Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Capital Defense Weekly

Criminal Law

: Capital Defense Weekly

Meet the executioners

Two pieces on the people and process of executions in Missouri and Virginia.  Together the  pieces examine a fundamental and irreconcilable paradox. The gallows fairs of [yesteryear] might have been cruel but they were, at least, human. By contrast, if the ideal “humane execution” were ever achieved, its clinical efficiency would force everyone involved - the warden, the witnesses and the condemned - to envisage a human life as a pure disposable object: a mentality usually associated with profound psychosis. In Missouri Before a Missouri executioner could go to Indiana in 2001 to help federal authorities put mass killer Timothy McVeigh to death, he had to take care of one detail: He needed permission from his probation officer to leave the state...continue to full post

Full post as published by Capital Defense Weekly on January 13, 2008 (boomark / email).