After reading two books on the Death Row in Texas, the death penalty is the interesting topic of Theodore Dalrymple’s November New English Review essay.
The quasi-medical way in which executions were carried out—the anaesthetic from whose bourn no traveller returns—appals me (they disinfect the condemned man’s skin before inserting the cannula though which the fatal chemicals are to flow, another instance of the operation of the bureaucratic mind). I am far from sure also about the presence of witnesses from what I suppose I must call both sides, as at a wedding—although it is not clear at an execution who is the bride and who is the groom.
It’s also the last chance for a man or woman to make a last display of wit and truculence: e.g. when offered rum and a cigar, the customary pre-execution treat of the time, Landru, the French serial killer, declined saying: ‘It’s not good for my health”…