Who are the victims of capital punishment? Not just the
person executed. Not just his or her family and friends. Read on.
“Three minutes before Wellons was declared dead a nurse
standing to his left was seen asking one of the corrections officers if he was
ok, just before the officer fainted.”
By all accounts, Marcus Wellons’s execution was routine, as
those things go. He went to sleep and stopped breathing. But it was apparently
not routine for the officer who fainted. The list of former prison wardens who,
after retirement, talk about how painful it was to preside over executions,
grows ever longer. For example, Don Cabana, who presided over executions in
several states, eventually left prison work for academic life. “’There is a
part of the warden that dies with his prisoner,” he often said.’”
Asked to comment about the “botched” execution of Clayton
Lockett, who died of a heart attack after prison personnel failed to insert an
IV into his femoral vein, the retired prosecuting attorney said, “Did he get
what he deserved? I don’t know, As I’ve gotten older, I’m a devout Christian,
and I just have more and more trouble, honestly, of the question of ‘get what I
deserve.’”
Some of those involved in executions, then, admit their
pain. For others, the execution seems to bring out the worst parts of their
nature.
Recently, a Missouri prison employee told the lawyer for a
prisoner facing execution that their client was in the top 1% of prisoners, and
that he always obeyed rules and assisted new or weak prisoners to stay out of
trouble. He would like to support clemency for him, but the prison
administration discouraged him and started an investigation for
“over-familiarity.” As a result, the employee withdrew his support.
Another troubling aspect of capital punishment is the
response of victim families. A family member of the victims killed by John Ruthell Henry, recently executed in Florida, commented after watching the
execution, “I actually feel good. I don’t feel sorry for him. . . . I wish it
could've been different. I wish he could’ve died the way he killed them.”
Or,
as a victim family member who witnessed an Oklahoma execution where the
prisoner, Scott Carpenter, “convulsed, clenched his jaw, made noises and his legs lifted,” put
it, “Who knows whether he felt pain or not, but if he did endure a little pain
again, so what? It’s in no way in comparison to what his victim felt.”
These are a perfectly understandable responses, but, I
submit, not particularly healthy ones. Does the fact that a loved one suffered
pain really justify the desire to inflict pain on others?
Many victims long for answers from the person who killed
their loved one; few get them. A man said that he watched the
execution of his father’s killer, Scott Carpenter, “in hopes that he would make some
comments or make some explanation. He robbed me of that as well. He was just
quiet.”
Why do we persist in imposing a punishment that wounds us,
troubles us, and brings out the worst in us?
