In “The Last Gasp”, Scott Christianson, the author of a new book on the history of the gas chamber, reflects on that subject and capital punishment in general, though not with as much detail as one would like. This claim surprised me: the gas chamber was invented in the twenties, argues Christianson, and
After WWI, which saw the first widespread use of poison gases, it became a method of execution that was actively promoted by Americans who were part of the eugenics movement. They advocated the use of the gas chamber to kill not only criminals but other classes of individuals who were deemed to be unfit or undesirable. There were industrial forces at work as well — businesspeople who wanted to use some of these poisons for fumigation and other purposes — which helped increase interest in the idea of death by gas.
It caught on because it “was thought to kill people very quickly and painlessly. But, belatedly, it was discovered that death by gas was not nearly as fast or as painless as had been assumed,” and in 1994 a judge declared it unconstitutional. But before that, after the moratorium on executions in the seventies, President Reagan suggested lethal injections and
This came at a fortuitous time for conservatives who were beginning to make capital punishment one of their main political issues. They realized that a lot of people were still squeamish about capital punishment based on the experience of the gas chamber and other methods. So lethal injection helped to placate that uneasiness on the part of the American public.
Recent First Things reflections on capital punishment (which give links to some others) are Joseph Bottum’s Blood for Blood and They Did It and R. R. Reno’s The State Without an Executioner.
August 2nd, 2010 | 11:05 am
It has always struck me as strange that one would want the death penalty to carried out painlessly. Pain is a part of reality. It is part of life, and of its end. Some forms of execution are, in the strictly physical sense, less painful than the arrest and hand cuffing, particularly where spirited resistance is offered, as is common in an arrest for a capitol offense. The various indignities of incarceration itself, especially those done by fellow inmates are painful and humiliating.
One goal of an execution is its existential effect, both on the criminal in his anticipation of death, and of others who, one would expect, would view the punishment as commensurate to the violent crime which it is meant to deter.
In that we are seeking to eliminate the pain of execution, we are indulging in self denial, as if we were asserting that something so important were not really happening. However, if an execution is to have any salutary effect on a murderer’s soul, it must confront him with a certainty that self deceit can not evade. Self deceit is essential to the criminal condition, difficult to over come.
One of my old instructors, a Minneapolis detective, warned us that if we were ever to shoot someone, we were to resist the impulse to immediately give him aid, lest he kill us with whatever strength he had left. “So he hurts. Let him hurt.” My teacher told us, “Pains good for you. It clears your mind.”
August 2nd, 2010 | 1:41 pm
It’s perhaps instructive that cyanide gas is truly painless, regardless of what the judge decided.
I know, I worked in the chemical industry and at one plant we used the stuff and I was required on the first day to smell it. Believe me, there is no pain before unconsciousness. (or when one revives, should one do that)
The Gas chamber was more of a symbol to be brought down. To many here in California, it was cruel simply because it was the death penalty, and for no scientific assessment of pain.
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