Inhumane Execution

THE STATE of Alabama executed John Evans last Friday night. For Evans, a convicted murderer, that execution was anything but painless. Even if one can temporarily disregard the mental anguish associated with any execution, the physical pain must have been terrible. It required three 30-second blasts of electricity at 1900 volts to kill Evans over a 10-minute period--a long time in which to carry out any kind of execution.

Advocates of capital punishment now have a new responsibility to defend this or any other method of execution as humane in light of what happened in Alabama. That the state had tested the electric chair is of comparatively little importance. How does one "test" an electric chair in any case? As with any complex piece of machinery, the only real "test" is actual use.

But a simple malfunction of machinery cannot account for the greater significance--and the greater moral dilemma--of Evans's execution. After the standard second shock of electricity, Evans was not pronounced dead, and there was an interval of several minutes during which his lawyer appealed to the Governor for clemency. He was told that clemency would not be forthcoming, and the final third shock of electricity was applied.

Such a protracted execution falls under the "cruel and unusual punishment" clause of the Eighth Amendment. Aside from the legal point, however, it raises the question of humaneness more dramatically than previous incidents.

In a similar case of an unsuccessful electrocution attempt in Louisiana in 1946, the convict was returned to the chair the next year and died. It this case and the Evans case demonstrate the only two options in case of an unsuccessful execution attempt, then perhaps one could say that continuing with the execution, rather than forcing an extended delay, might be the more merciful option--if such a scale of relativity exists.

A PROBLEM WITH MACHINERY does not mitigate a crime, but it does change the responsibility of society toward the convict. Prolonging the execution, as was done to Evans, smacks of torture. Forcing him to endure another attempt, on the other hand, is torture of a different sort, one difficult to measure, for it concerns mental and not physical pain.

Having subjected Evans once to the prospect of facing death and having inflicted on him some of the physical pain of the execution as well, forcing him once again to go to the chair--this time merely to finish what was previously begun--seems not only cruel but unnecessary. For the convicted criminal, as for the terminally ill patient, surely the process of dying begins long before the physical process of death itself. Advocates of capital punishment as a deterrent should admit that the experience of an unsuccessful execution attempt is grisly enough to act as a sufficient deterrent against the criminal's committing future crimes himself.

Even astute newspaper readers had read little, if anything, about John Evans before last Friday, and after several days and an explanation by the Department of Corrections, they are not likely to read much in the future. The waning of media attention for executions is natural--and disturbing--as capital punishment becomes more commonplace in this country. But the Evans case raises once again the questions surrounding capital punishment, and not only because of its bizarre and tragic circumstances. It deserves not merely a discussion of how to "improve" capital punishment--which would not answer the larger question of mental pain--but also reconsideration of whether there can be any method of capital punishment that is humane.