Black People Are Subjected to More Botched Executions than Any Other Group
A disproportionate number of torturous errors affect Black prisoners.
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Imagine being sentenced to die by the state.
You wait years for the appeals and the legal process to work itself out, and it doesn’t end in your favor. You finally get a date and wait still longer for the day to arrive. You hope for a last minute stay of execution from the governor that ultimately never comes.
Finally the day arrives.
You eat your last meal. They usher you into the execution chamber, people assembled for your death. You make peace with your Maker and the time comes.
Then they start the procedure. They tell you it will take only a few minutes and it will be painless. You will fall asleep and never wake up.
But it doesn’t happen like that. The minutes stretch on. They are sticking you again and again with needles that will stop your heart, but they can’t get it right. The minutes stretch, maybe into hours.
Finally, after all of this pain and yet more waiting. They get it right. Now you it’s finally time to die.
This is the reality of death penalty by lethal injection.
Among the many theological and legal reasons why we should abolish the death penalty in the United States, there is another basic and practical consideration.
Botched executions.
As it turns out, killing someone is not a smooth process. Along the way mistakes can and often do happen.
This is especially true regarding executions of Black people.
A new report by researchers at the nonprofit Reprieve organization determined that Black people endure botched lethal injections at a much higher rate than people of other races or ethnicities.
Black people had 220% higher odds of suffering a botched lethal injection execution than white people.
An NPR story on the report stated,
In an analysis of the more than 1,400 lethal injection executions conducted in the U.S. since 1982, researchers for the nonprofit Reprieve reported that states made significantly more mistakes during the executions of Black people than they did with prisoners of other races.
Arkansas and Georgia presented especially egregious records of botched lethal injections with Black people.
In Arkansas, “75% of botched lethal injection executions were of Black people, despite executions of Black people accounting for just 33% of all executions” and in Georgia, “86% of botched lethal injection executions were of Black people, despite executions of Black people accounting for just 30% of all executions.”
In 1977, when lethal injection was adopted as a way to administer the death penalty, proponents said it would be a painless and quick process lasting about five minutes.
The reality is far more torturous.
Beyond the significant racial disparities identified by the research, this analysis also found that botched executions typically lasted an extremely long time: over one third (26) of botched lethal injection executions lasted more than 45 minutes, with over a quarter (19) lasting over one hour. The longest execution, of a Black man in Alabama in 2022, took over 3 hours.
Although the report does not delve into specific causes for racial disparities in botched executions, the reason may be as simple, and as horrifying, as not being able to find a vein given the darker skin of Black folks.
A criminal justice professor at Texas State University, Dr. Scott Bowman, said, “You can't find a vein and you think, well, it really is hard to find veins in Black people, so I'm just going to keep sticking.”
A professor at Ohio State, Ruqaiijah Yearby, surmised that “the false notion that Black people have a higher tolerance for pain, could also be involved in the administration of drugs in the death chamber.”
With a policing and penal system rooted in the control and exploitation of Black bodies, we should not be killing people.
This recent report on botched executions is yet further evidence that the state cannot be trusted with the power of life and death.
Christians, who believe in grace, forgiveness, and redemption have every reason to be at the forefront of efforts to abolish the death penalty.
With new information about the cruel and unusual experience of the death chamber itself, the imperative to do away with the death penalty becomes even more urgent.
If you would like to learn more and get involved in efforts to abolish the death penalty visit Equal Justice USA (EJUSA, where I am on an advisory board).
Read the Repreive REPORT.
This is one of those issues that is difficult to get my mind around, except the certainty that people and especially Black men are being tortured and killed in the interest of White America's view of "justice." They don't have a problem being insensitive to all things Black.
On the matter of the death penalty, there cannot be ANY "collateral damage." Sadly, many people don't have a problem with getting it wrong – torturing the guilty or killing the innocent – if they can get it "right" from time to time.
There is a tragically long history of cruelty, torture and death directed at Black people, and I wonder if this context has created, to borrow your language, Dr. Tisby, a “permission structure” for a broad cultural value of grave indifference to Black suffering. From the earliest time of Transatlantic Slavery, barbaric methods of torture and execution used to keep enslaved Africans under control in what was a floating prison were common. Even the youngest of the captives were not spared. Markus Rediker, in his book The Slave Ship: A Human History, goes into detail about just what the slave voyages involved. The enslavement of Africans and their descendants in the Americas was too often attended by extreme forms of violence to maintain subjugation and force more labor from the enslaved. This cruelty didn’t end with emancipation, as Kidada E. Williams relates in They Left Great Marks On Me: African American Testimonies of Racial Violence from Emancipation to World War I. The history of lynching and the KKK and retributive violence against Civil Rights movements all the way up to continued police brutality carry this strangely determined willingness to cause brutal wounding to Black bodies.
I help to care for my best friend who is severely disabled, and over the 30 years I have journeyed with her within the medical system, I have seen the struggle of “finding a vein” and the preparatory work that is necessary for her to receive “a good stick”. Some have been helpful in this endeavor, yet others, determined to ignore her warning that it is hard to find her veins, try and try and try again, basically torturing her. She has always used that language of torture. She and I have often wondered if and when the bad experiences are due to racist beliefs about the Black body.
I think that in a system that operates within this historical context, where one cannot be certain of justice free of racial bias, and one cannot be safe from torture, the death penalty cannot be classified as a viable alternative for state ensured justice. Sorry this is so long…