Slow Torture: A New Milestone

Buried in the latest report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics on the status of the death penalty in the United States is a grim marker of absurdity. The time between sentencing and execution for those executed in any given year has reached a new high of 279 months — that is over 23 years. With a few exceptional years, the clear trend since the death penalty was reinstated in the U.S. in 1976 has been an increasing in that time of slow torture for those awaiting execution. (The number of years prisoners actually spend on death row is even greater because BJS measures time from the most recent death sentence in each case. Many individuals on death row have been re-sentenced at least once, meaning their actual stay has been longer.)

Along with this lengthening of time before execution comes all the health conditions associated with an aging population. It is not surprising to see death row inmates in wheelchairs or suffering from dementia, cancer, and heart disease. The next person scheduled to be executed in the U.S. fits this pattern. Barring a stay, Byron Black will be put to death in Tennessee on August 5. Black is 69 years old. It has been 37 years since the commission of the murders that resulted in his death sentence. Black has a defibrillator device implanted in his heart. That life-giving tool of modern science will automatically but unsuccessfully stimulate his heart to keep beating even as lethal drugs administered by the state override that pulse. In addition to the pain this might cause Mr. Black, the case raises serious questions of medical and legal ethics. Hospital staff may refuse to turn off Mr. Black’s heart device, a step which would bring him closer to death, but perhaps with less pain.

Courts, where the median age of federal judges recently reached 70, are being thrust into the uncomfortable position of deciding how best to kill an elderly human being, literally at the eleventh hour. The Supreme Court rarely grants a stay in death cases.

As our national population ages, families are increasingly grappling with the task of ensuring that their elder members live out their final years in a semblance of dignity. A growing number of aging parents and loved ones need assisted living, nursing homes, and hospice care. But on death row in places like Florida and Texas, the emphasis is on carrying out every last execution before the inmate dies of natural causes. While death sentences continue to decline across the country, executions are on the rise, as politics without compassion plays its persistent role.

Part of the delay in carrying out our executions is due to what Justice Harry Blackmun called the disgraceful “tinker[ing] with the machinery of death.” Instead of asking ourselves whether the death penalty should be allowed to continue, we focus on the mechanics of killing. Drug companies both here and abroad are adamantly opposed to having their life-saving medicines used to carry out executions, causing the death penalty to temporarily halt. Now as executions have resumed, some governors have balked at the exorbitant prices charged by less-scrupulous drug makers for lethal injections — as much as $900,000 for a single execution. As a result, states have resorted to shooting and gassing death row inmates.

For the most part, prisoners on death row are guilty of heinous crimes. Severe punishment is due. The typical sentence for murder in both death-penalty and non-death-penalty states is life in prison. The inmates with that sentence will live out their lives being punished every day for their offense. Hopefully, when they die there will be some recognition that as human beings they will be treated with a modicum of respect. But for inmates about to be executed, the last image they will see before their life is over will be fellow humans systematically working to kill them as swiftly as possible. The prisoners have seen this horror coming for years, with faint hope in appeals or clemency. Their dignity is drained until there is nothing left, and we are diminished in the process.

— Richard Dieter lives in West Virginia and is the author of the forthcoming novel “Yellowstone Down.”