Camu's Reflections of the Guillotine Review

After reading Reflections of the Guillotine by Camu it got me thinking about my own stance on capital punishment and the death penalty in the US. Camu definitely expresses throughout his essay that he does not agree with it in many ways. It is odd to think about the Guillotine as the method that was once used for the death penalty. It was interesting to travel back in time to see how the death penalty functioned in society and how it was conducted. It does make me wonder if capital punishment was less humane in Camu time, or is it less humane now. It does seem that a blade falling and cutting your head off is a pretty quick no nonsense approach but the picture view of this method does display itself as being very violent way of death (see Death by Guillotine video on Jenny's blog). I think that the Electric chair that the United States used for some time to put people to death for their crimes was probable closest form of execution that was as gruesome as a Guillotine. We now use lethal injection as our method of putting someone to death.

Now Camu believed that if a society were to have executions of criminals that they needed to be made more public so that society could fully take responsibility of their actions and could see and witness the end result of putting a man to death. I think he made a good point; people should have access to view an execution that is going to be carried out. Maybe we would change our minds about having the death sentence with lethal injections. When it is kept quiet and private it seems that society is trying to hide something. Why do people try to hide things? Usually because they did something that was wrong and they don't want the other person to know about it. Many people argue that to have capital punishment is a cheaper than life in prison without chance of parole. So I looked up the numbers; they estimate that a life without parole case costs approximately $1 million dollars and that a death penalty case cost somewhere between $1.2 million to $3.2 million dollars more than a life without parole case. I mean why do we really want to put people to death, is it really a financial reason or do people believes it reigns more psychological violence on someone’s mind that is going to be executed as Camu suggests. To me it would be more psychological torture to be imprisoned and confined to a small space for life. Death would seem like an escape from that type of prison, maybe it’s just a personal preference.

In modern day society most people currently have a clearer conscious on the death penalty because they think lethal injections are more painless. If we reason with what Camu says then we truly cannot be sure that death is completely painless with lethal injections. Modern day science has still not given us the knowledge of what someone is currently thinking in terms of pain while they are being executed and we cannot project our self to the "other side"; if you believe that a person who dies leaves this world and travel to a spirit world and asks them how they felt. What Modern Science does tell us is that human bodies react differently to medications that are processed in the body so there really is no way to tell how someone would react to a lethal injection. In the past people have made mistakes and were not given enough medication and they had to repeat the process over. This also does not seem like an efficient way to perform an execution. I find it interesting that one of the drugs that is in the lethal dose is a paralytic drug. They say this is to dignify the death of the criminal that is being executed. You have to wonder if it really just masking the gruesomeness of that method for the viewer who have to witness the death because without the paralytic the body would have some involuntary muscle movements.

Okay, my last input into the discussion is a follow-up to a previous lecture from my Bioethics professor. We discussed how in America we believe in putting a criminal to death if they meet the legal requirements in their state. What about those individuals who are not criminals but want to end their life with the means of lethal medication because they have been diagnosed and are living with a terminal disease. All 50 states in America currently have euthanasia as illegal ( Washington, Montana and Oregon have Physician Assisted Suicide which is when a physician prescribed medication that would give you the means of achieving death on your own.) It seems backwards that our legal system would allow a legal death for criminals as a way of punishment for their crimes but will not allow terminally ill patients the same legal right as a way of peace for their suffering.

*Fun Fact: Did you know that only 35 states use only lethal injections. Other states may still use the electric chair, gas chamber, hanging or a firing squad to put a criminal to death if lethal injection is found unconstitutional or by choice of the convicted criminal. Don’t believe it? Check it out @ http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/methods-execution