Execution Par Excellenceby Dr. Jack Kevorkian
It seems to be a quirk of human nature to overestimate the nobility of our achievements as well as our potential for achieving. For what other reason does every generation consider itself to be at the pinnacle of enlightenment, to be at or very close to the ideal in the agonizing evolution of what is gratuitously called civilized society? Despite the enduring and always bitter debate over capital punishment, there is little doubt that our society today-at least those collective groups comprising "civilized humanity"-considers its attitude toward the practice to be more enlightened and closer to a perfectly ideal goal than was the case at any previous time. It is gratifying to humanitarian opponents that the death penalty now seems to be disappearing throughout the world; and equally humanitarian proponents are gratified that where vestiges persist, mollifying methods are being introduced to carry it out. In the final analysis the debate is futile and manifests a deplorable narrowness of historical perspective. Both sides apparently ignore or reject the cyclical theory of history first postulated by the pre-Socratic philosophers and restated in our time by sages such as Nietzsche and Spengler. It is difficult to deny that human existence seems to be conditioned by some sort of cosmic, pendulum like essence that tends to be underestimated or overlooked, particularly by those who oppose capital punishment. I take a neutral position on the issue of capital punishment. It was, is, and probably always will be an extremely controversial and debatable topic. Any resolution will, in all likelihood, be temporary at best, and will depend not only on the sentiment (and I do mean sentiment) of those in control of government at the time but also on the prevailing social and economic conditions. Only a fool would doubt that during violent revolutions and catastrophic economic depressions the incidence of executions would skyrocket. The "pendulum" of capital punishment is unstoppable. Its use has fluctuated throughout recorded history, and there is not an interval of peacetime during which it completely disappeared. That is potent, indeed invincible, evidence that the practice probably emanates from the very core of the human psyche and will never be eradicated. Even the various gods invented by humankind to help face the terrifying unknowns of existence are in favor of the ultimate penalty. They not only mandate it but they even pass the death sentence on capitally sinful mortals, and serve as its executioners. Yahweh and Allah have condemned and executed millions guilty of the capital crime of lacking faith. The true believers may have been the sword, but the gods were the executioners who wielded it. In fact, they are still swinging it wildly in Lebanon, Iran, Ireland, and India. To hope for the permanent abolition of judicial execution is unreasonable and unrealistic. It will always recur or be in use somewhere. That calls for the adoption of the best way to put it into practice, which once again brings up the problem of how to define "best." Many contemporary supporters of the death penalty would say that the best has already been achieved with the introduction of lethal injection. But clear reasoning will show that not much has really changed. Confusion and uncertainty about the basic aim of capital punishment are at the root of the dilemma. Exactly why are capital offenders killed? First of all to punish, of course. A capital criminal is considered to have been severely punished when his or her life is ended. Now, how can that be? Punishment means the infliction of pain or distress, either physical or mental; but a corpse can experience nothing. Punishment has no meaning for a dead person. The only possibility of punishment with regard to the death penalty can be the distress caused by the anticipation of being killed and the anxiety over the method selected to do the killing, both of which the penalty (the supposed punishment) immediately relieves! We have here the nonsensical paradox of a supreme punishment that punishes only if it is not inflicted. Then there is the question of deterrence. Opponents are fond of citing statistics to support their contention that the death penalty has very little to do with preventing capital crime. Contrarily, those in favor of capital punishment interpret the statistics differently; their rebuttal seems to be that if deterrence can't be proved, neither can it be disproved. At present the consensus is that the matter is unsettled at best. But one can therefore hardly insist on deterrence being the primary aim of the death penalty. An aim perpetually at the top of society's list is "retribution." This euphemism for "revenge" is a big part of the problem. Originally the word retribution meant compensation or something of value given in return. How can the involuntary death of a criminal fit that definition? What is returned to society or to anyone in it? There can be no compensation from executions as traditionally understood; there can be only loss of life. In the final analysis capital punishment can have only two definite and absolutely inarguable aims. The first is simply to put an end to a criminal's earthly existence. The second is to prevent repetition of crime by the individual thus eliminated. Debating any other ultimately unprovable aim can only further muddy the already murky waters of furious and unending controversy. Unfortunately something theoretically irrefutable-in this case the inarguable aims of the death penalty-can be subverted by clever hypocrisy. That has always been true in this ugly realm of human behavior in which high-sounding but insincere philosophizing obscures the real motive underlying most, if not all, judicial killing: plain revenge, and frequently the more brutal and agonizing the better. In that way an otherwise elusive (and certainly unjustifiable) aim is achieved: the "punishment" of guaranteed physical and mental anguish deceitfully rationalized as "inadvertent" or "unintended" before the victim becomes an unfeeling corpse. Is our contemporary way of dealing with capital punishment the most enlightened ever devised? The question is unanswered because we have looked at only the physical aspect of the purposeful destruction of human life, and that may be the least important aspect. We have to consider the abstract components, too. Only they can prove whether the aims of the death penalty are noble enough to be worthy of the human spirit, and only they can be the true arbiters of the inherent value of those aims. All of the methods of execution thus far have but one purpose: to end a criminal's physical existence, in what is hoped to be the most humane way possible. The only abstraction thereby honored is secular law. That certainly is a noble aim, but how noble when that entirely artificial abstraction is compared with other totally ignored but even more meaningful and much more fundamental natural abstractions? After all, artificial law is a mere invention of the natural human mind, which itself is the essence of the natural human spirit. Therefore, the execution of a human being should aim far higher than simply to satisfy the law. Such an epochal event should serve as a means of elucidating the what, why, and how of human thought and action-especially those of a criminal nature-and of health and disease, and of life and death. In contrast to invented law, these are all inscrutable, preexistent phenomena of nature arbitrarily (and ineptly) conceptualized by man. And without them no other invention, abstract or concrete, could exist, let alone have value. Herein lies the perpetual tragedy of capital punishment. The progress purportedly made in the humane technique of its physical implementation pales to insignificance in the face of this glaring deficiency in its theoretical framework. The puny advance that lethal injection might be said to represent from a physical standpoint cannot begin to balance the abysmal spiritual void it nevertheless sustains. In and of itself lethal injection cannot reverse the retrogression manifested in the way we sacrifice human beings to appease the minor deity of abstract law alone. What is the proof of this retrogression-that we are not only not marking time, but actually retreating from some sort of superior code of conduct? Recorded history offers two proofs, one somewhat problematical, the other definite. The first probably prevailed in Ptolemaic Alexandria around the third century B.C. Here was the high point of ancient civilization that fostered an atmosphere of unbridled thought and investigation unequaled even in our time. Science and art flourished under enlightened rulers who encouraged men of genius. In this exciting scenario, according to Roman historians, the kings are supposed to have decreed that since condemned criminals owed society a huge debt, they were to be executed in anatomical laboratories. Although conclusive evidence is lacking, many historians believe that execution for medical purposes was practiced in that golden age of research. Having lasted for only three centuries, that age witnessed the first attempt to tap the strictly spiritual aspect of capital punishment by using it to probe the aforementioned natural abstractions, which are far more important and deserving than law. But retrogression set in when the hegemony of Rome stripped executions of the high aims imbued by the Alexandrians. The retrogression continued into the cistern which was the Dark Ages. Then another reversal occurred, astonishingly, with the incipient Renaissance, and, amazingly, in the Armenia of Asia Minor. I learned of that extraordinary episode only in 1987. According to a report in an obscure foreign-language newspaper, the medieval Armenians were doing exactly what the Alexandrines had supposedly done a millennium and a half earlier. They were subjecting condemned criminals to medical experiments during execution. I verified this from articles published recently in academic journals from Soviet Armenia. These articles, in turn, cited publications in the classical Armenian language from around 1350 to 1375 describing the practice then in vogue. They also tended to verify what I had guessed about Alexandria: experiments were performed there only after subjects were rendered insensitive with large amounts of alcohol. Much of the Armenian research dealt with observation of organ structure and function, including circulation of the blood. This then represents the second and well-documented episode of man's homage to the nobler and usually ignored values inherent in the willful destruction of humans. The backsliding of modern society in this regard is obvious. We wantonly squander priceless opportunities to study ourselves and our living brains, as well as new ways to make us wiser, healthier, and happier. Worse yet, in our "most enlightened" way of serving justice, we don't even think about making the attempt. So we sanctimoniously keep snuffing out the lives of criminals, many of whom acknowledge their transgression and sincerely desire to somehow make amends. They are eager to give society real retribution by donating their organs and by helping science unlock some of nature's deepest secrets by submitting to otherwise impossible experimentation. But society will not allow it, and doctors refuse to accept it. In callously overriding the personal autonomy of the condemned by denying them the privilege of choice, we inflict on them the worst kind of suffering-far more agonizing than any physical pain-the crushing pain of a tortured mind and a turbulent soul denied any hope of requital. This is forcefully driven home in a recent letter to me written by a fifty-year-old inmate awaiting electrocution on Georgia's death row: "It's cruel . . . to deny me the chance to donate my organs and make that degree of restitution. I am forced to meet my maker having taken a life and being denied the chance to give life to people so desperately in need. I am forced to exit this world with a troubled heart and anxious mind" (italics added). That is the ultimate proof of retrogression. It is why we delude ourselves when we insist that our way, this generation's handling of judicial executions, is the most enlightened. Excerpt from Prescription: Medicine, The Goodness of Planned Death by Dr. Jack Kevorkian; reprinted with permission from Prometheus Books. Published by Prometheus Books, 59 John Glenn Drive, Amherst, NY 14226. 716/691-0133.
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