The execution is now in progress. He made one jerk when the voltage initially entered the body. The tapes, which span executions from 1983 to 1998, include no names, no shouts, no screams of pain. Just a string of quiet voices. Death penalty supporters say the tapes prove executions are professional and unemotional.
Opponents say that is precisely the problem.
I would hope that most people will find the clinical way this is being done as really chilling. It isn't clear what the impact will be of the death chamber tapes, broadcast Wednesday on WYNC New York public radio and repeated on other stations in the days since. Timothy McVeigh, the unremorseful Oklahoma City bomber, is scheduled to be executed May 16 at a federal prison in Indiana. Gov. George Ryan of Illinois made big news last year when he declared a moratorium on executions. Breakthroughs in DNA evidence and new studies on the relationship between race and punishment have reinvigorated interest in the topic, though 67 percent of Americans still support capital punishment, according to a Gallup poll in April.