States Streamline Machinery of Death
Dublin Core
Title
States Streamline Machinery of Death
Subject
Capital punishment--United States
Description
After the deaths of Billy Bailey and John Albert Taylor, states are being faced with how to go about offering the most humane capital punishment.
Creator
McCarthy, Colman
Source
McCarthy, Colman. "States Streamline Machinery of Death." The Washington Post, February 6, 1996.
Publisher
HIST 298, University of Mary Washington
Date
1996-02-06
Rights
The materials in this online collection are held by Special Collections, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington and are available for educational use. For this purpose only, you may reproduce materials without prior permission on the condition that you provide attribution of the source.
Format
1 JPG
300 DPI
Language
English
Coverage
Smyrna, Delaware
Point of the Mountain, Utah.
Text Item Type Metadata
Text
[Author] Colman McCarthy
[Title] States Streamline Machinery of Death
Last year rests as a record-setting year for state-sanctioned homicides: 56 men executed at a cost estimated by Duke University researchers at $2.1 million per death. Jan 25 and 26 are likely to go into the books also: successive days on which one state hanged a man by rope and another state killed with bullets.
Both executions were well reported, given the novelty of gallows and firing squads at a time when legislatures are increasingly sanctioning drugging people to death. Lethal injection has a softness to it, almost a cruelty-free medical aura, which allows state governments to have it both ways: to kill humanely.
The Delaware hanging of Billy Bailey and the shooting 26 hours later of John Albert Taylor in Utah lacked the ordinariness that might have allowed these two executions to pass unnoticed beyond prison walls. The methods of killing-- not the killing itself-- caused uneasiness among politicians in both states. Bailey and Taylor could have chosen to go quietly, lying down on a gurney and having a vein opened. Instead, they rejected taking up the states' option of a lethal drug.
As a result, international television crews along with major U.S. networks poured into the remote prison towns of Smyrna, Del., and Point of the Mountain, Utah. The power of TV visuals was at work. How often does a chance come along to get footage of a well- constructed wooden gallows and a trapdoor swinging open in a dry run for the cameras? Or to film the firing squad room and its sandbag-supported death chair complete with a spill device to catch the blood?
The day before these two executions, Virginia executed a man by lethal injection. This was almost a non-story, except that death chamber technicians needed 30 minutes to locate a suitable vein, finally settling for one just above the foot.
It is not likely that executioners in Delaware and Utah will earn this much international and national publicity again. Delaware switched to lethal injection in 1986 but Bailey, sentenced before then, rejected the choice. In Utah, politicians have introduced a bill to ban the firing squad for future death sentences.
Many states are giving condemned prisoners choices in dying. Capital punishment advocates who see this as an unwarranted turn toward
mercy-- why give these heinous murderers a choice?-- need not be alarmed. Legislatures aren't getting soft, they're getting practical.
First, they are making capital punishment more palatable, should a clamor arise that death by hanging, shooting, electrocution or gassing is barbaric and bad for the state's image. Second, and far more important, is that the offering of choices protects the state against spending still more money in legal expenses.
Death penalty sentencing is a post-conviction procedure, akin to another trial with full deliberations and arguments. In most states, juries decide whether murderers deserve death. In some, judges rule. In a few, judges, usually running for reelection, can override juries that reject a capital sentence.
If those now on death row were not given choices they would have a legal opening to demand a new sentencing trial. Their reasoned argument would be: I was sentenced to die one way and now the rules are changing and I am forced to die another way. I should have another sentencing trial.
Fearing that appeals courts might agree, states end-run this by offering a choice: The condemned are not being forced to accept another method; the first one remains available.
Trail judges and prosecutors abhor new trials, whether on questions of guilt or sentencing. Evidence not originally available-- either because inexperienced defense lawyers didn't know how to gather it or because it was suppressed by prosecutors-- often has a way of showing up years later.
Days before the Delaware and Utah executions, Joseph Spaziano, a Florida death row inmate for nearly 20 years, had one of the rarest of legal victories. A Florida circuit court, vacating both hid conviction and sentence, ordered a new trial. A combination of nonjudicial forces-- the doggedness of Spaziano's attorneys, including Prof. Michael Mello of the Vermont Law School, and reporters from the Miami Herald-- persistently presented evidence of grave doubts of the condemned man's guilt.
It was said: Well, the system worked. In fact, it was lawyers and reporters who worked. The legal system did its powerful best to kill.
[Title] States Streamline Machinery of Death
Last year rests as a record-setting year for state-sanctioned homicides: 56 men executed at a cost estimated by Duke University researchers at $2.1 million per death. Jan 25 and 26 are likely to go into the books also: successive days on which one state hanged a man by rope and another state killed with bullets.
Both executions were well reported, given the novelty of gallows and firing squads at a time when legislatures are increasingly sanctioning drugging people to death. Lethal injection has a softness to it, almost a cruelty-free medical aura, which allows state governments to have it both ways: to kill humanely.
The Delaware hanging of Billy Bailey and the shooting 26 hours later of John Albert Taylor in Utah lacked the ordinariness that might have allowed these two executions to pass unnoticed beyond prison walls. The methods of killing-- not the killing itself-- caused uneasiness among politicians in both states. Bailey and Taylor could have chosen to go quietly, lying down on a gurney and having a vein opened. Instead, they rejected taking up the states' option of a lethal drug.
As a result, international television crews along with major U.S. networks poured into the remote prison towns of Smyrna, Del., and Point of the Mountain, Utah. The power of TV visuals was at work. How often does a chance come along to get footage of a well- constructed wooden gallows and a trapdoor swinging open in a dry run for the cameras? Or to film the firing squad room and its sandbag-supported death chair complete with a spill device to catch the blood?
The day before these two executions, Virginia executed a man by lethal injection. This was almost a non-story, except that death chamber technicians needed 30 minutes to locate a suitable vein, finally settling for one just above the foot.
It is not likely that executioners in Delaware and Utah will earn this much international and national publicity again. Delaware switched to lethal injection in 1986 but Bailey, sentenced before then, rejected the choice. In Utah, politicians have introduced a bill to ban the firing squad for future death sentences.
Many states are giving condemned prisoners choices in dying. Capital punishment advocates who see this as an unwarranted turn toward
mercy-- why give these heinous murderers a choice?-- need not be alarmed. Legislatures aren't getting soft, they're getting practical.
First, they are making capital punishment more palatable, should a clamor arise that death by hanging, shooting, electrocution or gassing is barbaric and bad for the state's image. Second, and far more important, is that the offering of choices protects the state against spending still more money in legal expenses.
Death penalty sentencing is a post-conviction procedure, akin to another trial with full deliberations and arguments. In most states, juries decide whether murderers deserve death. In some, judges rule. In a few, judges, usually running for reelection, can override juries that reject a capital sentence.
If those now on death row were not given choices they would have a legal opening to demand a new sentencing trial. Their reasoned argument would be: I was sentenced to die one way and now the rules are changing and I am forced to die another way. I should have another sentencing trial.
Fearing that appeals courts might agree, states end-run this by offering a choice: The condemned are not being forced to accept another method; the first one remains available.
Trail judges and prosecutors abhor new trials, whether on questions of guilt or sentencing. Evidence not originally available-- either because inexperienced defense lawyers didn't know how to gather it or because it was suppressed by prosecutors-- often has a way of showing up years later.
Days before the Delaware and Utah executions, Joseph Spaziano, a Florida death row inmate for nearly 20 years, had one of the rarest of legal victories. A Florida circuit court, vacating both hid conviction and sentence, ordered a new trial. A combination of nonjudicial forces-- the doggedness of Spaziano's attorneys, including Prof. Michael Mello of the Vermont Law School, and reporters from the Miami Herald-- persistently presented evidence of grave doubts of the condemned man's guilt.
It was said: Well, the system worked. In fact, it was lawyers and reporters who worked. The legal system did its powerful best to kill.
Original Format
Newspaper
Contributor of the Digital Item
Kabre, Timbila
Student Editor of the Digital Item
Williams, Megan
Files
Citation
McCarthy, Colman, “States Streamline Machinery of Death,” HIST299, accessed May 18, 2025, https://hist299.umwhistory.org/items/show/250.