Dave Skinner’s Aug. 15 column (“Cruel and Unusual”) on the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana’s lawsuit challenging the state’s lethal injection protocol did readers of the Flathead Beacon a disservice by its effort to inflame emotions of rage and vengeance by focusing on details of the crime committed by Ronald Smith.
The issues placed before the court by the ACLU are both bigger and more specific for our society.
This lethal injection challenge is not about the tragic murders of Thomas Running Rabbit and Harvey Mad Man. It’s about our Constitution, our law, and what we as a society choose to be.
I oppose the death penalty on the basis of what I want American society to be. Death by lethal injection no matter how it’s enacted will not bring back a murder victim. However, this specific case is narrow, only about requiring the State of Montana to follow the law.
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that for the death penalty to be constitutional, it must be carried out in a manner that protects the person being executed from cruel and unusual punishment caused by pain and suffering during that execution.
The ACLU argues that Montana’s lethal injection protocol fails on every front. Not only does it not specify appropriate medical qualifications and training for executioners, it does not even outline how these executioners will be trained to give a lethal injection.
Lethal injection when done improperly can cause intense pain and suffering. That has happened in other states where executioners botched administering the IV or drugs causing the prisoner to be conscious, alert, and in agony throughout the entire execution.
Skinner would argue that if the victims suffered, so should Smith. But there are two problems with that premise: First, do we as a society truly believe that torturing someone in any way relieves the pain of those that person harmed? Can two wrongs suddenly make a right?
And, second, willfully causing (or even failing to prevent) a death row prisoner to suffer during an execution is against the law. It is prohibited by our Constitution, which was, after all, drafted by wise and enlightened minds.
As for Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s decision on clemency, Skinner’s request that Smith be set free to be murdered by potential vigilantes is to show the low road that rage and vengeance can take us. Granting clemency would mean that Smith’s sentence would be commuted to one of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
No one is advocating for his release. Life in prison is a long, miserable, burdensome punishment.
Even so, life in prison without possibility of parole is seen by advanced nations as one which does not reduce a country’s citizens to the level of those who take other human lives when there is an alternative (which historically has not cost the taxpayer as much as the legal steps in execution).
Opposition to the death penalty does not mean an opposition to consequences for crimes committed. It is rather opposition to government-sanctioned killing – the very act of killing that society condemns in Smith.
Karen Cunningham lives in Coram.