This, for example, works just fine: quick, cheap, virtually painless.

Capital punishment foes have no shame, and (I know I am a broken record on this, and it cheers me no more than it pleases you), the knee-jerk journalists who have been squarely in their camp for decades refuse to illuminate their constant hypocrisy. In Connecticut, for example, holding that putting to death the monstrous perpetrators of the Petit home invasion was “immoral,” anti-death penalty advocates argued that the extended time it took to handle appeals made the death penalty more expensive than life imprisonment—an added expense for which the advocates themselves are accountable.

A similar dynamic is at work in the aftermath of the execution of convicted murderer and rapist Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma.Witnesses to his execution by lethal injection said Lockett convulsed and writhed on the gurney, sat up and started to speak before officials blocked the witnesses’ view by pulling a curtain. Apparently his vein “blew,” and instead of killing him efficiently,  the new, three-drug “cocktail” arrived at as the means of execution in Oklahoma after extensive study and litigation failed to work as advertised.  Why was there an excessively complex system involving multiple drugs used in this execution? It was the result of cumulative efforts by anti-death penalty zealots to make sure the process was above all, “humane.” Of course, the more complicated a process is, the more moving parts it has, the more likely it is to fail. Continue reading →