Angry

Tonight, I am angry.

Legitimately, thoroughly, heart-breakingly angry.

I am angry for my colleagues in Arizona. For days, weeks, months, the intrepid defenders representing Joseph Wood, who was executed today, have been fighting to get information about the lethal injection process. They, like any good defenders, wanted to know what the procedure would look like, what drugs would be used, where the drugs came from, what kind of training the people administering the drugs had. They argued to court after court that we couldn't assess whether executing Joseph Wood would violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment without that information. Not only were they shot down by every court, they were vilified by the public, criticized in online comments sections, accused of filing frivolous motions, grasping at straws, doing whatever they could to eek a little more money out of the taxpayers. And in the end, they had to watch someone they cared about (because it is possible to care about people even after they've done horrible, terrible, heinous things) suffer through a prolonged death. (In a way that proved they were right all along to want the information they had sought, but small comfort that is to them tonight.)

I am angry for the portion of the American populace that wants no part of the death penalty. We think it's ugly, dirty, beneath the dignity of this great nation. We think intentional killing is wrong no matter who does it or why. Tonight, we feel guilty, we feel sorrow, we even feel dirty because we haven't been able to stop things like what happened to Joseph Wood in Arizona tonight. Our failure to win the day on abolition of the death penalty makes us complicit in your murder and that makes me angry.

I am angry for the reporters who had to watch Joseph Wood's prolonged death, that included him gasping and struggling for breath for nearly two hours. I am angry for the prison guards and other staff who were charged with trying in vain to do this thing they had no business doing. These are people trying to do their work, trying to be honest and lawful and genuine. And yet, they will now be forced to remember forever the sounds of Joseph Wood gasping for breath, the sights of him struggling as his execution went against plan. Actual people are tasked with carrying out the acts that will end human lives and with documenting those acts for the public. Those people pay a price and I am angry on their behalf.

I am angry for all of the men and women on death row throughout the nation who have to live in purgatory on earth, wondering if that could be the fate that awaits them next week, next year, or 10 years from now. No matter what you've been or done, no one should have to live with that kind of mental torture. We none of us think what their victims endured was ok because human beings shouldn't treat each other with such carelessness, such disdain. True adherence to that ideal means we shouldn't be ok with treating any human beings that way, no matter how much some humans might "deserve" it on some cosmic score card of pain.

I am angry as hell at the people who insist on keeping the death penalty alive in this country. It should be a relic, something we discarded along with lynchings, Jim Crow laws, denial of women's suffrage, and any number of other things civilized, enlightened societies are better without. I am furious that they insist some people waive their rights to live, deserve whatever manner of torture we can think of, etc., without recognizing the cost the rest of us pay when harmless, defenseless people are intentionally killed. We will be a better society when those people are finally defeated. I am angry that they keep us from being our best selves.

I am angry for Joseph Wood. He suffered a terrible, painful death. He gasped for breath, snorted, struggled for almost 2 hours. He will never now be able to tell us what it felt like. And while, yes, his victims also undoubtedly suffered in ways we will never be able to imagine, that doesn't make it wrong for me to condemn his suffering on top. We are supposed to be better than common criminals. If I could speak to Joseph Wood, I would tell him how righteously angry I am on behalf of his victims. That anger towards his actions does not in any way limit my ability to look Joseph Wood's torturers in the eyes and express the same righteous anger about Wood's subsequent suffering. Any time a human being suffers at the hands of another human, anger is justified.


There is no good way to kill a human being. Death is ugly. When left to run its own natural course, death can also be beautiful, transcendent even. But the ugliness is always there. When it comes as the result of the intentional act of human hands, there's no hiding the ugly. The ugly will always reveal itself. There is no method human beings can devise of intentionally killing each other that won't eventually reveal the ugly underbelly. Firing squad, hanging, drawing and quartering, lethal injection, electrocution, even Madame La Guilllotine herself. Every single method has been botched. Every single method has resulted in human suffering. Every single method is beneath us.

There is no good way to kill a human being. So for the love of all that is good, stop freaking trying.

There will never be a good way to kill a human being.