The death penalty has made national news again, this time due to another botched execution in Arizona. Attorneys for inmate Joseph Wood challenged Arizona state secrecy laws that kept him from knowing the source of his lethal injection drugs, but the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately decided the execution should proceed. Arizona used experimental drugs, and it took Wood nearly two hours to die.
The botched execution in Arizona is a symptom of a government policy that is broken from start to finish. The recent botched execution has sparked outrage from both sides of the aisle. Also check out this recent piece from the Washington Times, “A Conservative Case Against the Death Penalty.” The death penalty is marred by errors, fallibility, and bias - from the initial decision of who to prosecute to the final execution and at countless stages in between. The spate of botched executions is just further proof humans cannot carry out an execution. Repeal of the death penalty is the only way to stop these government errors. As Sister Helen Prejean wisely stated in a recent article, “the whole death penalty system is botched.”