FREEDOM OR ANARCHY,Campaign of Conscience,

The campaign against the death penalty has all the trappings of modern gestures of misplaced moral authority: Achieving the goal comes at someone else’s expense
Hooray for the Death Penalty!

Author
By Michael R. Shannon
For a brief moment I almost believed the mainstream media when I read: ‘Oklahoma Execution of Murderer Went Horribly, Horribly Wrong.’ ‘Oklahoma Governor Calls for Independent Review of Botched Execution.’



My initial response was horror, too: You mean that violent sadist is still alive?!!!

But the execution wasn’t botched. Clayton Lockett is dead, dead, dead and good riddance. The ceremony may not have been esthetically pleasing to capital punishment opponents, but any execution where the murderer winds up dead is, by definition, a successful execution.

According to hysterical coverage by USA Today (Headline: Botched execution could slam brakes on death penalty) “Clayton Lockett, 38, struggled violently, groaned and writhed after lethal drugs were administered by Oklahoma officials Tuesday night, according to eyewitness accounts. State Corrections Director Robert Patton halted the Lockett’s execution, citing vein failure that may have prevented the deadly chemicals from reaching Lockett. He eventually died of a heart attack.”

In a sane world the inefficient Oklahoma execution would slam the brakes on frivolous death penalty appeals. The goal of the left is to step–by–step end capital punishment. First the electric chair was deemed ‘inhumane.’ So government switched to lethal injection. In return the left attacked the chemicals used.



Today the proven, effective drug, thiopental, is unobtainable and states are forced to experiment
Since no subject has ever walked out of a lethal injection meeting alive, it would appear the original chemical cocktail works fine, but I’m not a judge that grants spurious legal relief. Over the years drug manufacturers have been under relentless legal assault.

Today the proven, effective drug, thiopental, is unobtainable and states are forced to experiment. This is fine with opponents, because rather than taking the blame for banning the effective and humane drug, they shift blame to the state for using a substitute.

Leading to an interesting pharmaceutical contrast. The same political class that is morally outraged by lethal injection, is equally outraged when the state of Oklahoma bans the off–label use of abortion–inducing drugs by requiring doctors only administer the drug in accordance with FDA protocols.

It’s exactly the same strategy the murderer’s lobby uses to prevent the use of thiopental. Yet regulation that saves a truly innocent baby’s life is unacceptable, because it impedes a woman’s ‘right to choose.’ While the other instance is a barbaric throwback to savagery when it restores balance and justice.

In fact Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, made an unintentionally hilarious comment in the wake of Lockett’s passing, “Somebody died because of the state’s incompetency.”

The second contrast involves medical professionals. Doctors with a sense of justice have been prevented from participating in executions by means of a leftist perversion of the Hippocratic oath. State medical societies threaten doctors with penalties and loss of medical license. Yet abortionists have no problem with ‘first do no harm’ during their procedures, even though harm is the goal. As a result executions are conducted by penal employees who may or may not have adequate training.

Which justice opponents also use to attack governments like Oklahoma.

This problem lends itself perfectly to a genuine ‘bi–partisan compromise: let late–term abortion doctors perform really late term abortions on murderers. Of course the left won’t agree.

The campaign against the death penalty has all the trappings of modern gestures of misplaced moral authority: Achieving the goal comes at someone else’s expense.

Arguments against the death penalty have three main components: The death penalty is not an effective deterrent, it is cruel and unusual punishment and life in prison is a more severe than death.

But since when did deterrence become the benchmark for a law’s utility? Prevention is an equally valid way to judge a law’s effectiveness and the death penalty has a 100 percent success rate in preventing future murders. Laws against robbery don’t always deter robbers. Laws against sawed–off shotguns didn’t deter Lockett. And, laws against speeding don’t deter the readers of this column, yet the laws remain on the book.

Death is the final earthy punishment, but that doesn’t make it cruel. Dennis Prager has made a strong case for the moral authority of the death penalty based on the Bible and the fact we are made in God’s image.

The facile counter–argument that ‘eye for an eye’ law no longer applies because of its savagery is historically ignorant. Lex talionis, outlined in Exodus 21:24, is actually a legal innovation that restored fairness in the law by holding everyone responsible regardless of his station in life. Eye–for–an–eye meant that a rich man could not buy his way out of punishment, while the poor man suffered severe consequences as happened in pagan cultures. It made the law truly impartial and just.

The final argument has always been incoherent. If the death penalty is inhumane how can these compassion tourists advocate a punishment that’s worse? Simple, they are lying. I’ve driven by Huntsville prison in Texas more than once and I have never seen inmates hanging bed sheets out of the window demanding they be put our of their misery.

If murderers were offered a chance between death and life in prison, almost every one would choose life. Then murderers would be free to endanger the guards, medical staff and other inmates in the prison, but the exhibitionist left can’t be bothered with that petty detail.

In spite of years of anti–death penalty propaganda in the mainstream media, 55 percent of the public still favors the ultimate punishment. But reporters keep trying. In January Oklahoma executed Michael Lee Wilson with another mysterious drug cocktail. In an effort to elicit sympathy for the unsympathetic reporters say his last words were, “My whole body is burning.”

But I don’t think that was in reference to the execution. I think he was referring to his destination, because not all near–death experiences are glowing lights and fluffy bunnies.