In 2011, the European Union set out to “save America from itself” by banning the export of lethal-injection drugs. Without these drugs, EU lawmakers reasoned, US officials wouldn’t be able to carry out executions, and the practice would perhaps end. Alas, the US is simply resorting to alternative means. Last week, Utah gave the green light to firing squads(!) Oklahoma also permits them; Kentucky allows electrocution; in New Hampshire, inmates can be hanged; Arizona has the gas chamber (what sort of message does that send? Ed.)

Commentators are already arguing that these methods are no more cruel than lethal injection. But the more the debate revolves around the means of killing, the less we focus on the “overarching brutality of the death penalty”. The average death-row prisoner spends ten years awaiting execution – a horrible period of uncertainty that causes many inmates to contract a mental condition known as “death-row syndrome”. Arguing about quite how much pain they feel in their last few minutes of life ignores the fact that “the entire procedure of a death sentence is an experiment in torture”. (Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig, The New Republic, Washington DC).

If the death penalty deterred murder there would be almost no murders. The truth is that it is barbaric and ineffectual, damaging to the people who have to administer it, and cruel in every respect. Time and time again people on death row have been found to be innocent, there by mistake or, it is alleged, because of the prejudice of prosecutors or juries. It has been abolished in some American states and all over Europe, and there has been no murder rampage.
To be fair, it is gradually disappearing in the US as well, but in the meantime reflects appallingly upon those who ardently support it. Epicureans strongly oppose the death penalty. Itis a moral black mark against us all.