11/shattering-the-facade-a-report-on-bahrains-implementation-of-the-bahrain-independent-commission-of-inquiry-bici-four-years-on/">found</a> that only two of the report’s 26 recommendations had been fully implemented, and eight had not even begun. Many of these reforms centred around creating mechanisms to ensure an end to torture and an increase of state accountability. Even Professor Cherif Bassiouni, the head of the BICI team, <a href="http://mcherifbassiouni.com/bahrain-right-thing/">wrote</a> in June last year that most of the reforms had not been fully implemented. </p>
<p>But things are actually getting worse. Amid the token reforms, the January executions show that Bahrain is regressing with regards to political development and human rights. The country’s only remotely critical newspaper, Al Wasat, which was shut down in 2011, has now been <a href="http://www.bna.bh/portal/en/news/766028">ordered by the government</a> to close its online paper, too. The official reason given was that it was “jeapordising national unity and disrupting public peace”. In fact, it had been slighty critical of the executions. </p>
<p>Earlier this year, the government of Bahrain announced that it was reversing one of the BICI reforms which stipulated that Bahrain’s National Security Agency (NSA) have its powers of arrest removed. The power separation was considered important in controlling torture. Other laws enacted which have clamped down on freedom of expression, alongside the arrest of activists, have prompted accusations not of reform, but of <a href="http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/S0163-786X20160000039011">de-democratisation</a>. The fact that these are the first official executions to have occurred since 2010 suggest Bahrain is becoming more, not less authoritarian. </p>
<h2>International influence</h2>
<p>Bahrain’s small size and its reliance on foreign countries has also resulted in anger at the perceived complicity of numerous governments. Saudi troops, along with officers from states including the UAE, assisted in dealing with the unrest in 2011. Many of Bahrain’s military officers are from other Arab or Muslim countries, and many have <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/british-commandos-training-bahraini-armed-forces-to-use-sniper-rifles-a6952836.html">received training by the British</a> (including from John Yates, ex-assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard). </p>
<p>As a result, many Bahrainis feel increasingly isolated from the global community, who they believe are the only ones able to put pressure on the Bahrain government to reform, democratise, and implement human rights reform. Activist <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/maryam-alkhawaja-arrest-bahrain-us-uk">Maryam Al Khawaja</a> accused the UK, Bahrain’s former protector, of abetting this authoritarian excess and allowing the executions to go ahead. She wrote on Twitter: </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"820553226399387652"}"></div></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZjvLgjBpH4">Protests</a> in London outside the embassy also reflected this anger. And it is an anger founded not simply on the fact that the British response to the executions was considered <a href="https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/uk/britain-condemned-inadequate-response-execution-bahrain-shia-torture-victims/">“woefully inadequate”</a>, but because the UK has been training the Bahrain police since 2011. The charity <a href="http://www.reprieve.org.uk/">Reprieve</a> noted that the UK also taught the Bahrainis how to <a href="http://www.reprieve.org.uk/press/uk-taught-bahrain-police-whitewash-custody-deaths/">“whitewash custody deaths”</a> and provided training to the police <a href="http://www.reprieve.org.uk/press/police-scotland-trained-saudi-bahraini-officers-without-human-rights-checks/">without</a> conducting proper human rights assessments. </p>
<p>As a result of the executions, frustration in Bahrain will inevitably increase. Scenes of people chanting “Down with [King] Hamad” at the police are becoming more common again. The regression back to more authoritarian ways is enabled by a lack of pressure from traditional international allies. </p>
<p>For the UK, this apparent “complicity” is unlikely to change. Jane Kinninmont of <a href="https://www.chathamhouse.org/">Chatham House</a>, the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, notes that Brexit will likely <a href="https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/post-brexit-britain-would-double-down-middle-east-alliances">diminish attempts to support human rights</a>. With traditional allies like the UK less choosy about trade, less choosy about allies, and less choosy about human rights, Bahrain is set to see more instability and unrest.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71367/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marc Jones received funding from the ESRC for his PhD. He is affiliated with Bahrain Watch, an NGO that documents issues of governance, arms sales, and PR in Bahrain and the wider Gulf. </span></em></p>State killings are the latest demonstration of the country’s regression.Marc Jones, Research Fellow, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of ExeterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/667142016-10-13T13:46:55Z2016-10-13T13:46:55ZThink entertainment is violent today? The Victorians were much, much worse<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141620/original/image-20161013-31333-13n0yll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">British Library 74/1881.d.8(26)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.bl.uk/events/victorian-entertainments-there-will-be-fun">There Will Be Fun!</a> proclaims the tag line of the British Library’s latest exhibition, a show exploring the spectacle and sheer pleasure of Victorian entertainment through vibrant playbills and posters, and rare sound and film recordings. The pieces assembled expose a number of key themes, including the wonderful diversity of performance genres, the appetite for innovation and sensation, the increasingly commercial world of Victorian showbiz, and the growth of mass audiences. All good fun and relatively harmless. Or is it?</p>
<p>There is another story about Victorian entertainment that lies behind these jolly posters and harmless pantomimes, one which I would argue is as important for understanding modern British culture: that of the seemingly insatiable appetite for representations of violence among ordinary Victorians. From the opening of Queen Victoria’s reign until the last decades of the 19th century, men, women and even children were amused by images and descriptions of murder and mutilation which would today be regarded as shocking and unfit for public consumption.</p>
<p>Take, for instance, the popularity of increasingly elaborate pictures of execution. Some very crude depictions of hanging appeared on flimsy sheets sold at foot of the scaffold in the 18th century. But in the early decades of the 19th century, improvements in printing and changes to the penal code increased the public’s desire for such “artwork”. Fewer people, and essentially only murderers, were hanged by the accession of Queen Victoria, so the rarity of an execution combined with the sensational nature of the crime whetted public appetites.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141610/original/image-20161013-31333-1xix5yt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141610/original/image-20161013-31333-1xix5yt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141610/original/image-20161013-31333-1xix5yt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141610/original/image-20161013-31333-1xix5yt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141610/original/image-20161013-31333-1xix5yt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141610/original/image-20161013-31333-1xix5yt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141610/original/image-20161013-31333-1xix5yt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141610/original/image-20161013-31333-1xix5yt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A new song on the Mannings.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/a-broadside-on-the-execution-of-the-mannings">British Library 1876.d.41. volume 2</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items?formats=broadside&related_themes=crime-and-crime-fiction">Highly decorative broadsides</a> were printed to inform about and commemorate in prose, verse and image the crime, the trial, the lead up to the execution and the execution itself. Hawkers selling these half-penny productions could be found in the streets of major British towns. But the largest sales were typically achieved on execution day. When <a href="http://www.exclassics.com/newgate/ng622.htm">James Greenacre</a>, the Edgware Road Murderer, was executed in 1838, approximately <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=dvrHCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT2&#v=onepage&q=1%2C650%2C000&f=false">1.65m</a> sheets were sold, a figure that rose to <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=dvrHCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT2&#v=onepage&q&f=false">2.5m</a> for the execution of <a href="http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/mannings.html">Maria and Frederick George Manning</a> in 1849.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141613/original/image-20161013-31333-92v4va.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141613/original/image-20161013-31333-92v4va.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141613/original/image-20161013-31333-92v4va.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=694&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141613/original/image-20161013-31333-92v4va.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=694&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141613/original/image-20161013-31333-92v4va.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=694&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141613/original/image-20161013-31333-92v4va.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141613/original/image-20161013-31333-92v4va.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141613/original/image-20161013-31333-92v4va.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Murder souvenir mug, c. 1824.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://royalpavilion.assetbank-server.com/assetbank-pavilion/action/viewAsset;jsessionid=DA71C56076CE30F7F1031139B71AB59E?id=27747&index=1181&total=5014&categoryId=-1&categoryTypeId=1&collection=Categories&sortAttributeId=0&sortDescending=false">Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nor did the public appetite subside after execution day. A violent material culture capitalised on a public desire to remember and even vicariously relive these gruesome events. Large quantities of cheap souvenirs were manufactured by Staffordshire potters and sold on urban streets, including <a href="http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/341496">earthenware figurines</a> of murderers and victims and <a href="http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/341768">models of sites</a> connected with their crimes. </p>
<p>Life-size reincarnations could also be found at popular waxworks museums, the most famous of which was <a href="http://shootingvictoria.com/post/80586847229/edward-oxford-among-the-celebrated-criminals-of">Madame Tussaud’s</a> on London’s Baker Street. Madame Tussaud’s expanded their Chamber of Horrors in response to public demand, and made concerted efforts to obtain authentic relics from the murder scenes and assemble faithful tableaux reconstructions.</p>
<h2>Murder on stage</h2>
<p>As early as the 1820s, theatre managers also became alert to the profits which could be made from performances based on recent murders. Among the <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items?formats=playbill">collections</a> of 19th century playbills kept by the British Library is one advertising a tragedy, The Gamblers, at the Surrey Theatre on London’s Southbank in 1823. Based on the murder of William Weare by <a href="http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/thurtell.html">John Thurtell</a> near Watford, proprietors promised audiences “the identical horse and gig alluded to by the daily press in the accounts of the murder”. </p>
<p>But reenactments of topical murders formed only one type of violent drama found on the contemporary stage. Much more prominent was the murder melodrama. Theatre playbills, which were highly informative productions at this time, not only provided a textual description of the violent scenes in advertised plays, but from the 1840s, graphic illustrations as well. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141619/original/image-20161013-31333-qbx6g2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141619/original/image-20161013-31333-qbx6g2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141619/original/image-20161013-31333-qbx6g2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141619/original/image-20161013-31333-qbx6g2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141619/original/image-20161013-31333-qbx6g2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141619/original/image-20161013-31333-qbx6g2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1120&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141619/original/image-20161013-31333-qbx6g2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1120&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141619/original/image-20161013-31333-qbx6g2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1120&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The String of pearls or The Barber of Fleet Street.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-string-of-pearls-or-the-barber-of-fleet-street">British Library C.140.d.6.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One of the most popular Victorian melodramas was the tale of demon barber <a href="http://www.timeout.com/london/film/the-story-behind-the-legend-of-sweeney-todd">Sweeney Todd</a>, a heady mix of murder and cannibalism <a href="http://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=sharon-aronofsky-weltman-1847-sweeney-todd-and-abolition">first performed in 1847</a>. It was, in fact, an adaptation of an enormously successful serial novel, or “penny blood”, as this genre of cheap fiction sold in penny parts became known. A rare copy of the original Sweeney Todd story is held by the British Library, together with its second edition, several hundred pages longer with even more gruesome illustrations.</p>
<p>Just as contemporary murders helped to fuel interest in fictional murders, techniques used in melodrama and penny bloods were subsequently fed into the formula of violent crime reporting. Sweeney Todd’s publisher, Edward Lloyd, was also a founding father of the Sunday press, launching <a href="http://www.edwardlloyd.org/LW.htm">Lloyd’s Weekly London Newspaper</a> in 1842. Its success, and that of other weekly newspapers, was largely attributable to its significant coverage of criminal justice and even aggressive marketing when reporting particularly notorious murders. </p>
<p>Reading Lloyd’s Weekly on a Sunday became commonplace for many working- and lower middle-class Victorians. Given the limited time available for leisure, the importance of the Sunday newspaper as a form of entertainment becomes clear.</p>
<h2>Violent Victorians today</h2>
<p>Some of this may be familiar to you. Discrete pieces – such as execution broadsides, or penny bloods – are occasionally brought out to titillate 21st century audiences, to satisfy our desire for a bit of rough in our education about the Victorians. Yet few have dared to expose this material in any significant quantity, to highlight the presence of very graphic violence in multiple, even connected, entertainment genres.</p>
<p>Violent entertainments fulfilled an important function in the evolution of modern British culture and society. They began to flourish right at the very moment when displays and expressions of actual violence were being brought under control and, as far as possible, suppressed. These gruesome and bloodthirsty representations provided an outlet, siphoning off much of the actual violence that had hitherto been expressed in all manner of social and political dealings, providing a crucial accompaniment to schemes for the reformation of manners and the taming of the streets. </p>
<p>But they also helped to carve out a new space for the enjoyment of violence in 20th and even 21st century popular culture. While the most extreme forms disappeared, or were repackaged for smaller and very specialised audiences, the continuing public appetite or need for violence continued to be satisfied by violent crime reporting, by nostalgic reenactments of melodramas, and eventually by violent films and video games.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66714/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rosalind Crone does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Victorians revelled in images and descriptions of murder and mutilation which would today be regarded as shocking.Rosalind Crone, Senior Lecturer in History, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/640532016-08-24T04:31:54Z2016-08-24T04:31:54ZPhilippines cannot build a nation over the bodies of 100,000 dead in Duterte’s ‘war on drugs’<p>There are rare instances when there is value to a politician’s failure to deliver on a campaign promise. This is particularly true when the promise goes <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-36659258">like this</a>: I will kill 100,000 criminals if I become president. I will dump their corpses into Manila Bay for the fish to eat. Funeral parlours will be a booming industry. It will be bloody.</p>
<p>Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte claims to be a man who says what he thinks and means what he says. Since he was elected in May, more than 700 suspected criminals and drug pushers have been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/02/more-than-700-killed-in-less-than-three-months-in-filipino-drugs-crackdown">killed in police operations and summary executions</a>. With the killings averaging at least ten per day, it is possible Duterte’s target of 100,000 bodies will be reached in his six-year term.</p>
<p>To understand Duterte’s rise to power, it is necessary to distinguish the empirical from the normative – the “what is” from “what should be”. Unfortunately, bridging the two is increasingly challenging at a time when the nation’s vision of an ideal society is far from settled.</p>
<h2>‘Cardboard justice’ without due process</h2>
<p>Duterte won a <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36253612">landslide victory</a> after what began as a tightly contested presidential race. He shifted the framing of the campaign from poverty (his opponents’ main issue) to a personal crusade against crime and illegal drugs. </p>
<p>While all presidential contenders promised to deliver inclusive growth, Duterte characterised the nation’s problem as something more basic: peace and order. The nation, he said, was on the brink of falling apart.</p>
<p>As president, Duterte now enjoys an unprecedented <a href="http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/797675/pulse-asia-rody-enjoys-91-trust-rating">trust rating of 91%</a>. A majority of Filipinos — 63% to be precise — <a href="http://cnnphilippines.com/news/2016/07/25/sws-survey-president-rodrigo-duterte-promises.html">believe</a> he will fulfil “most if not all” of his promises.</p>
<p>Duterte’s support extends to the legislature. The co-equal branch of government, meant to serve as a check and balance to executive power, was quick to form a <a href="http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/787450/alvarez-cements-super-majority-in-congress">super majority</a> to support the president’s legislative agenda. That left only seven opposition members in a 290-member House of Representatives. </p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, House Bill No. 1 <a href="http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2016/07/07/1600371/house-bill-no.-1-restore-death-penalty">seeks to reinstate the death penalty</a>. Another priority bill aims to reduce the age of criminal liability to nine years old.</p>
<h2>Why is this approach so popular?</h2>
<p>It is not difficult to understand the sociological reasons behind the popularity of Duterte’s killing spree. For urban centres and mega-cities, crime and drugs are everyday issues that make life miserable for rich and poor communities alike. </p>
<p>In my fieldwork, my informants in slum communities have expressed relief when drug dealers have been gunned down. After all, they are the menaces who beat their wives, starve their children and bang on the doors of cowering neighbours while high on meth. They are the syndicates responsible for teenagers running red-eyed and for young mothers hauling cocaine in cheap suitcases to airports in China and Indonesia. </p>
<p>Upon hearing about the death of a drug pusher, an ordinary Filipino is afforded a sense of finality, if not retribution. The troublemaker is gone and will harm their families no more.</p>
<p>But why killings? Why can’t there be support for humane ways of being “tough” on crime?</p>
<p>Part of the reason has to do with a criminal justice system that has failed over the years. Arresting, prosecuting and imprisoning drug pushers is so slow, so bureaucratic and so prone to corruption that it has discredited the democratic virtue of due process.</p>
<p>What is the point of putting drug dealers behind bars if everyone knows the maximum-security prison has become a <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/world/life-of-luxury-in-manila-prison-sauna-stripper-bar-airconditioning-20141229-12fdor.html">fiefdom run by convicted drug lords</a>? In 2014, media reports revealed that prison cells had been converted to strip clubs, private gyms, recording studios and drug laboratories, with the occasional jacuzzi installed. Jail wardens were either too corrupt or too afraid to confront the felons. </p>
<p>For many, the assassination of drug criminals delivers what is now popularly called “<a href="http://news.abs-cbn.com/news/07/25/16/duterte-urged-stop-cardboard-justice">cardboard justice</a>”. Every day, broadsheets and primetime newscasts feature images of bloodied corpses covered by a cardboard sign that reads: “I am a drug pusher, do not follow in my footsteps”, or “I am a drug pusher, forgive me Lord.”</p>
<p>“We cannot build a nation over the dead bodies of our own citizens,” Duterte said in one of his speeches. But he went on to say that he had the resolve to “destroy the apparatus” of drug syndicates by targeting both big and small-time dealers. His police chief calls this <a href="http://www.rappler.com/nation/138049-dela-rosa-pnp-plan-drugs">Operation Plan Double Barrel</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>One touch of the barrel, two triggers will be set off. There’s a barrel that will target from above, the high-value targets. And there’s a barrel that will target from below, the street-level personalities.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Critics must engage with ‘war on drugs’ support</h2>
<p>To say that public support for these killings is merely based on fear and anger is mistaken. That overlooks the rationality that underpins the frustrated citizens’ support for Duterte’s anti-drug war. We need to engage with these reasons, not dismiss them, if the debate on policy is to move in a more deliberative direction.</p>
<p>Some criticise the notion of universal human rights. They see human rights as an argument put forward by Manila’s liberal intellectuals who are out of touch with the daily brutalities of crime and drugs. </p>
<p>For others, this is the Philippines’ way of “catching up” with more prosperous neighbours that have been ruled by strongmen whose legitimacy is based on delivering peace, order and economic growth. Singapore’s success story is very much part of this narrative.</p>
<p>Also, others believe sacrificing the lives of some is necessary for the lives of the majority. This argument finds voice even among Duterte’s progressive cabinet appointees, including the environmental justice advocate turned environment secretary, Gina Lopez. The former ashram yoga missionary <a href="http://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/in-depth/141535-environment-gina-lopez-profile">justifies</a> the war on drugs as precisely that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You shoot, you kill, you want to win the war because you’re fighting for the life of your people.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Certainly, the differential valuation of lives is a common logic invoked in the public sphere. <a href="http://www.rappler.com/nation/142179-gina-lopez-drug-related-killings">Lopez says</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m not making any judgement, but maybe the sacrifice of two or three can get rid of drugs, and these drug lords stop making money in the Philippines killing our youth.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The argument of retribution is also making a comeback. Though there is a lack of evidence for the death penalty <a href="https://theconversation.com/there-is-no-evidence-that-the-death-penalty-acts-as-a-deterrent-37886">as a deterrent</a> of crime, ideas of retribution bring the nation back to debating what kind of society it wants to become.</p>
<h2>Democracy requires effective opposition</h2>
<p>What, then, does the future hold for Philippine democracy, where the public affirms, legitimises and even celebrates the spike in drug-related killings? </p>
<p>Here, it is important for the normative to speak to the empirical. I offer two conjectures, drawing lessons from the deliberative democratic tradition.</p>
<p>First, the Philippine “intelligentsia” – human rights advocates and citizens critical of the drug war – should reflect on how they can make a meaningful case for human rights. In divisive debates, it is crucial to deploy <a href="http://ptx.sagepub.com/content/38/3/319.abstract">rhetoric</a> that bridges rather than polarises existing discourses. </p>
<p>Saying “human rights are human rights” no longer suffices. We unfortunately no longer live (or have never lived) in a time when human rights can be a premise that requires no further justification. This is especially the case in the Philippines, where discourses of war, crisis and the fragmentation of the republic are being deployed.</p>
<p>Second, a new, vibrant and dynamic opposition must emerge to challenge the strong consensus on the war against drugs. Given that support for the president is overwhelming in both the public and empowered sphere, the Duterte regime is an “<a href="http://www.rappler.com/thought-leaders/139170-administration-in-search-opposition">administration in need of an opposition</a>”. </p>
<p>But an opposition is not simply something out there that can be found. It needs to emerge organically. Pockets of dissent are beginning to claim space. Student activists can be seen wearing cardboard signs similar to the ones pinned on slain suspects that declare “anyone can be a drug pusher”. </p>
<p>While such micro-acts of resistance still have little impact on the broader public sphere, these creative ways of disrupting societal consensus can puncture the fantasy of penal populism that sets apart the virtuous public from the degenerates who do not deserve due process.</p>
<p>True to his promise, the first months of the Duterte regime have been bloody. But it can also evolve to become a stage for thoughtful deliberation on the nation’s shared virtues and democratic ideals. This is urgent work, for the war against drugs can easily <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-23/duterte-lashes-out-at-united-nations/7775832">turn into a war against its critics</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64053/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole Curato receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>To understand Rodrigo Duterte’s rise to power and the public support for killing drug dealers and users, we need to distinguish the empirical from the normative – the ‘what is’ from ‘what should be’.Nicole Curato, Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute for Governance & Policy Analysis, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/632662016-08-03T02:49:22Z2016-08-03T02:49:22ZWhy executions in Indonesia must stop<p>Indonesia executed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/28/indonesia-mass-execution-prisoners">four prisoners on death row</a> for drug offences early on Friday. Last week’s killings were the third round of executions under Joko Widodo’s government, and were carried out despite ongoing legal appeals and international pressure. </p>
<p>The firing squad shot dead Humphrey Jefferson Ejike Eleweke and Michael Titus from Nigeria, Seck Osmane from Senegal, and Freddy Budiman, an Indonesian national. </p>
<p>These executions were different from two rounds of executions last year that killed 14 people, including Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. Then, the government prepared with a lot of fanfare, went through bitter diplomatic fallouts, and endured international criticism. This time, the government carried out the executions abruptly and quietly. </p>
<p>The government notified families of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/27/indonesia-executions-firing-squad-this-week">14 prisoners</a> only on the Tuesday that executions would take place. The government did not explain why the executions of ten of these prisoners were postponed.</p>
<p>Human rights experts in Indonesia have repeatedly called for the government to stop the use of capital punishment. Hours before the third round of executions, the Indonesia Alliance of Human Rights Lecturers released a short statement addressed to Jokowi.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We urged him to stop the executions. Our considerations are simple. Not only does the death penalty violates human rights, executions in Indonesia are carried out under a deeply flawed justice system.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Violation of the right to life</h2>
<p>The death penalty violates the most fundamental right in human life: the right to life. This right is enshrined in Indonesia’s Constitution in Article 28 I: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The right to life, the right to be free of torture, the rights for freedom of thought and conscience, the rights to religion, the rights to be free from slavery, the rights to be treated equal in front of the law, and the rights to not be charged on retroactive laws are non-derogable rights in any circumstances. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Indonesian government ratified the <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/ccpr.aspx">International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights</a> in 2005, committing itself to uphold international human rights law. Indonesia has yet to ratify the optional protocol to abolish the death penalty. </p>
<p>However, Indonesia’s penchant for executions will weaken the nation’s standing in seeking reprieve for 334 Indonesians on death row in other countries as of last year. </p>
<h2>Indonesia violates its own laws</h2>
<p>The Indonesian government has repeatedly failed to uphold its own laws regarding death sentencing.</p>
<p>For example, under Indonesian law, executions are prohibited when legal processes are still ongoing. Jefferson was executed despite his pending clemency appeal. Jefferson, convicted in 2004 after the police found 1.7kg of heroin in a room used by one of his employees in a restaurant he ran, maintained that he was innocent and was framed.</p>
<p>By going ahead with the execution despite pending appeals, the government has clearly violated Article 13 on clemency law and ignored the 2015 Constitutional Court decision on the death penalty. </p>
<p>Further, the attorney-general also violated the rights to information of the advocates and families of the prisoners. They have the right to 72 hours notice of execution. The attorney-general only informed lawyers and families 60 hours prior. </p>
<p>The implementation of the death penalty without fixing the corrupt judicial system will not deter people from engaging in the illegal drug trade. Convicting and executing drug dealers will not eliminate drug trafficking in Indonesia as long as corrupt officials are free to abuse the system. </p>
<p>This is clear in the case of Budiman. He was sentenced to death in 2012 for smuggling 1.4 million ecstasy pills from China from behind bars. </p>
<p>Ahead of Budiman’s execution, the head of the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence (KontraS), Haris Azhar, released a statement on social media that went viral. Azhar said that when he visited Budiman in 2014, Budiman implicated military generals, National Narcotics Agency officials and the police in running the drug trade. </p>
<p>In short, indication of involvement of the state apparatus in Indonesia’s drug trade is really strong. In the last couple of months there have been many news reports on military and police involvement <a href="http://www.harianterbit.com/m/nasional/read/2016/04/09/59742/0/25/Tajuk-Jaringan-Narkoba-Menjerat-TNI-Polri">in the drug network</a>. In April, the attorney-general fired 20 attorneys involved in illegal drug offences.</p>
<p>It would not be surprising if the death penalty was merely an attempt to cover-up the corrupt law enforcers.</p>
<p>There are deep flaws in the law and legal enforcement, especially in the process of death sentencing and executions. The death penalty is built on weak institutions. This affects not only justice for the condemned but also the attempt to create a just legal system in Indonesia. The strength or weakness of the institution reflects the quality of Indonesia’s law.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63266/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Herlambang P Wiratraman works for Centre of Human Rights Law Studies, Universitas Airlangga, and SEPAHAM Indonesia (Indonesian Lecturer Association for Human Rights). He receives support from Asean University Network for Human Rights Education (AUN HRE) and Southeast Asian Human Rights Studies Network (SEAHRN). </span></em></p>Not only does the death penalty violate human rights, executions in Indonesia are carried out under a deeply flawed justice system.Herlambang P Wiratraman, Director at the Centre of Human Rights Law Studies, Universitas AirlanggaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/459152015-11-06T12:55:36Z2015-11-06T12:55:36ZAlbert Pierrepoint: a ‘haunted hangman’ and the death penalty today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100935/original/image-20151105-16235-1qxbx5e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=12%2C30%2C1011%2C702&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gallows legacy. Albert Pierrepoint and the nature of the executioner.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/121483302@N02/15775540288/in/photolist-29sFb-4n9Qfw-q32LvW-oxHo2n-ohyHMr-7CLgze-74TMdi-s3fj9E-sEu9R-o78A8E-29s53-37841-aayyym-rMXeTn-886VNx-a6yjCB-92VZNU-nX49n1-fh3qJ1-7gQg-j9QFE-4JYT-byxCwr-4ZGka3-5BcZio-a6wAHa-jcH9WS-5AYBUR-2mKRHu-23G6T7-6MmUDf-66djBA-6dkDnA-7gN4yE-7BFCJx-4GFFZa-5BCTGd-5A17MF-7h3Bhj-pXiYuU-KhpPd-4idfA2-82BTWj-7CHDth-YbTNG-fyjsaS-9r9UQC-e2xNHk-qAAEc-mdLbC">Global Panorama</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fifty years ago this Sunday, Britain passed a law which brought an end to the death penalty for murder and consigned the noose to history. One executioner, though, did not simply recede into the shadows. Albert Pierrepoint was not the last British hangman, but he was certainly the most famous. His legacy lives on as a symbol of the terrible responsibility of those charged to do the state’s killing and a benchmark for our understanding of the job.</p>
<p>The 1965 Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act was a trial measure, with abolition <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/16/newsid_3258000/3258437.stm">finalised in 1969</a>. But parliamentary votes on reintroduction continued into the 1990s, and it was only relatively recently that the last remnants of the death penalty were definitively removed from UK law. Only in 1998 did treason and piracy cease to be capital offences. </p>
<h2>Bridge to the past</h2>
<p>Pierrepoint came to embody our strange relationship with the institution. As the son and nephew of hangmen, he seemed to continue some kind of artisan family tradition. His oddly sympathetic public profile was established during the 1940s when he carried out multiple hangings of Nazi war criminals. By the time Pierrepoint had resigned from the executioners’ list in 1956 he had hanged around 450 people. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100541/original/image-20151102-16535-1uyvqn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100541/original/image-20151102-16535-1uyvqn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100541/original/image-20151102-16535-1uyvqn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100541/original/image-20151102-16535-1uyvqn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100541/original/image-20151102-16535-1uyvqn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100541/original/image-20151102-16535-1uyvqn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100541/original/image-20151102-16535-1uyvqn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100541/original/image-20151102-16535-1uyvqn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The public face of the death penalty. Albert Pierrepoint.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ninian_reid/12278766983/in/photolist-jH2TD2-jG5Ju3-dXsMVL-jvMHXU-bo99Lg">Ninian Reid</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After his retirement, he dispensed expertise about hanging for television and radio audiences, acted as a film consultant and, in 1974, published a memoir, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Executioner_Pierrepoint.html?id=510vAQAAIAAJ">Executioner: Pierrepoint</a>. In the post-abolition era, Pierrepoint <a href="http://cmc.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/09/15/1741659015603623.abstract">was an authentic link</a> with the practice of hanging; a bridge to memories of capital punishment. And there are three significant aspects in his cultural persona that have helped build our modern narrative of the executioner.</p>
<h2>Civilised hanging</h2>
<p>The first was Pierrepoint as an <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/50th-anniversary-last-execution-britain-how-hangman-albert-pierrepoint-did-his-job-1460839">efficient and professional hangman</a>. This was a portrayal that he contributed to in his memoir and media interviews. It stressed the meticulous care he took and emphasised his speed and efficiency. It was in keeping with 20th century understandings of execution. The bodily suffering of the condemned should be minimised or, <a href="http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/social_research/summary/v078/78.3.garland.html">preferably, non-existent</a>. Whether this could actually be achieved is debatable but it was important that hanging was understood to have been “modern” and civilised.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100939/original/image-20151105-16249-jl9znk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100939/original/image-20151105-16249-jl9znk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100939/original/image-20151105-16249-jl9znk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100939/original/image-20151105-16249-jl9znk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100939/original/image-20151105-16249-jl9znk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=741&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100939/original/image-20151105-16249-jl9znk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100939/original/image-20151105-16249-jl9znk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100939/original/image-20151105-16249-jl9znk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A section from Pierrepoint’s testimony to the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment in 1950.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/candp/punishment/g12/g12cs3s2.htm">National Archives</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Famously, Pierrepoint also renounced the death penalty in his memoir, stating that it achieved nothing but revenge. My trawl through the archives of the time shows that those who opposed the reintroduction of capital punishment seized on this as compelling support. This “reformed hangman” aspect of Pierrepoint’s external cultural persona earned him respect and fascination. But this appears to have been an oversimplification; statements he made in interviews I have read were more equivocal. Pierrepoint does not seem to have been firmly against capital punishment in all circumstances.</p>
<h2>Regrets</h2>
<p>The final aspect of Pierrepoint’s cultural persona is that of the haunted hangman, traumatised by guilt and regret. It is a noteworthy portrayal because it does not draw on his self-image. In fact, it contradicts his accounts of being untroubled about those he had hanged, even if they were subsequently pardoned. </p>
<p>Some press reports about Pierrepoint when he died in 1992 suggested that he was troubled by his past. However, the clearest portrayal of Pierrepoint in this way is found in the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0462477/">eponymous biopic</a>. In this film, the character of Pierrepoint, played by Timothy Spall, is haunted by executing an acquaintance and, eventually, traumatised by the many hangings he has carried out. It is an appealing idea, one perhaps that the public cling to, that life is not easily taken by anyone.</p>
<h2>Fraught future</h2>
<p>Maybe Pierrepoint had an easy ride. Now that it is more than <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/13/britain-last-executions-hanging-criminals-low-key">half a century since anyone was hanged</a> in Britain, we can use him to understand better how this conflicting cultural persona of the executioner has contemporary relevance in the US, where the death penalty is increasingly <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/10/23/lethal_injection_in_the_u_s_is_a_farce.html">beset by scandal</a>. </p>
<p>Pierrepoint was able to construct an air of professionalism around the mechanics of the gallows, but that is not a luxury afforded to his modern-day equivalents. The availability of the drugs necessary to perform lethal injections is increasingly restricted, which has forced states that retain the death penalty to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jan/14/oklahoma-experimental-lethal-injection-protocol-supreme-court">“experiment” with alternative drugs</a>, or add other <a href="http://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/utahs-reintroduction-firing-squads-usas-latest-attempt-fix-unfixable">execution methods</a>. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/13/botched-oklahoma-execution-clayton-lockett-bloody-mess">High-profile botched executions</a> by lethal injection have raised the problem of how to carry out those “civilised” executions that avoid pain and suffering, and which helped to create the Pierrepoint persona in the UK. This seems almost impossible now for the Americans who try to do the same under intense scrutiny. The prospect of putting people to death in the gas chamber, electric chair or by firing squad feels like a step backwards.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100938/original/image-20151105-16231-80d7e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100938/original/image-20151105-16231-80d7e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100938/original/image-20151105-16231-80d7e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100938/original/image-20151105-16231-80d7e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100938/original/image-20151105-16231-80d7e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100938/original/image-20151105-16231-80d7e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100938/original/image-20151105-16231-80d7e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/100938/original/image-20151105-16231-80d7e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protests at the Supreme Court.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/80014607@N05/8700016493/in/photolist-efMRNn-zu1tr-s4Hnjf-av6Vi5-zu1bg-zu15u-zu13Q-zu17a-zu1cf-zu12M-zu14S-zu127-zu18Q-zu16m-7m8M15-zu1mi-zu1n5-zu1ny-cXe3E-ywyq-ywy9-zu1vp-ywy5-zu1pm-zu1de-zu1g5-zu1ex-3TmdFT-zu1hG-zu1gX-55QUN-4zGV5L-apL7xv-4zGVeh-zu19z-zu1ah-zu1io-zu1kK-ywyf-zu1jo-efTZdG-zz25D-nJdVRY-zu1vL-efTZjW-efTYVu-ywya-ebcu2z-7ewf59-zu1sg">Thomas Muther, Jr.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In an echo of Pierrepoint’s life, some former executioners and prison governors in the US have spoken <a href="http://www.salon.com/2015/10/08/i_executed_62_people_im_sorry_an_executioner_turned_death_penalty_opponent_tells_all/">out against the death penalty</a>. They have detailed their trauma, and campaign groups raise this potential for capital punishment to harm people other than just the condemned prisoner as an argument for abolition. </p>
<p>Pierrepoint would have had no truck with that, I suspect. But those somewhat contradictory narratives around his career – the quest for professionalism, his apparent reformation and the biopic tale of a man haunted by his deeds – remain deeply relevant in understanding how today’s executioners might think, and how the public might view them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45915/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lizzie Seal is a member of the Howard League for Penal Reform.</span></em></p>50 years after the UK first experimented with removing the death penalty for murder, one name has become our bridge to the hangman’s noose.Lizzie Seal, Senior Lecturer in Sociology/Criminology, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/457912015-08-09T08:31:23Z2015-08-09T08:31:23ZBarbaric and futile: world must do away with state-sponsored killing<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/bali-nine">execution by firing squad</a> of Australian nationals Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, in April this year brought the issue of capital punishment to the forefront of Australia’s consciousness and reignited debate over the practice on a global scale. The two young men were executed alongside six others in Bali after being convicted of drug offences in Indonesia. In light of this we must ask what sort of crimes – if any – justify state-sanctioned killings.</p>
<p>Public opinion in Australia in relation to the executions was hard to discern. Polls reflected conflicting sentiments on the death penalty. In January 2015, a Roy Morgan poll found <a href="http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/6044-executions-andrew-chan-myuran-sukumaran-january-2015-201501270609">52% supported the penalty</a> for those convicted of drug trafficking overseas. A month later, a conflicting Lowy Institute Poll found <a href="http://www.lowyinstitute.org/news-and-media/press-releases/new-lowy-institute-poll-finds-62-australians-oppose-execution-andrew-chan-and-myuran-sukumaran">62% of Australian adults opposed the executions</a> of Chan and Sukumaran.</p>
<p>The mixed public opinion in relation to these executions echoed that in evidence when Australians Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers were hanged in Malaysia in 1986. A historical report from the Australian Institute of Criminology <a href="http://aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/tandi/1-20/tandi03.html">suggested public support</a> for capital punishment at the time ranged from 43% to 70%, depending on the crimes. A national survey in May 1986, however, <a href="http://aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/tandi/1-20/tandi03.html">revealed only 17% supported the death penalty</a> for persons convicted of serious drug trafficking.</p>
<p>Despite the variance in public sentiment, in both cases the Australian government response was strongly stated and in definite opposition to the death penalty. The then prime minister Bob Hawke <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/drug-duos-hanging-marked-start-of-big-chill-with-malaysia/2005/11/29/1133026469659.html">called the execution of Barlow and Chambers “barbaric”</a>, sparking outrage in Malaysia. The remark <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=2rRbATH7L7QC&pg=PA48&lpg=PA48&dq=public+opinion+executions+Kevin+Barlow+and+Brian+Chambers+Malaysia&source=bl&ots=Ck4Wb3DfH-&sig=WLkwuW1xLveP0eZ4jML1qZGhFKk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAmoVChMInMKFi56RxwIVZhmmCh3RXAFr#v=onepage&q=public%20opinion%20executions%20Kevin%20Barlow%20and%20Brian%20Chambers%20Malaysia&f=false">drove a wedge between Australia and Malaysia</a>. Relations were only rebuilt after the 2003 retirement of former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad.</p>
<p>In response to the execution of Sukumaran and Chan, Australia’s prime minister, Tony Abbott, and foreign minister, Julie Bishop, <a href="http://foreignminister.gov.au/transcripts/Pages/2015/jb_tr_150429.aspx?ministerid=4">labelled the killings “cruel and unnecessary”</a>. Australia’s official response emphasised the men’s <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/27/bali-nine-hard-won-public-sympathy-appears-no-match-for-judicial-resolve">rehabilitation</a> during their ten years on death row. </p>
<p>Hours after their deaths were confirmed, Tony Abbott announced the “unprecedented step” of <a href="http://www.pm.gov.au/media/2015-04-29/executions-andrew-chan-and-myuran-sukumaran-0">recalling Australia’s ambassador</a> to Indonesia. As many guessed, however, this move was only shortlived. The ambassador <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-10/indonesian-ambassador-returns-to-jakarta-following-withdrawal/6534176">returned quietly</a> about five weeks later.</p>
<p>Although ultimately ineffective, there is no doubt Australia lobbied strongly against the death penalty in the case of Chan and Sukumaran. Australia’s response to the executions reflected the <a href="https://theconversation.com/hard-line-on-refugees-undermines-principled-opposition-to-execution-40953">official and well-established view</a> that Australia is opposed to capital punishment in <a href="https://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2010C00307">law</a> and <a href="http://foreignminister.gov.au/speeches/Pages/2015/jb_sp_150212.aspx?ministerid=4">policy</a>. </p>
<p>Yet the death penalty is imposed thousands of times each year and in many cases Australia and other abolitionist countries do not lobby strongly in protest. At a time when the issue is fresh in the public mind, an examination of the worldwide practice is warranted.</p>
<h2>Which countries execute – and why?</h2>
<p>Amnesty International <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/act50/0001/2015/en/">reports annually</a> on the imposition of the death penalty globally. It provides only minimum figures, because it only reports figures where reasonable confirmation exists. China, North Korea and some other states treat capital punishment as a state secret. The numbers executed in those states are not reported, although it is estimated that China executes and sentences to death thousands of people each year. Published reports of capital punishment statistics therefore exclude practices in China and North Korea.</p>
<p>In 2014, at least 22 countries carried out the executions of 607 people or more. At least 2,466 people were sentenced to death around the world. The five countries responsible for the most executions, according to confirmed data, were Iran (289), Saudi Arabia (90), Iraq (61), the USA (35) and Sudan (23). In the USA, 3,035 people were living on death row.</p>
<p>The death penalty is imposed in some countries for “crimes” which are not even regarded as such in many other countries. The Cornell University Law School Project <a href="http://www.deathpenaltyworldwide.org/search.cfm">Death Penalty Worldwide</a> charts the practice of capital punishment in all retentionist countries. Australian observers of the death penalty are arguably most familiar with the punishment as it has been applied to drug offenders in some South-East Asian countries. However, in <a href="http://www.deathpenaltyworldwide.org/country-search-post.cfm?country=Afghanistan">Afghanistan</a>, it is legal for the state to execute a person convicted of apostasy, adultery or consensual homosexual sex. In <a href="http://www.deathpenaltyworldwide.org/country-search-post.cfm?country=Iran">Iran</a>, the death penalty may be imposed for recidivist theft. In <a href="http://www.deathpenaltyworldwide.org/country-search-post.cfm?country=Saudi+Arabia#f72-3">Saudi Arabia</a>, executions are carried out as punishment for “crimes” including sorcery, witchcraft and repeat partaking of alcohol. Although official statistics are unavailable, it is known that <a href="http://www.deathpenaltyworldwide.org/country-search-post.cfm?country=China#f97-3">Chinese law</a> permits capital punishment for serious graft or bribery offences involving large sums of money.</p>
<p>In 2014, <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/act50/0001/2015/en/">executions were carried out</a> in various countries by beheading, hanging, lethal injection and shooting. In the United Arab Emirates it is legal to execute by stoning. In 2014 all executions in the US were carried out by lethal injection – but some states retain other methods as legal options, including hanging, shooting, the gas chamber and the electric chair.</p>
<p>Amnesty International is <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/ACT51/005/2014/en/">currently campaigning</a> to prevent the execution of people with mental or intellectual disabilities. Capital punishment continues to be imposed against people who <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/bali-nine-schizophrenic-man-rodrigo-gularte-did-not-understand-he-was-going-to-be-executed-until-final-moments-before-his-death-10214446.html">lack the capacity to adequately understand their actions</a> or punishment.</p>
<p>In January this year, the US states of Texas and Georgia executed <a href="http://example.com/http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jan/30/texas-executes-robert-ladd-intellectually-disabled-prisoner">intellectually disabled</a> men. This contravened federal court bans on imposing the death penalty in such cases. Texas defines intellectual disability <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/01/29/3616830/robert-ladd-execution/">in relation to a character in the John Steinbeck novel Of Mice and Men</a> rather than according to the standards set by medical science. </p>
<p>Globally, and notably in the USA, the death penalty is also imposed disproportionately against the <a href="http://deathpenalty.org/article.php?id=54">poor and those from minority racial and ethnic groups</a>. In violation of international law, Egypt, Iran, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nigeria, <a href="http://www.reprieve.org.uk/press/pakistan-executed-juvenile-in-may-court-documents-show/">Pakistan</a>, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and other countries continue to execute juveniles. </p>
<h2>Barbaric and ineffective</h2>
<p>Even the most pragmatic analysis must reject the death penalty as ineffectual and unreliable. In the US since 1973, more than 150 death row inmates have been <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/act50/0001/2015/en/">exonerated</a>, often based on <a href="https://theconversation.com/loss-of-innocence-the-experience-of-exonerated-death-row-inmates-42968">DNA evidence</a>. There is no evidence that capital punishment is <a href="https://theconversation.com/there-is-no-evidence-that-the-death-penalty-acts-as-a-deterrent-37886">any more effective</a> at deterring crime than <a href="http://www.brown.edu/initiatives/journal-world-affairs/211-fall%E2%80%93winter-2014/value-international-standards-campaign-abolition-death-penalty">life imprisonment</a>.</p>
<p>States that carry out capital punishment debase their justice systems and devalue human life. The practice is <a href="http://www.amnesty.org.au/adp/comments/29959/">indefensible</a> regardless of the severity of the crime for which it is meted out. When imposed against the mentally ill, intellectually disabled people or children - or disproportionately against racial minorities and the poor - capital punishment is barbaric. Abolitionist countries are obliged to lobby against the practice, whether or not it affects their nationals.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Shelby Houghton, academic research assistant at the University of Newcastle Law School, Australia, contributed to the research and writing of this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45791/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amy Maguire does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Capital punishment is unfairly imposed, innocent people are regularly condemned and it is patently ineffective in deterring crime. So why to states retain the death penalty?Amy Maguire, Lecturer in International Law, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/432272015-08-08T12:14:45Z2015-08-08T12:14:45ZThere’s no evidence that death penalty is a deterrent against crime<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90133/original/image-20150729-30854-178u469.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Demonstration against the death penalty in Paris.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">World Coalition Against the Death Penalty</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Capital punishment is such a costly, controversial, and divisive issue that, unless it succeeds in saving lives, it clearly should be abolished – as it already has been <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/death-penalty/">in the European Union and in 101 countries around the world</a> But does the death penalty save lives? Let’s consider the relevant factors and the evidence.</p>
<p>Some feel the question of whether the death penalty deters can be argued as a matter of theory: capital punishment is worse than other penalties therefore it must lead to fewer killings. This contention misses much of the complexity of the modern death penalty. First, theory can’t tell us whether the spectacle of state-sanctioned killings operates to unhinge marginal minds into thinking that their own grievances merit similar forms of retribution that they then try to inflict on their own. Even if some other criminals were deterred by the death penalty, one must ask whether these avoided crimes would be more than offset by the possible brutalisation effect.</p>
<p>Second, operating a death penalty regime – at least in the United States – has been incredibly costly, as each case resulting in a death sentence will spend years in various types of legal appeals, eating up the valuable time of judges, prosecutors, and defence lawyers, overwhelmingly at government expense.</p>
<p>The best research on the issue suggests that life imprisonment is a <a href="http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/CookCostRpt.pdf.">less costly penalty</a>, since locking someone up is far less expensive than both locking them up and paying a team of lawyers for many years – often decades – to debate whether a sentence of death should be imposed. In California, for example, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-461750/Suicides-overtake-executions-Californias-death-row.html">execution is only the third leading cause of death for those on death row</a> (behind old age and suicide).</p>
<p>Some might contend that the lengthy appeals are a needless burden that should be jettisoned so that the penalty is administered more cheaply and quickly, but the large number of exonerations of those on death row (<a href="http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-cases#154">155 including 21 by DNA evidence at last count</a>) underscores the danger of any effort to short circuit the judicial process. Killing a few innocent defendants is an unavoidable consequence of having a capital regime – so unless there is some clear evidence of deterrence, it is hard to argue positively for the death penalty.</p>
<h2>Lack of evidence</h2>
<p>So what is the evidence on deterrence? Here the answer is clear: there is not the slightest credible statistical evidence that capital punishment reduces the rate of homicide. Whether one compares the similar movements of homicide in Canada and the US when only the latter restored the death penalty, or in American states that have abolished it versus those that retain it, or in Hong Kong and Singapore (the first abolishing the death penalty in the mid-1990s and the second greatly increasing its usage at the same), there is no detectable effect of capital punishment on crime. The <a href="http://escholarship.org/uc/item/1gk0r77m">best econometric studies</a> reach the same conclusion. </p>
<p>A number of studies – all of which, unfortunately, are only available via subscripton – purported to find deterrent effects but all of these studies collapse after errors in coding, measuring statistical significance, or in establishing causal relationships are corrected. A panel of the <a href="http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/NatResCouncil-Deterr.pdf">National Academy of Sciences</a> addressed the deterrence question directly in 2012 and unanimously concluded that there was no credible evidence that the death penalty deters homicides.</p>
<p>The report went on to say that the issue of deterrence should be removed from any discussion of the death penalty given this lack of credible evidence. But if the deterrence argument disappears, so does the case for the death penalty.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90138/original/image-20150729-30875-1xppc4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90138/original/image-20150729-30875-1xppc4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90138/original/image-20150729-30875-1xppc4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90138/original/image-20150729-30875-1xppc4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90138/original/image-20150729-30875-1xppc4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90138/original/image-20150729-30875-1xppc4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/90138/original/image-20150729-30875-1xppc4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Troy Davis was executed in Georgia in September 2011.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">World Coalition Against the Death Penalty</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Those familiar with criminal justice issues are not surprised by the lack of deterrence. To get the death penalty in the United States one has to commit an extraordinarily heinous crime, as evidenced by the fact that last year roughly 14,000 murders were committed but only 35 executions took place. </p>
<p>Since murderers typically expose themselves to far greater immediate risks, the likelihood is incredibly remote that some small chance of execution many years after committing a crime will influence the behaviour of a sociopathic deviant who would otherwise be willing to kill if his only penalty were life imprisonment. </p>
<p>Any criminal who actually thought he would be caught would find the prospect of life without parole to be a monumental penalty. Any criminal who didn’t think he would be caught would be untroubled by any sanction.</p>
<h2>Wasted resources</h2>
<p>A better way to address the problem of homicide is to take the resources that would otherwise be wasted in operating a death penalty regime and use them on strategies that are known to reduce crime, such as hiring and properly training police officers and solving crimes.</p>
<p>Over the past three decades there has been a downward trend in the number of murders that lead to arrest and conviction to the point that only about half of all murders are now punished. The graphic below shows the steady decline in the number of homicides cleared by arrest in Connecticut, which mimics the national trend. Of course, even if there is an arrest, there may not be a conviction so the percentage of killers who are punished is smaller than this figure suggests.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91152/original/image-20150807-27590-mpq7qw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91152/original/image-20150807-27590-mpq7qw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91152/original/image-20150807-27590-mpq7qw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91152/original/image-20150807-27590-mpq7qw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91152/original/image-20150807-27590-mpq7qw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91152/original/image-20150807-27590-mpq7qw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91152/original/image-20150807-27590-mpq7qw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91152/original/image-20150807-27590-mpq7qw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Murder cases cleared by arrest or other means: 1970 - 2009.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">John Donohoe</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Far better for both justice and deterrence if the resources saved by scrapping the death penalty could be used to increase the chance that killers would be caught and punished – and taken off the streets.</p>
<p>To give a sense of the burden of capital punishment, note that over the past 35 years the <a href="http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/california-cost-study-2011">state of California spent roughly $4 billion to execute 13 individuals</a>. The $4 billion would have been enough to <a href="http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/6068">hire roughly 80,000 police officers who, if appropriately assigned, would be expected to prevent 466 murders</a> (and much other crime) in California – far more than any of the most optimistic (albeit discredited) views of the possible benefits of capital punishment. </p>
<p>In other words, since the death penalty is a costly and inefficient system, its use will waste resources that could be expended on crime-fighting measures that are known to be effective. It is not surprising that last summer a federal judge <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/16/justice/california-death-penalty/">ruled that California’s capital regime is unconstitutional</a> on the grounds that it serves no legitimate penological interest.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions-year">sharp decline in executions in the US</a> from the peak of 98 in 1999 down to 35 last year (with death sentences falling from a 1996 peak of 315 to 73), coupled with the steady pace of states <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/05/victory-nebraska-becomes-the-19th-us-state-to-abolish-the-death-penalty/">abolishing the death penalty over the past eight years</a> (including conservative Nebraska in May) shows that “smart on crime” entails shunning capital punishment. </p>
<p>With zero evidence that the death penalty provides any tangible benefits and very clear indications of its monetary, human, and social costs, this is one programme about which there can be little debate that its costs undeniably outweigh any possible benefits.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43227/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Donohue does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Not only does capital punishment not deter crime but it’s more expensive than keeping a convicted murderer in prison for life.John Donohue, C Wendell and Edith M Carlsmith Professor of Law, Stanford UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/431302015-08-01T07:25:12Z2015-08-01T07:25:12ZWhy the death penalty is losing favour in sub-Saharan Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90321/original/image-20150730-25753-1als732.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi waves at his trial with other Muslim Brotherhood members in Cairo, in May. He was subsequently sentenced to death. Egypt is among a handful of African countries that regularly execute.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mohamed Abd El Ghany</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The death penalty is <a href="http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/6093">declining worldwide</a> despite a surge in executions during the first few months of 2015 in countries such as <a href="http://www.hrw.org/news/2015/06/01/saudi-arabia-spike-executions">Saudi Arabia</a> and <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/pakistans-execution-surge-carries-hard-line-message-for-foreign-leaders/2015/04/21/f18c8020-e812-11e4-aae1-d642717d8afa_story.html">Pakistan</a>. The African continent is a vanguard of this trend. </p>
<p>The death penalty has been abolished or has fallen into disuse throughout Portuguese and French-speaking Africa. The same goes for South Africa and Namibia. Only a handful of countries regularly execute, most prominently Egypt, Sudan, Somalia, and Libya. Several verge on abolition. Zambia has had a moratorium for 25 years. </p>
<p>In 2012, the Ghanaian government endorsed a <a href="http://blog.deathpenaltyworldwide.org/2012/07/ghana-accepts-constitution-review-commissions-recommendation-to-abolish-the-death-penalty.html">constitutional change</a> to abolish capital punishment. The death penalty in Kenya, historically mandatory for robbery and rape, faces frequent court challenges. Executions that do occur on the continent, as in <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/01/gambia-pressure-execution-prisoners">The Gambia in 2012</a> or <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/25/us-nigeria-execution-idUSBRE95O0RA20130625">Nigeria in 2013</a>, generate controversy at home and abroad.</p>
<h2>A macabre foreign import</h2>
<p>As with most aspects of criminal justice, the death penalty as it exists in law is a <a href="https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10036/3085/Killing%20the%20condemned.pdf?sequence=5">colonial import</a>. Except in centralised empires, criminal justice before the modern era was a private matter in which a victim’s family, clan, or kin group negotiated compensation from a perpetrator’s kin under threat of spiritual harm. Law enforcement and punishment were collective and crime could result in misfortune for the group. Compensation restored the harmony of a community, a nascent concept of restorative justice that resonates today.</p>
<p>While the death penalty was known for religious reasons in <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=T9QMAQAAMAAJ&lpg=PA1&ots=u-_y2eOLBv&dq=legislative%20methods%20in%20the%20zanzibar%20and%20east%20african%20protectorates&pg=PA5#v=onepage&q&f=false">Islamic-majority Africa</a>, elsewhere the use of capital punishment was spotty. Crimes that caused spiritual harm, such as incest or adultery in some societies, often triggered the most severe sanctions. Among the <a href="http://www.everyculture.com/wc/Mauritania-to-Nigeria/Igbo.html">Igbo</a> peoples of Nigeria and the <a href="http://www.maasai-association.org/maasai.html">Maasai</a> of Kenya, murder of a kinsman was treated more harshly than murder of an outsider. Execution rituals were intricately linked to beliefs about authority and the afterlife. For instance, the king of Dahomey “owned” the heads of his subjects and therefore carried out executions by decapitation.</p>
<p>Attitudes toward the death penalty in pre-colonial or colonial times are still relevant. The <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-13040376">Batswana of Botswana</a> practiced capital punishment for murder while the <a href="http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/shona-people-soul-africa">Shona of Zimbabwe</a> used an intricate system of compensation for wrongs. Unlike Botswana, Zimbabwe suffered excessive political executions during the colonial period. </p>
<p>In Ian Smith’s Rhodesia, even petty security offences by African nationalists could result in death sentences, many imposed by secret military courts. No wonder, then, that Botswana remains committed to legal capital punishment while Zimbabwe’s political establishment is not. The vice president, <a href="http://www.thetelescopenews.com/zimbabwe-news/3790-why-emmerson-mnangagwa-will-not-sign-any-zimbabwe-death-warrants.html">Emmerson Mnangagwa</a>, once a political prisoner during the Rhodesian War, has publicly stated his <a href="http://www.newzimbabwe.com/news-12607-We+must+abolish+death+penalty+Mnangagwa/news.aspx">opposition</a>. Zimbabwe’s new constitution also drastically restricts the scope of capital punishment.</p>
<p>Elsewhere, misuse of the death penalty during the colonial era or in the period of one-party and military rule after independence continues to haunt. In Kenya, more than 1,000 executions of militants took place during the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-12997138">Mau Mau conflict</a> in the 1950s. During the <a href="Algerian%20War%20%7C%20Britannica.com">Algerian War</a>, the French government even carried out executions for sabotage and other property crimes. </p>
<p>Newly independent governments learned these lessons all too well. The sham capital trials of environmental activist <a href="http://global.britannica.com/biography/Ken-Saro-Wiwa">Ken Saro-Wiwa</a> by the Nigerian military government, opposition leader <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-orton-chirwa-1558842.html">Orton Chirwa</a> in Hastings Banda’s Malawi, and human rights attorney <a href="http://www.jambonewspot.com/koigi-wa-wamwere-why-i-will-buy-uhuru-kenyatta-a-bible/">Koigi wa Wamwere</a> in Kenya under former president, Daniel arap Moi, are only the most well-known examples among thousands.</p>
<h2>The case for abolition</h2>
<p>African political leaders do not need me, an American academic, to tell them that the death penalty is an ineffective tool of criminal justice. I have no moral authority here: the United States executes more efficiently and frequently than the entire African continent combined. These executions have significant costs: 154 death row <a href="http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/6162">exonerations</a> since 1976 – and at least two likely wrongful executions, routinely botched executions and an increasingly desperate search for scarce lethal injection drugs.</p>
<p>African countries have similar struggles. Forensics and police investigations are weak in many countries. The <a href="http://innocenceprojectsa.com/about/">Innocence Project</a> South Africa and the <a href="http://www.wits.ac.za/alumni/news/13309/justice_.html">Wits Justice Project</a> at the University of the Witwatersrand uncover the same problems of poor forensic evidence that plague capital cases in the United States. </p>
<p>In 2010, Benard Tagoe was released from <a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/201007300842.html">24 years on death row</a> in Ghana due to faulty evidence. Resource constraints contribute to a chronic shortage of legal aid for indigent defendants. Swaziland and Zimbabwe have had difficulty <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/03/2013349325128765.html">hiring executioners</a> who can properly carry out hangings, a vanishing skill. The staggering diversity of the continent, divided into legal systems that operate in often-unfamiliar languages and with bewildering procedures, is its own obstacle.</p>
<p>The question confronting political leaders of all retentionist nations is whether the death penalty is worth the cost and the risk of error. But on a continent with a legacy of misuse by powerful, unchecked executives, the case against the death penalty may be even more compelling. </p>
<p>Certainly, some brutal dictatorships in the world today have abolished capital punishment, but their job is harder. The death penalty is a dramatic expression of state power. Though only a small part of the rule of law landscape, the implications of abolition for judicial independence, transparency, and trust in authority may be far-reaching.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43130/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Novak does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As with most aspects of criminal justice in sub-Saharan Africa, the death penalty as it currently exists in law is a colonial import. Criminal justice before the modern era was a private matter.Andrew Novak, Adjunct Professor, International and Comparative Criminal Justice, George Mason UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/410612015-05-01T05:17:04Z2015-05-01T05:17:04ZCriticise Indonesia, but let’s not forget the West helps put plenty of people on death row<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79969/original/image-20150430-30696-dv92wd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Feelings are running high in Australia.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.epa.eu/politics-photos/citizens-initiative-recall-photos/australia-withdraws-ambassador-after-indonesian-execution-photos-51909292">EPA/Dan Himbrechts</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Across the world, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/29/guardian-view-indonesia-executions-cruel-unnecessary">people have expressed outrage</a> with the recent executions in Indonesia. The European Union, the United Nations, and various national governments have all issued <a href="http://www.un.org/sg/statements/index.asp?nid=8578">statements condemning the state killings</a>. </p>
<p>While we can criticise the Indonesian authorities, we should also use this time to look at ourselves. For far too long, we have been wittingly or unwittingly complicit in the imposition of the death penalty elsewhere – and, as long as we help states impose death sentences, we have little moral authority with which to condemn the likes of Indonesia. </p>
<p>The Australian government has <a href="http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/global-filipino/world/04/28/15/australia-recall-ambassador-over-indonesia-executions-pm">recalled its ambassador</a>, following the lead of the Brazilian and Dutch governments which took similar measures when their nationals were <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-17/indonesian-execution-of-brazilian-triggers-ambassador-recall-1-">executed earlier this year</a>. The French government has warned of “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/29/france-increases-diplomatic-efforts-to-save-man-from-execution-in-indonesia">consequences</a>” should the planned execution <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/29/bali-nine-who-are-the-nine-people-being-executed-by-indonesia">of Serge Atlaoui</a> go ahead, and the UK has also expressed its “<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-concerned-by-executions-in-indonesia">concerns</a>” with the executions, particularly since there are a number of British nationals facing the firing squad (though the strength of the UK’s statement leaves a lot to be desired). </p>
<p>The British government, however, is not exactly immune from criticism when it comes to the death penalty, especially when it is imposed on drug offenders. Investigations by <a href="http://www.reprieve.org.uk/topic/death-penalty/">Reprieve</a> have highlighted how money and assistance from the UK, other European governments, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime have helped the likes of Pakistan and Iran impose death sentences on drug offenders.</p>
<h2>Holding the executioner’s coat</h2>
<p>By providing specialist training and equipment to anti-narcotics agencies, the UK and others have actually aided executions by enabling the likes of Iran and Pakistan to track down, prosecute, and hang suspected drug traffickers. In its 2014 report, <a href="http://www.reprieve.org.uk/case-study/safe/">European Aid for Executions</a>, Reprieve lays bare the correlation between funding for counter-narcotics programmes, and increases in the numbers of death sentences and executions in these two countries.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79973/original/image-20150430-30698-1y9igw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79973/original/image-20150430-30698-1y9igw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79973/original/image-20150430-30698-1y9igw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79973/original/image-20150430-30698-1y9igw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79973/original/image-20150430-30698-1y9igw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79973/original/image-20150430-30698-1y9igw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79973/original/image-20150430-30698-1y9igw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79973/original/image-20150430-30698-1y9igw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chilling stuff: Reprieve’s report details how western countries help keep Death Row busy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reprieve</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/19/un-fund-iran-anti-drugs-programme-executions-unodc-death-penalty">UK, Denmark and Ireland have ceased funding</a> for counter-narcotics programmes in Iran because of concerns about capital punishment, they have not applied the same reasoning to Pakistan. It’s worth noting that on the same day that Indonesia executed eight men, Amnesty International issued a press release detailing how Pakistan had just carried out its <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/articles/news/2015/04/pakistan-one-hundred-people-sent-to-the-gallows-since-death-penalty-moratorium-lifted/">100th execution</a> since December 2014. While not all of these executions were for drug-related crimes, it’s questionable whether we should be funding a justice system that puts so many people to death. </p>
<p>In the case of the Bali Nine in Indonesia, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/apr/30/abbott-government-removed-death-penalty-opposition-from-afps-priorities">it has already been pointed out</a> that Australia could have prevented death sentences from ever being handed down to Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumuran. It was the Australian Federal Police that provided information to Indonesian authorities about the Bali Nine, enabling their arrest and conviction. The Australian police tipped off the Indonesian authorities despite knowing that this intelligence-sharing might result in death sentences. </p>
<h2>Rough justice</h2>
<p>Likewise, the British government has helped other countries track down offenders, who have then been <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23497627">sentenced to death</a>. In 2013, Ali Babitu Kololo was sentenced to death by a Kenyan court for his role in the murder of British national David Tebbutt and the kidnapping of his wife, Judith Tebbutt. </p>
<p>British police were heavily involved in the investigation into these crimes, providing forensic expertise and assistance with preparing the prosecution’s case. When sentencing Ali to death, the <a href="http://www.reprieve.org.uk/case-study/ali-babitu-kololo/">judge thanked the British police</a> for their assistance, and for helping secure the outcome of the case. </p>
<p>While British police should of course help bring the killers and kidnappers of British nationals to justice (though there is <a href="http://www.reprieve.org.uk/case-study/ali-babitu-kololo/">evidence to suggest</a> that Ali is actually innocent), it is starkly hypocritical of us to <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/35448/death-penalty-strategy-oct-11-15.pdf">promote the abolition of the death penalty worldwide</a> while simultaneously helping countries to impose capital punishment. </p>
<p>In early April, the foreign secretary, Phillip Hammond, <a href="http://www.reprieve.org.uk/press/foreign-secretary-refuses-to-request-death-row-brits-release/">refused to ask</a> Ethiopian authorities to release Andy Tsege, a British national who was illegally kidnapped and sentenced to death in absentia in Ethiopia, simply for speaking out against human rights abuses there. </p>
<p>This is similar to the government’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22244809">refusal to fund legal appeals</a> for Lindsay Sandiford, who is languishing on death row in Indonesia. It is hardly rocket science to know that a well-funded defence team would stand a greater chance of saving Sandiford’s life. Failing to properly assist our own nationals who are facing the death penalty abroad is akin to standing by and watching a person burn: we might not be legally culpable for their eventual death, but we surely have a moral and humanitarian obligation to do all we can to help. </p>
<p>We might not be as morally culpable in all this as the Indonesian government, but we can only condemn Indonesia when we have our own house in order. We can do this by refraining from enabling the use of capital punishment elsewhere, and by making greater efforts to save those on death row.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41061/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bharat Malkani does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Whatever you think of capital punishment, if your police force helps convict people of capital crimes, you are complicit to some degree.Bharat Malkani, Lecturer, Birmingham Law School, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/409682015-04-30T00:36:20Z2015-04-30T00:36:20ZAustralia should send ambassador back to Indonesia immediately<p>My brother died in Indonesia last year – albeit in very different circumstances to <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-29/andrew-chan-and-myuran-sukumaran-executed/6426654">Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan</a>. I know what it is like to have to fly to Bali, grieve for a sibling, and then organise for them to be brought home. It is tough regardless of the circumstances of death. But it is members of the Australian diplomatic staff who make the difficult circumstances less hard deal with.</p>
<p>This is one of several reasons why Australia should reverse its decision to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/29/bali-nine-executions-tony-abbott-to-recall-australias-ambassador-to-indonesia">withdraw</a> its ambassador to Indonesia, Paul Grigson, in response to Chan and Sukumaran’s executions. Harsh as it is to say, the Australia-Indonesian relationship is far more important than the protest over two dead drug traffickers. </p>
<p>On average, an Australian dies in Bali <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/how-one-aussie-tourist-dies-every-nine-days-on-paradise-island-of-bali/story-e6freuy9-1226448671303">every nine days</a> – let alone the rest of Indonesia. Each nine days in Bali a family has to go through the grief of pain and suffering that accompanies losing a loved one. While the circumstances were different, Australia’s consul-general gave great support to our family when we needed it. It did the same for Chan and Sukumaran’s families.</p>
<p>Each time an Australian dies, members of the Australian diplomatic staff are on hand to help. The ambassador and <a href="http://www.9news.com.au/world/2015/04/28/11/44/bali-nine-pair-myuran-sukumaran-and-andrew-chan-in-execution-over-drug-smuggling-charges">consul-general</a> lead the staff who provide this support. Australians are the ones who suffer when this support is weakened.</p>
<h2>Other aspects of the relationship at stake</h2>
<p>Australia’s <a href="http://dfat.gov.au/trade/resources/trade-at-a-glance/Pages/top-goods-services.aspx">third-largest export</a> is international education, where <a href="http://dfat.gov.au/geo/indonesia/Pages/indonesia-country-brief.aspx">Indonesia</a> is one of the critical markets. Beef, resources, manufactured products and other goods are sold into that market. </p>
<p>Australian diplomatic staff assist, help and encourage our trade. Again, Australians suffer when the diplomatic post is weakened.</p>
<p>Australian <a href="http://www.liberal.org.au/latest-news/2014/06/05/joint-press-statement-president-yudhoyono-batam-island-indonesia">joint training</a> with Indonesian military forces has come a long way since the middle of last century. Many credit the joint training as assisting in the de-escalation of a number of tense moments in the <a href="https://www.polity.co.uk/up2/casestudy/INTERFET_case_study.pdf">INTERFET peacekeeping deployment</a> in East Timor. As such, weakening diplomatic ties harms Australia’s security.</p>
<p>Police co-operation in people and drug trafficking has helped reduce the flow of trafficked women, asylum seekers and drugs into Australia. While there are <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/bali-nine-executions-australian-federal-police-to-break-silence-on-bali-nine-20150429-1mvyex.html">legitimate questions</a> over the Australian Federal Police’s actions in the Bali Nine case, weakening Australia’s diplomatic mission makes Australia more vulnerable to people and drug smuggling.</p>
<h2>The doctrine of proximity</h2>
<p>Do Australians really want the country weakened in trade and security? Do we really want the ability of our diplomats to assist families in grief or businesses seeking to trade lessened?</p>
<p>If one bases protests over the executions on human rights, them Australia is on shaky ground. Human rights law is <a href="https://theconversation.com/hard-line-on-refugees-undermines-principled-opposition-to-execution-40953">said to be “universal”</a>. If this is the basis for being upset, then the protest should be equal regardless of who is executed and where the executions take place. The protest should be the same regardless of whether the execution takes place in the US or Indonesia, or if the person executed is Australian or of another nationality.</p>
<p>Australia did not withdraw its ambassador to Singapore in 2005 following the execution of one of its citizens, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4487366.stm">Van Tuong Nguyen</a>. Australia very rarely protests against US executions. Any Indonesian would have to query an apparent hypocrisy in the differing positions based on nationality.</p>
<p>Likewise, while most Australians can name the two Australians killed, can they name the others killed at the same time who do not share our passport? There is a “doctrine of proximity” in which people feel more strongly about events that are perceived closer to them. Killing one “of ours” will also mean more to Australians than killing someone else.</p>
<p>But if we are protesting based on proximity, let’s not hide behind the “universality” of human rights when really many only care about Australians killed.</p>
<h2>Relationship is already complicated</h2>
<p>Australia has a <a href="https://theconversation.com/bali-nine-poor-political-leadership-creates-lasting-bilateral-problems-37753">complicated relationship</a> with Indonesia. It is such a shame that it is not a relationship based as much on trust and collaboration as it could be. This is why the recall of the ambassador is an important step. But is it as big a deal as it has been said?</p>
<p>Prime Minister Tony Abbott claims the ambassador’s recall is an <a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-withdraws-its-indonesian-ambassador-in-execution-response-40951">“unprecedented step”</a> that makes Australia’s protest clear. This is simply not true.</p>
<p>Recalling ambassadors is quite common in diplomatic circles. It happens for all number of reasons and is one of the more mild levels of diplomatic protest. </p>
<p>The trick in an ambassadorial recall is not the withdrawal, but the timing of when to return the ambassador – especially if the circumstances that triggered the withdrawal do not change. The longer a country drags out the process, the harder it is to send them back.</p>
<p>The people who suffer in this withdrawal are Australians, more than Indonesians. Why make our own people suffer for a largely toothless protest?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40968/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew MacLeod does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Australians are the ones who suffer when consular support is weakened overseas.Andrew MacLeod, Visiting Professor, Public Policy, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/312062014-09-08T13:31:25Z2014-09-08T13:31:25ZIslamic State’s ‘medieval’ ideology owes a lot to revolutionary France<p>Over recent weeks there has been a constant background noise that <a href="https://theconversation.com/second-execution-video-shows-that-islamic-state-has-a-grim-strategic-plan-31256">Islamic State</a> and its ideology are some sort of throwback to a distant past. It is often framed in language used last week by the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/nick-clegg-backs-calls-to-take-away-uk-jihadists-passports-to-prevent-terror-attacks-9696780.html">who claimed that ISIS is “medieval”</a>. In fact, the terrorist group’s thinking is very much in a more modern western tradition.</p>
<p>Clegg’s intervention is not surprising. Given the extreme violence of Islamic State fighters and the frequent images of decapitated bodies, it is understandable that we attempt to make sense of this violence as somehow radically “other”.</p>
<p>But this does not necessarily help us understand what is at stake. Above all, this tends to accept one of the core assertions of contemporary jihadism, namely its claim that it reaches back to the origins of Islam. As one Islamic State supporter I follow on Twitter is fond of saying: “the world changes, Islam doesn’t”.</p>
<h2>Generation gap</h2>
<p>This is not just a question for academic debate. It has real impact. One of the attractions of jihadist ideology to many young people is that it shifts generational power in their communities. Jihadists and, more broadly, Islamists present themselves as true to their religion, while their parents, so they argue, are mired in tradition or “culture”. </p>
<p>It needs to be said very clearly: contemporary jihadism is not a return to the past. It is a modern, anti-traditional ideology, with a very significant debt to western political history and culture.</p>
<p>When he made his speech in July at Mosul’s Great Mosque, declaring the creation of an Islamic State with himself as its caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi quoted at length from the Indian/Pakistani thinker, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abul_A'la_Maududi">Abul A’la Maududi, the founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami party</a> in 1941 and originator of the contemporary term “Islamic State”. </p>
<p>Maududi’s Islamic State is profoundly shaped by western ideas and concepts. He takes a belief shared between Islam and other religious traditions, namely that God alone is the ultimate judge of a person, and transforms this – reframing God’s possession of judgement into possession of, and ultimately monopoly of, “sovereignty”. Maududi also draws upon understandings of the natural world governed by laws that are expressions of the power of God – ideas at the heart of the 17th-century scientific revolution. He combines these in a vision of the sovereignty of God, then goes on to define this sovereignty in political terms, affirming that “God alone is the sovereign” (The Islamic Way of Life). The State and the divine thus fuse together, so that as God becomes political and politics becomes sacred.</p>
<h2>Western tradition</h2>
<p>Such sovereignty is completely absent in medieval culture, with its fragmented world and multiple sources of power. Its origins lie instead in the <a href="http://www.articlemyriad.com/relevance-westphalian-system-modern-world-sasha-safonova/">Westphalian system of states</a> and the modern scientific revolution. </p>
<p>But Maududi’s debt to European political history extends beyond his understanding of sovereignty. Central to his thought is his understanding of the French Revolution, which he believed offered the promise of a “state founded on a set of principles” as opposed to one based upon a nation or a people. For Maududi this potential withered in France, its achievement would have to await an Islamic state (<a href="http://www.islamicstudies.info/literature/process/process.php">The Process of the Islamic Revolution</a>). </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/58345/original/yd8tpbfr-1409919351.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/58345/original/yd8tpbfr-1409919351.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/58345/original/yd8tpbfr-1409919351.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/58345/original/yd8tpbfr-1409919351.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/58345/original/yd8tpbfr-1409919351.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/58345/original/yd8tpbfr-1409919351.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/58345/original/yd8tpbfr-1409919351.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/58345/original/yd8tpbfr-1409919351.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/storm-crypt/3790548505/in/photolist-3dboZY-6LXy1z-6EyN1o-9RExqc-9RHrFm-6EuvLB-bCHgHX-6HMKyK-6EyNXJ-6HRRcb-6Jqknh-6HRQJm-6EuFFF-6EyFm3-62g9Pz-6JqjTh-6EuMJ8-6EyHXL-6EuJSe-nvUgye-nvVrKy-6EuyKi-6EuM3Z-dfzCtn-dfzEXs-6EyL2S-6EuL1n-6EuwLM-6EuEGa-6EuDEZ-6EyUdQ-dfzDug-dfzDon-6Euugi-38bmNX-3hmkx7-3grrRE-395WXx-6b6ku9-b5bisZ-5HnYYK-HNKoz-7a245b-c5SEQ1-abUjSD-c5SDr3-6FBjYM-6FFoUL-6FBjin-5jCYk7">Storm Crypt</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In revolutionary France, <a href="http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/brubaker/Publications/04_The_French_Revolution_and_the_Invention_of_Citizenship.pdf">it is the state that creates its citizens</a> and nothing should be allowed to stand between the citizen and the state. That is why still today French government agencies are prevented by law from collecting data about ethnicity, considered a potential intermediary community between state and citizen.</p>
<p>This universal citizen, separated from community, nation or history, lies at the heart of Maududi’s vision of “citizenship in Islam” (Islamic Way of Life). Just as the revolutionary French state created its citizens, with the citizen unthinkable outside the state, so too the Islamic state creates its citizens. This is at the basis of Maududi’s otherwise unintelligible argument that one can only be a Muslim in an Islamic state.</p>
<h2>Modern violence</h2>
<p>Don’t look to the Koran to understand this – look to the French Revolution and ultimately to the secularisation of an idea that finds its origins in European Christianity: <em>Extra ecclesia nulla salus</em> (outside the church there is no salvation), an idea that became transformed with the birth of modern European states into <em>Extra stato nulla persona</em> (outside the state there is no legal personhood). This idea still demonstrates extraordinary power today, the source of <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9780470670590.wbeog491/abstract">what it means to be a refugee</a>.</p>
<p>If IS’s Islamic State is profoundly modern, so too is its violence. IS fighters do not simply kill. They seek to humiliate as we saw last week as they herded Syrian reservists wearing only their underpants to their death. And they seek to dishonour the bodies of their victims, in particular through postmortem manipulations. </p>
<p>Such manipulations aim at destroying the body as a singularity. The body becomes a manifestation of a collectivity to be obliterated, its manipulation rendering what was once a human person into an “abominable stranger”. Such practices are increasingly evident in war today, from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombian_necktie">Colombian necktie</a> to troops trading images of body parts to <a href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2013/07/29/book-review-our-violent-world-terrorism-in-society/">access pornographic websites during the Iraq war</a>.</p>
<p>Central to IS’s programme is its claim to Muslim heritage (witness al-Baghdadi’s dress). Part of countering this requires understanding the contemporary sources of its ideology and its violence. In no way can it be understood as a return to the origins of Islam. This is a core thesis of its supporters, one that should not be given any credence at all. Nazism wasn’t medieval, nor is Islamic State.</p>
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<p><em>Next, read this: <a href="https://theconversation.com/there-is-nothing-medieval-about-islamic-state-atrocities-theyre-just-cruel-and-brutal-31383">There is nothing ‘medieval’ about Islamic State atrocities – they’re just cruel and brutal</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/31206/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kevin McDonald has received funds from the European Commission as a Marie Curie International Fellow and the Australian Research Council. Part of this article draws on research funded through those grants.</span></em></p>Over recent weeks there has been a constant background noise that Islamic State and its ideology are some sort of throwback to a distant past. It is often framed in language used last week by the deputy…Kevin McDonald, Professor of Sociology and Head of the Department of Criminology and Sociology, Middlesex UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.