I just don’t get the argument that says, “my client is too crazy to be executed.” Lawyers claim that the condemned man’s mental state is such that he is unable to understand why he is being executed. That lack constitutes ‘cruel and unusual punishment.’ It seems to me that, that very argument undermines the assertion.

If he is too crazy to understand why he is being executed, work with it. Words mean something. Instead of calling the event an execution, just change the rhetoric. How about, “the warden is going to give you a drug that will make it seem like all your birthdays are coming out of the end of your pee-pee.”

It’s worth a try. My bet is that the march to the death chamber will become a sprint with the condemned leading the way.

The last executioner for Great Britian once presided over a hanging that was over less than a minute after the condemned entered the execution chamber and stepped onto the gallows. In Japan, authorities don’t tell the condemned prisoner that his last walk, is his last walk. They just take the condemned from his cell and march the inmate off to the gallows. I suspect the condemned man’s last thought is: “Wait a minute, I get a shower on Thursday, this isn’t Thursday!”

The first thing we do is change the methodology. Death by hanging becomes natural causes – gravity. Drug use (supporters claim is victimless and a journey towards self-actualization). Work with that, lethal injection becomes the ultimate attempt at self-actualization, and nobody is being victimized. A firing squad is nothing more than the application of high school physics. Finally, the point must be made that the state has never executed an innocent man. When a competent court says let em go, that’s what the warden does. Let’s take the ritual out of the ritual.