Capital Punishment as the Unconstitutional Establishment of Religion: A Girardian Reading of the Death Penalty
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Abstract
When the switch is thrown, the prisoner "cringes," "leaps," and "fights the straps with amazing strength." "The hands turn red, then white, and the cords of the neck stand out like steel bands." The prisoner's limbs, fingers, toes and face are severely contorted. The force of the electrical current is so powerful that the pris oner's eyeballs sometimes pop out and "rest on [his] cheeks." The prisoner often defecates, urinates, and vomits blood and drool. "The body turns bright red as its temperature rises," and the prisoner's "flesh swells and his skin stretches to the point of breaking. Sometimes the prisoner catches on fire, particularly if [he] perspires excessively." Witnesses hear a loud and sustained sound "like bacon frying," and "the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh" permeates the chamber. This "smell of ftying human flesh in the immedi ate neighborhood of the chair is sometimes bad enough to nauseate even the Press representatives who are present." In the meantime, the prisoner almost literally boils: "the temperature in the brain itself approaches the Doiling point of water," and when the postelectrocution autopsy is performed "the liver is so hot that doc tors have said that it cannot be touched by the human hand." The body frequently is badly burned and disfigured.1