Without the practical line of attack represented by disputing whether capital punishment reduces crime or not, the ethical dimension enters in the foreground. The primary ethical objection to the death penalty, I have, is that it represents state or government sponsored blood vengeance  against a person largely rendered defenseless. It’s difficult to distinguish from murder, because the individual doesn’t have to be threatening or carrying out an aggressive attack against anyone during the process of killing them. An equivalent act in principle would be shooting a POW rendered non-threatening in the head.

Another important ethical consideration with respect to capital punishment pertains to the manner in which it energizes the warfare state. One of the awful things about the “War on Terror” is the manner in which it has normalized extrajudicial killings on presidential whim. This kind of summary execution is the absolute worst form of the death penalty. It’s conducted with zero legality or objective accountability. It has contributed to the deaths of countless people.

The final moral consideration to seriously consider is how it creates a warped entitlement to kill mentality among police forces. The numerous unjust shootings one can read about in the libertarian and left press confirm the existence of said outlook. It’s the whimsical militarist presidential worldview brought into the realm of nominally civilian policing.

Despite the big focus being on the morality of capital punishment, there is an important practical consideration that does relate to practicality. That would be the potential of killing an innocent person. There is a new study showing that 4 percent of death row inmates are innocent, so this is no idle concern. It’s better for a guilty person to escape death than for an innocent individual to die, because the proper role of the law is to protect the rights of all rather than to kill them. Let’s work to make sure the law sticks to that.

When we are disgusted by the unnecessary pain inflicted even on those who’ve inflicted unnecessary pain, we are disgusted with retribution. When we are outraged by the horror of a botched execution, we are outraged by the use of punishment to make an example out of its victims.

It is time to take the final steps on the path we’re already taking.

It is time to abolish the crime of punishment.

But if we can’t face the man on his knees, and if we don’t want to see ourselves as the man holding the pistol, should we be killing at all? Clayton Lockett was tortured to death last night so we could pretend we are somehow better than the man holding a pistol to the base of another man’s skull. If we are fine with killing, then why do we not kill the right way? If killing the right way troubles you, are you really fine with killing?

The particular incident sparking national attention this time was a lethal injection in McAlester, Oklahoma that failed to immediately kill its intended victim. Instead, convicted murderer and rapist Clayton Lockett died — of a heart attack — after 43 minutes spent writhing in pain and struggling to get out the words “Man,” “I’m not,” and “something’s wrong.”

Unsurprisingly, Amnesty International calls it “one of the starkest examples yet of why the death penalty must be abolished.” Even the White House — headquarters of worldwide mass drone assassinations — made a point to publicly state that the execution “fell short” of the standard for humane executions.

We might ask ourselves, though, why we find such a horrible death for such horrible crimes repugnant. If we think punishment should be retributive and proportionate to the crime committed, we ought to welcome particularly cruel punishments for particularly cruel crimes. If we think punishment should serve as a deterrent, we ought to welcome such gruesome, excruciating deaths in hopes that they make crimes like those committed by Lockett less likely.

In fact, we arguably passively accept more cruel punishments already.

As jokes in popular culture reveal, it’s socially understood that a prison sentence involves condemning a convict to a hell of constant abuse from both guards and fellow inmates. This looming threat lasts much longer than the 46 minutes of pain Lockett experienced, leaving permanent psychological damage. Even when sentences end and inmates leave with their bodies, they don’t always escape with their souls.

None of this is to downplay what happened to Lockett in McAlester, especially considering that his time on death row ensured he went through the torture of prison as well.

The problem is not just that what Lockett experienced was cruel and unusual. The problem is that the all too usual practice of punishment itself — the process of intentionally inflicting harm on another human being for the purpose of inflicting harm — is irredeemably cruel.

If this is where punishment has brought us, to systematic killings and mass incarceration, then it’s time to reexamine punishment. We must reflect on what it is we really want out of punishment, and whether or not we can achieve it some other way.

One of the most basic things we want out of punishment is a way to restore respect for victims and their dignity. When a murderer escapes conviction, our anger comes out of solidarity with the victim.

What better way to respond to crime, then, than by demanding restitution for victims or their loved ones? The focus there is placed firmly on showing respect for those harmed, and away from bringing new harm to the criminal.

The most obvious objection to such a proposal is that no amount of monetary compensation will ever bring back the dead, or undo an assault, making full justice impossible under restitution. While this is unfortunately true, it is also true of punishment — even if Lockett had suffered for three hours, his victim would still be just as dead.

The difference is that with a restitutive model of justice, we can at least go some way toward healing the wounds of crime. With a punitive model, no steps are taken in that direction at all and new injustices are committed.

When we look back at the history of criminal justice, most of us mark progress by the abolition of the cross, the rack and the guillotine. We take it as a mark of our humanity that our modern debates about lethal injections are about how we can punish with the least additional pain possible. When we fail in that goal, as Oklahoma did with Lockett, we are repulsed. Those who oppose capital punishment take it as a reason to abandon the practice altogether.

Each of these steps that we praise backs away from the principles used to justify punishment.

When we are disgusted by the unnecessary pain inflicted even on those who’ve inflicted unnecessary pain, we are disgusted with retribution. When we are outraged by the horror of a botched execution, we are outraged by the use of punishment to make an example out of its victims.

It is time to take the final steps on the path we’re already taking.

It is time to abolish the crime of punishment.

This man, a convicted rapist and murderer, is not someone I plan to mourn. His crimes, which included the rape and murder of a teenage girl, were as heinous as they were repulsive. His death was equally repulsive. Strapped to a gurney, he was injected with an untried cocktail of drugs intended to sedate him, stop his breathing and then stop his heart. The first drug, midazolam, commonly known as Versed, is a short-acting benzodiazepine (similar to Valium) typically used to sedate patients before uncomfortable procedures such as being executed while strapped to a gurney. The second drug, vecuronium bromide, is a particularly nightmarish substance. A paralytic, it blocks the transmissions of motor neurons. Patients who report being awake but unable to move or cry out during surgery are reporting the joys of vecuronium bromide when administered with insufficient sedation. The last drug, potassium chloride, is simply poison that stops the heart. KCl, as it is known, is common fodder for gallows humor in the medical community, with doctors and nurses “prescribing” a fatal injection of KCl to particularly obnoxious patients. Or, as here, fatal doses actually being prescribed.

The administration of these drugs failed to achieve the intended purpose — a clean, antiseptic death. Instead, the condemned man writhed on the gurney, called out and died in apparent agony of a massive heart attack. Clearly, this outcome was unacceptable — the state must kill in a controlled, clean and calm fashion, without embarrassing or distressing drama. Indeed today NPR told me I might find its reporting on the man’s death “disturbing,” presumably because of the writhing, not the death.

What is most curious about this experiment is how unnecessary it is. Millions of data points from killing fields and death camps, from the Einsatzgruppen and the NKVD, point the way clearly to the easiest, swiftest, most painless and cost effective way to kill. Have the condemned kneel. Place the muzzle of a small caliber pistol against the base of the victim’s skull. Pull the trigger once. The bullet destroys the brain stem, killing the condemned instantly. The total price of the execution amounts to a few minutes of the executioner’s wages and the price of a bullet. In the 20th Century, millions died this way. This is the most reliable method of execution known, and why in our data-driven age any other technique is used is a mystery. Or perhaps, it is no mystery at all.

A man on his knees, hands bound, blindfolded, is defenseless, helpless, a pitiful object. We cannot stomach killing this way. We cannot, truthfully, stomach the act of killing at all. Just as we long for remote-control wars and fill the skies with drones, we long for a robotic executioner killing without any of the horror of killing. We do not use lethal injection out of concern for the condemned, but out of concern for ourselves. We long to imagine that “the state” is killing these men and women, and that they aren’t really being killed at all, just antiseptically removed — “destroyed.” So we distance the lethal act from the proof of the deed; first the hangman, who simply pulls a lever, then the electric chair, with its switch, and now lethal injection, done at the press of a button, the same way the Air Force kills Yemeni children.

But if we can’t face the man on his knees, and if we don’t want to see ourselves as the man holding the pistol, should we be killing at all? Clayton Lockett was tortured to death last night so we could pretend we are somehow better than the man holding a pistol to the base of another man’s skull. If we are fine with killing, then why do we not kill the right way? If killing the right way troubles you, are you really fine with killing?