True Crime and Death Row

There are so many things I want to talk about!!  That’s the real struggle with this blogging bullshit.  Like… are there rules?  Can I only make a post about one thing? (Well fuck, I screwed that one up already)  Are the posts supposed to be short – or long – or in between.  If I skip around on subjects, do I need to set this bastard up like an APA outline???

Seriously. That is my brain.  I got so stressed out about how to talk about all the things I wanted to talk about that… I just didn’t.  *facepalm*

I’m currently over that.  Although…. Breaking things up with headlines sounds fun, so let’s do that for a minute!

********MORBIDLY CURIOUS WOMAN RAISES EYEBROWS READING ABOUT DEATH ROW*********

Yeah, so, I read a book.  Watch Me Die by Dr. Bill Kimberlin.  If you are into true crime, learning about the justice system, interesting ethical conundrums, or just a curious weirdo like I am – I HIGHLY recommend it.  So this professor (the author) decides that he can’t really teach about Death Row until he knows about Death Row.  Commendable.  I’ve had a few professors who have obviously only ever known a thing in theory.  So the good Doc moseys through all these channels, and discovers he has to be invited.  Lo and behold – the inmates want to talk.  He starts getting invited to witness executions, and he can interview the inmates for his book.  All with their permission of course.  I have always been OK with the death penalty – it takes a long time, the appeals process is in place to make sure that if a mistake has been made it can be rectified, etc.  Not so much anymore.  Well.  Kinda.  How many of you know how we handle government funded murder?  Harsh words, right?  But – accurate, by our own definitions.  Most folks would be like – lethal injection, it’s painless.  Yeah, I was that naïve before the book as well.  NOPE.  It’s more like this:

State Employee 1: Well, looks like we have some bad motherfuckers we gotta kill.  Need to get some drugs together for that injection.

State Employee 2: Yep – better get a book or something, since we can’t have a doctor or nurse in there.  Think we should tell people we don’t know if it’s painless or not?

Employee 1:  Nah, they don’t really need to know that one of the drugs is a paralytic.

Employee 2: True, true.  It would be terrible if we upset people with the death throes of an inmate.

** I really wanted to cuss more in that.  I held back.  

Lethal injection = chemical cocktail that they HOPE works because drug companies are refusing to sell to us because we use them to kill.  

There’s a state that still has the gas chamber.  Seems innocuous yeah?  Hell the fuck no.  Arizona, Missouri, and Wyoming.  Gas chamber = death by Hypoxia.  A bucket is put under the chair that the inmate is sitting on.  Sulfuric acid and sodium cyanide crystals are mixed.  Skin turns purple, eyes bulge out – and can take about 20 minutes to die.  No cruel and inhuman punishment, right?  But – they didn’t say it couldn’t hurt.  

Then there’s hanging – yep, still got one of those going on.  And hello – that takes some fucking math skills.  Weight, height of the drop, etc – to insure that the neck snaps for instantaneous death.  How many prisons do you think have someone with the math skills to accurately figure that out?  Yeah, pretty much zero.  

Oh oh oh… then there’s the firing squad.  The most humane.  

Electric chair?  Jesus Christ on a crutch.  Remember the Green Mile?  That was accurate.  “The inmate that is to be put to death by electrocution must first have his head and leg shaved.  Once they are strapped into the electric chair, a metal skullcap shaped electrode is attached to the scalp on top of a sponge that has been soaked in a saline solution…The inmates face is covered due to the simple fact that once the electricity is passed through a body it is not uncommon for the eyeballs to pop out of the skull.  The inmate often urinates, defecates, and vomits blood once the nearly 2000 volts surge through their body for 30 second intervals which is repeated until they are pronounced dead.  Since the body is hot enough to blister someone who touches it, the body must cool for a period of time before being removed from the chair.”

Good ol’ Nietzsche reminded us about this type of thing…. “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster.  And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”

Some people need killin’.  It’s true.  William Sapp?  He’s on death row.  He needs to die.  He’s evil.  Is it necessary however, for us to become like him to get it done?  I don’t think so.