Everywhere I look, I see signs that the US has swung the steering wheel hard to the right, and is bumping and swerving into a deep, dark, forest. One with a big sign that reads “Danger, Keep Out” but has “MAGA” written on it in blood-red spraypaint.
In Nevada, the judicial system is planning to use fentanyl for executions.
International community: “Your justice system is corrupt and racist! You should not execute people.”
US: “NOoooooo THEY MUST DIE!”
Drug Manufacturers: “We will not sell you our products if you plan to use them to execute people.”
US: “NOoooOO!!! THEN WE WILL USE DRUGS WE SEIZE FROM DRUG SMUGGLERS! THEY MUST DIE! EVERYONE MUST DIEEEEE!”
Yeah, that warning sign.
The Guardian reports [guard]:
Nevada plans to carry out the first execution using fentanyl, a drug at the heart of the US opioid epidemic, on Wednesday.
The state intends to use a synthetic opioid – involved in more than 20,000 overdose deaths in 2016 alone – to kill Scott Dozier, a double murderer, after finding it difficult to obtain other drugs for Nevada’s first execution in 12 years because of opposition from pharmaceutical manufacturers.
But questions have been raised about whether Nevada’s department of corrections broke the law to obtain the fentanyl, and whether the multibillion dollar distribution company that provided the drug ignored evidence it was to be used in an execution.
Nobody, and I mean nobody is saying that Dozier is not a horrible human being, who showed such disrespect for another person’s life that he shot another man, cut his body to pieces, and dumped the chunks in a dumpster. That is cruel, unconscionable, behavior. So, how does the state engaging in similar cruel, unconscionable behavior somehow re-balance the scales of justice? It doesn’t. What it does is shows that the scales of justice are a cheap pot-metal plated prop for sadistic gerontocrats who want to kill people.* The US is starting to remind me of Pasolonini’s banned film Salo (which I watched because it’s banned) [wc] a disgusting, over-acted, playground for cruel, power-mad, would-be aristocrats.
The US is evolving toward the moral stature of Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, the law is enforced against the weak by the strong, as cruelly and publicly as possible, to get the weak to understand the situation. There’s some fluff about morality and justice thrown on for the rubes but everyone knows that it’s simply the state instituting a rule of fear: “Look what we can do to you! Fall to your knees before us and submit!” And, if we step back and look at the US, it’s pretty apparent that the US ruling class has wanted to be that honest, all along, but has felt inhibited by the tiny shreds of humanism that it is now divesting itself of.
The crowd in the picture of the Saudi execution appear to be lower class. There are no thawbs or bisht at all; they are watching one of their own die. If we ever see a rich, powerful, person kneeling for the headsman, it’s because they lost a political argument with one of their superiors. Americans should see their future in that: white supremacists want to be able to kill with comparable impunity. The woods are very dark, indeed.
When I look at the picture from Saudi Arabia, I have to reflect on De Boetie’s question about involuntary human servitude [stderr] – the onlookers outnumber the headsman and he only has a sword. They could disarm him easily. Why are they standing there watching? Can’t they see themselves in that kneeling position? For that matter, can’t the white Americans who watch ICE taking away hispanics see their own future in the red and blue blinking lights? America has a rich history of ruthlessly suppressing its working class with police violence – do they think ICE is on their side?
There’s some kind of weird egalitarian symmetry that fentanyl – a drug that has killed some famous and wealthy people like Michael Jackson and Prince – and many less notable addicts, is going to be weaponized by the justice system against the people. There are probably some people in prison for dealing Fentanyl right now – their mistake was that they didn’t do it for the Nevada department of corrections. “Department of corrections” – what about killing someone is “correcting” them? How does this help anyone or anything, except to fulfill the state’s thirst for blood?
* A note on Sadism. De Sade was very familiar with prisons; he occupied the social role of an “extremist troll” like a Milo Yiannopolous for his day: shocking, self-contradictory, attempting to ‘get back at’ high society, which had imprisoned him for his tastes – tastes which more well-behaved aristocrats were perfectly free to sample discreetly. Underlying his stories is a deep concern with the notion of justice, but mostly with how it relates to political hypocrisy. De Sade would be the patron saint of executioners, except that he’s already the patron saint of corrupt politicians who send people to the gallows. If he could see how American society dipped briefly into enlightenment ideals of liberty but then veered back on its long-term course of racism and political cruelty, he’d laugh.
Oddly, wikipedia now lists the cause of Whitney Huston and Michael Jackson’s death as “cardiac arrest.” Well, true, but also a lie. The fellow in the picture from Saudi Arabia also experienced cardiac arrest. But what killed him? His government.
This is a really interesting article from the Marshall Project, about Scott Dozier: [mp] There were prisoners on death row who appeared to be trying to build a challenge in the supreme court regarding capital punishment. Well, like Roe, that’s over: the new supreme court would probably approve if the various states started buying swords to whack people’s heads off with.
I wonder if people who were on death row then cleared by DNA testing would have standing to challenge the death penalty. Though it may be too late for that now.
robertbaden@#1:
I wonder if people who were on death row then cleared by DNA testing would have standing to challenge the death penalty.
One would expect that. Nowadays, probably the only person who could get standing would be someone who was actually executed already. Catch-22.
In the summer of 2016 I thought that the US death penalty was one supreme court decision away from being struck down. Now, it looks like it’s going to be here forever. I hope RBG can hold out, but I suspect Trump will get a 2nd term.
Evolving towards being as good as them? Consider: Saudi Arabia just buys weapons. It’s the USA that designs, develops, tests, manufactures and sells those weapons on the open market. You think that makes the US morally superior to the Saudis? To my eyes, they’re considerably lower. At least the Saudis don’t pretend to themselves that they’re civilised. They know they’re fooling nobody.
———————-
A serious question: if you’re the government of a backward barbarian #shithole, and you’re determined to actually execute people in cold blood, how can you possibly want for chemicals to do it with? This baffles me. Every breath I take is 78% nitrogen, a gas that kills people who work in my industry (chemicals manufacture) all the time. Many manufacturing processes require an inert atmosphere, and this is most easily achieved by flooding a vessel with pure nitrogen, which is laughably easily available for cheap. The biggest problem with doing this is that a pure nitrogen atmosphere will, quietly and efficiently, render unconscious then quickly kill a human who enters it. A common problem used to be people going into empty storage tanks, being overcome by the inert atmosphere, being noticed by their buddy… who becomes the second fatality. It’s quick, by most accounts it’s fairly painless and it’s absolutely 100% reliable. So the question is: if you’ve abdicated your humanity to the point that you’re happy living somewhere that kills in cold blood people over whom you already have complete control, why would you not do so the cheapest, quickest way possible? Why the wailing and gnashing of teeth that you can’t get certain specific drugs? Is anyone fooled by this?
The sword in the picture looks bogus. As does the mask. Shogun Executioner it ain’t. Can I just believe that photo is bogus?
The picture looks fake. The sword looks to be a mock-up made of cardboard. It seems to lack weight. It also seems a bit small for serious head-whacking.
A simple guillotine would be both more efficient and humane.
Would a Saudi executioner really wear jeans and trainers on the job?
I’d guess the picture is from a play or movie.
But good point about the nitrogen, why are they faffing about with drug cocktails if N2 is so good?
Sonofrojblake @ #3: I think I may have an answer to that. The government needs to stick to a certain form, or risk being challenged for causing unnecessary pain*, and having their fun taken away from them. The old method is still there because it has not been challenged successfully. Any substantially different method is likely to be contested and probably stopped by the courts: how can you prove it does not cause pain? I foresee difficulties getting those clinical trials past the ethics committee.
On the other hand, with the new and improved Supreme Court, the details of the method may become less of a problem.
* Death is perfectly fine, but brief pain followed by death is way too cruel.
Marcus:
You say:
Oddly, wikipedia now lists the cause of Whitney Huston and Michael Jackson’s death as “cardiac arrest.”
and
There’s some kind of weird egalitarian symmetry that fentanyl – a drug that has killed some famous and wealthy people like Michael Jackson and Prince […]
I was a bit startled by those statements, so I checked.
Regarding cardiac arrest, in both cases, Wikipedia goes into more detail about the cause of death. It says that Whitney Houston drowned in the bathtub due to the effects of cocaine and heart disease, and that she had used a number of other drugs (including at least two sedatives and a muscle relaxant). The words “cardiac arrest” do not occur in the article at all. For Michael Jackson, the introduction says he “[…] died of acute propofol and benzodiazepine intoxication on June 25, 2009, after suffering from cardiac arrest”, and the sidebar has wording to the same effect. His death is indeed described at one point later in the article as caused by cardiac arrest, without further qualification, but that’s in the context of discussing his concert schedule, so I would not read that as an intent to mislead — although perhaps just saying he died would have been better. The “Death” section then goes into some detail, and there’s even a separate article on it.
There’s little chance someone would go away thinking either of them just had a cardiac arrest out of the blue. I think you’re misrepresenting Wikipedia this time.
About the other thing, Michael Jackson was not given fentanyl. None of the drugs were opioids, in fact.
@cvoinescu, #8:
I already said – the chemical industry has been “executing” people accidentally by this method for decades, so there’s no need for any (more) trials. For every person killed, there were several nearly killed, so we have many, many accurate reports of the sensations involved from people who’ve survived the first bit. Nitrogen is obviously odourless so there’s no sense of breathing anything odd (not like you’d get in a gas chamber). Oxygen deprivation has well-known effects – after some moments you pass out, in an effort by your body to get your head lower to improve the blood flow. Consciousness is lost with no sense of pain at all. You then EITHER wake up to the sight of your relieved co-worker who pulled you out OR… you don’t wake up. There have been edge cases of brain damage when people have been retrieved after extended periods, but there’s no reason a condemned person couldn’t simply be left in an inert atmosphere for a couple of hours. There are few complex organisms that could survive that, and certainly no humans.
My own interpretation of why the US doesn’t execute people this way is the opposite of what you suggest. I believe it is not considered because there’s nothing theatrical about it at all, and the guarantee of painlessness, no need for needles or bullets or ropes or doctors or buttons, lights and levers and fancy mechanisms or whatever, means it’s too humane for Americans. That society actively wants its prisoners to suffer before they die. How else can you explain the ridiculous palaver that is the lethal injection process. Tales abound of the nastiness of electrocution as a method of killing. The US also uses gas chambers, hanging and firing squads. By comparison, tapping someone lightly on the back of the neck with a cardboard sword (as shown in the picture) or indeed slicing swiftly through it in public with a real one doesn’t seem so bad. It’s probably quicker than the chair and less gruesome than the gas chamber, at least for the victim.
I would agree that the photo looks fake. The bizarre getups of the executioner and the victim look like a teenager’s fantasy based on some lurid graphic novel not something the Saudi Gov’t would bother about. That sword seems weird and the crowd seems a bit blurry to me. I am not a photographer but it I tend to think PhotoShop. The crowd look a bit too relaxed to be at a beheading, but that’s just my opinion.
BTW those men in the crowd are not Saudi. Assuming that part of the photo was taken in Saudi they are contract workers from the Indian subcontinent or Sri Lanka.
@ 5 lorn
A simple guillotine would be both more efficient and humane.
All reports of public executions in the Kingdom that I have heard of or read about says the executioner uses a sword. Saudis like to maintain the old traditions.
@6 jazzlet
Would a Saudi executioner really wear jeans and trainers on the job?
Wildly unlikely but that assumes the executioner is a Saudi. One would expect a Saudi to be wearing a tobe and probably sandals. Certainly not trainers.
It is vaguely possible the Saudi Gov’t has hired a contract executioner from another country. But overall the photo looks fake.
lorn@#5:
The picture looks fake. The sword looks to be a mock-up made of cardboard. It seems to lack weight. It also seems a bit small for serious head-whacking.
Yes, the handle on that thing is very short, and he’s holding it in this weird 2-hand grip. His arms would impede his own swing; he looks like he’s using a baseball bat, not a sword. That weird paper mask also seems unworkable; you wouldn’t want your mask to slip while you were launching a cut.
A simple guillotine would be both more efficient and humane.
Nevada appears to intend to use the same mix as they do, with the change being to use fentanyl instead of phenobarbital. Before I was blogging here, I wrote a piece about the pharmacology of one of the botched executions using curare, midozalam, and sodium thiopental. Depending on how they were administered, the victim might be conscious but unable to breathe, suffocating from the curare, then experience a heart attack. I believed at the time – and checked with a professional anaesthetist (who said the very question made them feel sick) – that it may have been deliberately constructed so as to make sure the prospective deceased suffered.
According to [deathpenalty] some states are offering nitrogen hypoxia: Alabama, Mississippi, and Oklahoma.
cvoinescu@#8:
I wrote:
Oddly, wikipedia now lists the cause of Whitney Huston and Michael Jackson’s death as “cardiac arrest.”
I’m not sure exactly what search I put in to google (I thought I’d fact-check but then I felt it was ghoulish) but I searched google and it did that thing where it comes back with the answer, in the top box. In the past that sort of answer is usually from wikipedia, so I made that mistake; I definitely should have checked more thoroughly – basically I looked at it, went “huh?” and stayed focused on what I was writing.
Just now I went through my browser history and I don’t even see the query; perhaps I hallucinated the whole thing?
I was wrong; I do not know what happened there.
I think you’re misrepresenting Wikipedia this time.
I wasn’t trying to. I was completely off the mark on that one.
jrkrideau@#10:
All reports of public executions in the Kingdom that I have heard of or read about says the executioner uses a sword. Saudis like to maintain the old traditions.
Since I have some interest in swords, I searched for those, and that led me to the picture that I posted.
The Saudi executioner’s sword looks like a heavy persian-style ‘shamshir’ – a typical light cavalry sabre, but with a heavier tip. Some shamshir have a narrow tip and a strong curve – that’s the type Napoleon’s hussars were fond of looting and carrying. The heavier reinforced tip version makes some sense as an executioner’s weapon but… Well, I’ll just say it: persian-style swords are shit. I’ve sparred with them; they’re awkward and they want to turn your wrist. Basically they’re a standard cavalry saber that’s good for riding through terrified hordes of peasants and making big sweeping cuts.
That may not be one of the Saudi headsmen – the bedouin-style bandoleers look more like something out of the Saddam Hussein regime.
Oh, and speaking of “horrible motherfuckers” look what else google image search turned up for “saudi executioner’s sword”
I’m also getting the impression that capital punishment is being intentionally made as painful as possible to get away with.
Are you being serious here or is this one of those cases where I fail to correctly interpret figurative language? You are basically asking why people don’t choose to become martyrs (answer: so few people choose martyrdom, because it’s fucking painful). Assuming you lived in a country where public executions happen and you tried to attack the executioner and free the victim, law enforcement officials would simply arrest you, publicly torture you, and make an example out of you in order to warn other wannabe dissenters. And, to make it even worse, your martyrdom wouldn’t even accomplish anything. A single civilian cannot overthrow a despotic regime, for that you need a large number of people to work together. And organizing a successful revolution isn’t that simple either.
As for white Americans, what can they really do? Are you suggesting they grab pitchforks and torches and attack ICE officials? (OK, I’m aware that some white Americans have certain, well, to put it mildly, shitty opinions, and they are perfectly happy to witness injustice happening in their country. But I assume that there are also plenty of Americans who don’t like what they see happening in their country, who can “see their own future in the red and blue blinking lights,” and there’s not much they can do about it.)
sonofrojblake @ 10:
I totally agree with you about asphyxiants.
I don’t agree about cruelty in executions. History shows they always wanted a “modern” method, and one that was not messy or even uncomfortable to watch (hence the paralytic in the standard protocol). Minimizing suffering may not be a concern for the executioner, but it sems to be for the courts, at least in form if not in substance.
Also, I would like to point out that using any sort of gas in executions would remind people of Nazis, and for some Americans that is still a bad thing. So there won’t be any executions with any gas (even mere nitrogen) any time soon.
Efficiency and humanity are not the goals here – especially not humanity.
On the subject of US executions, I entirely agree with sonofrojblake: “That society actively wants its prisoners to suffer before they die.” The only difference between the US and Saudi Arabia on this point is that the US likes to maintain some plausible deniability about it.
cvoinescu @#16
Always? “Always” after which century? Starting from which year? When thinking about executions, the first thing that comes to my mind is the torture and execution of Robert-François Damiens. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert-Fran%C3%A7ois_Damiens#Torture_and_execution
And painful and messy executions aren’t just a problem that existed many centuries ago. I can also think of intentionally painful executions that happened in the 20th century.
Ieva, this is about America specifically. My impression is that, at some point in the late 19th century, they decided they wanted their executions to be modern, so they began adopting the electric chair. Electricity, at the time, was all the rage: it makes perfect sense that the greatest country on Earth would use only the bestest methods of killing.
By the way, you’ll be glad to know that, as of 2015, in Oklahoma, the first backup method, if lethal injection is not available, is asphyxiation with nitrogen (… followed by electrocution and firing squad, in order of decreasing preference — they really want to have a way to kill you once they set their mind to it, come hell or high water).
Ieva, I forgot to point out, I’m talking about the way the officially approved methods have evolved, not about the way sadistic executioners could botch any given protocol to transform it into torture. Their tastes have not changed much since the days of the rack and burning at the stake.
cvoinescu@#19:
Ieva, this is about America specifically. My impression is that, at some point in the late 19th century, they decided they wanted their executions to be modern, so they began adopting the electric chair. Electricity, at the time, was all the rage: it makes perfect sense that the greatest country on Earth would use only the bestest methods of killing.
The electric chair… Aaaah, that was an inspired bit of marketing. I’ll queue up a blog posting on this… But: the story is more amazing than you probably can imagine.
sonofrojblake@#3:
Evolving towards being as good as them? Consider: Saudi Arabia just buys weapons. It’s the USA that designs, develops, tests, manufactures and sells those weapons on the open market. You think that makes the US morally superior to the Saudis? To my eyes, they’re considerably lower. At least the Saudis don’t pretend to themselves that they’re civilised. They know they’re fooling nobody.
You’ve convinced me. And, for another thing, the Saudis don’t have the entire world at gunpoint with an arsenal of nuclear weapons. Yet.
I just wrote a quick piece because cvoinescu’s comment @#19 reminded me of some things about the history of executions in America. Reviewing that material convinced me further that we’ve got room for improvement if we wanted to be as moral as the Marquis De Sade.
As a follow up the the report, DW is reporting that German firm probed over alleged illegal shipment of euthanasia drug to US.
https://www.dw.com/en/german-firm-probed-over-alleged-illegal-shipment-of-euthanasia-drug-to-us/a-44652009.
@cvoinescu, #16:
Didn’t seem to bother them between 1924 and 1999.
sonofrojblake @ #24: Shit, you’re right. But they used a different gas, didn’t they? No?
Does it matter??