Unless the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes, the state of Missouri will execute a man named Brian Dorsey less than 12 hours after you receive this email. Under that state's execution protocols, should a suitable vein not be found to pump the death cocktail into Dorsey's arm, members of the execution team would be permitted to perform "surgery without anesthesia," he argued through court documents.
Specifically, executioners would make an "incision that could be several inches wide and several inches deep" and use "forceps to tear tissue away from a vein that becomes the injection point."
Missouri officials argue that this is a rare and if necessary pain relief medication will be available. Gov. Mike Parson denied Dorsey's clemency request over the objections of more than 70 prison staff members and a former warden.
Only five states carried out death sentences in 2023, Missouri among them along with Texas, Florida, Oklahoma and Alabama. Executions might be increasingly rare; the appetite for them is not.
In November 2022, the state of Alabama botched the execution of a man named Kenneth Smith when executioners failed to insert an IV into his arm before his death warrant expired — the very thing Brian Dorsey's lawyers fear might happen tonight in Missouri. Fast forward to earlier this year when Alabama successfully used the previously untested method of using nitrogen hypoxia to suffocate Smith.
The United States is divided on the question of the death penalty. Twenty seven states have death penalty laws on the books; the others do not. About half of Americans support the death penalty and think it's usually applied fairly; the other half opposes it and believe the practice is inherently inequitable.
Those who support the death penalty believe it deters crime and is an important tool in the law-and-order toolbox.
Even the National Institute of Justice, a division of the U.S. Department of Justice, acknowledges that there is no evidence that the death penalty deters crime. Furthermore, data from 2020 show that non-death-penalty states have a 44% lower rate of homicide compared to death penalty states.
One reason for Americans' stubborn support for the death penalty could be due to the fact that the rhetoric of skyrocketing crime and out-of-control criminals is so pervasive in our elections, even in places we think of as being liberal.
From a messaging standpoint, "crime is up" is a better talking point than "it's complicated." Donald Trump, for example, has said that on President Biden's watch, "violent crime has skyrocketed in virtually every American city," despite law-enforcement data that refutes the claim. Even in Democratic primary elections, candidates have traded blows over public-safety concerns.
Thus, concern about crime is one of the top issues on voters' minds as they cast votes in this year's primary elections and, presumably, when they head back to polls for the November general election.
Here's a list of national organizations that advocate for ending the death penalty:
Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty · Death Penalty Action
· Death Penalty Information Center · Equal Justice Initiative · Equal Justice USA · Innocence Project · Journey of Hope . . . from Violence to Healing · Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights (MVFHR) · National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty · People of Faith Against the Death Penalty · Witness to Innocence
Source: executinggrace.com
