On the Death Penalty

Originally published July 13, 2001, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1443

“You know the good part about the death penalty in Texas? Fewer Texans.”

–George Carlin

Some years ago, I wrote an issue of The Incredible Hulk which featured a character named Crazy Eight. She was a supervillain or hero, depending upon which side of the law you were on. And she was on death row for having committed a series of cold-blooded murders. She was the Punisher with a string of luck that had run out, and the story involved her final hours and her interaction with Doc Samson. In the last pages, she was strapped to a chair and electrocuted, on panel. She was pronounced dead. Aside from an emotional final page with Doc, that was the end of the story.

When the issue came out, I was flooded… deluged, I tell you, inundated (all right, I got a few letters) from readers who were extremely bothered by the story. Why? Because I’d shown someone being executed.

“This kind of thing is extremely upsetting,” I was told. “A comic is no place for this story.” “I don’t want to see this kind of thing happening.” “You shouldn’t have killed her; she was too good a character.” And my favorite, “What a disregard for long-standing characters Marvel has, to dispatch them in so heartless and pointless a fashion,” which was pretty interesting considering Crazy Eight had never existed before that issue.

This response amazed me. Here were all these people, getting well and truly worked up over the death of a comic book character. What upset them wasn’t that she died, but the manner in which she had gone. She didn’t get laser-beamed, or demolecularized, or anything satisfactorily comic booky. She was executed by the state.

Except, as we know, these things really happen. In Texas, fried felons is rivaling drilling for oil as the major pastime. And I couldn’t help but wonder whether these letter writers got quite as worked up about real people dying. I suspected they didn’t. Why? Because if they were genuinely in opposition to the death penalty, they would have been pleased to see a story portraying it in all its cold-blooded brutality.

But this was a comic book character. She wasn’t real. No one had actually died. The only real thing in the whole comic was the method of her death, and that was what got people worked up: The reality. Which makes you wonder why, if people are so exorcised by the reality of capital punishment, so many people think it’s a nifty idea.

I think I know why.

We haven’t gone far enough.

It’s a true hoot to hear Europeans going on about how barbaric this country is because we have capital punishment. They sniff about how any truly mature country has left it behind. This, of course, ignores the fact that America is anything but a mature country. We’ve only been around a little over 225 years. Compared to European countries, that’s an eyeblink. As a society we’re obsessed with youth, and we have the same love/hate relationship with the government that many teens have with their parents: We resent its intrusion into our lives, and want it to go away so we can do what we want when we want, and keep its hands off our stuff (like money and guns)… but we also squawk if the government isn’t there when we need it. This is indeed an adolescent country at best, a country of brats. As such, we embrace the death penalty because of the most juvenile of exclamations: “I hate you! I hope you die!” And with the First Fratboy in the White House, we can rest assured that that mind set is going to be in place for at least the next three and a half years (which, I assure you, is going to seem like a lot longer during the current presidency.)

See, here’s the problem. As noted, European countries have one hëll of a lot of nerve crabbing at us about capital punishment, considering that when they were at a parallel time in their development—and even older, really—they not only embraced execution, they made it into a fine art. Anyone who’s seen Braveheart can attest to that… and, in point of fact, the movie wasn’t historically accurate since the Brits were in fact a lot more vicious with William Wallace than the film showed us. Execution, particularly in Europe, was a public sport, a means of mass entertainment.

You know why?

No TV.

So now, y’know, Europeans have TV—lots of our programs, for that matter—so they can afford to get all snooty, because they have other stuff to watch now.

In the meantime, somewhere along the way, American executions became very private matters. We didn’t publicly hang them or burn them or press them beneath rocks, like in the good old days. Executions became very private, quiet matters. Well, if the reaction to the Hulk issue is any indication, the only reason we still have them is because people don’t actually see what’s going on.

Remember Vietnam? Remember what turned the tide of public opinion? That’s right. TV. Americans sitting around the dinner table saw footage on the six o’clock news showing our boys dying, and it wasn’t pretty, and wasn’t noble, and John Wayne and Randolph Scott weren’t making it look heroic. It looked, in fact, pretty godawful. And within a relatively short time, we were pulling out of there.

So here we had the Tim McVeigh execution, and the courts ruled that it could not be televised. See, that’s what upsets me. If the Europeans have any legitimate reason to complain about us, it’s that. At least they truly knew how to turn slaughter into an art form, a festivity. A true entertainment for young and old, for the killer in all of us. If there’s any example we should follow, it’s that one.

Do I think the McVeigh execution should have been televised? Absolutely. I mean, we know that capital punishment isn’t a deterrent. Why should it be? It’s neatly tucked away behind brick walls. But if would-be killers, murderers, terrorists, actually see the act right before their eyes, they might be inclined to give genuine second thought to their actions. Kind of like the kids in “Scared Straight.” And if Americans watch it and are appalled by what they see, then maybe this “barbaric” form of state-sanction retribution will finally go the way of the dodo. In the meantime, let’s have fun with it.

In fact, I’ll take it a step further, because if we’re gonna do this, let’s do it right. I think it should have been on Pay Per View. That’s right. Pay Per View. In fact, I think all executions should be on Pay Per View. It’d generate a mint. You know it, I know it. And half of all the proceeds of each execution would go into a fund to benefit the survivors of the killers’ victims. How can you argue with that?

And you know what else? Let’s have executions carry some poetic justice with them. Executing Tim McVeigh with a lethal injection was of no relevance to the nature of his crime. It didn’t really give him a feel for what his victims experienced. Instead, they should have taken him out the way Alan Moore had Rorschach take out that guy who butchered the girl. They should have found a building (preferably in Oklahoma) scheduled for demolition anyway. Take McVeigh, put him in the middle of it, surrounded by explosives. Handcuff him to a pipe, put the key a distance away, and give him a surgical saw that he can’t use to cut through the pipe, but would be able to hack through his wrist. Give him a sporting chance. But not too sporting: Tell him he’s got ten minutes to get out, and really only give him one. Then blow the monster to kingdom come.

Cruel and unusual? Hëll no. It’s less cruel than lethal injection; he would have died in one quick, blinding flash. Unusual? People die every day and blow up buildings every day. So what’s unusual by just combining the two?

But at the very least—if you can’t make the blowing up part work for you—then keep the lethal injection, but have an interesting person host the event. I have just the candidate: Anne Robinson, the British game show host. What could be more appropriate? After all, cold blooded terrorist sociopaths are part of what keep mankind from advancing to a higher state of decency and morality. So who better to dispatch them? Witnesses spoke of McVeigh’s icy, contemptuous stare in his final moments. But I submit that he would have had considerably less sang froid if, while breathing his last, he’d had to look at Robinson’s glacial gaze and have, as the last words he’d ever hear on this planet, the contemptuous dismissal of, “You are the weakest link. Goodbye.”

I’d pay money to see that. I bet Europeans would, too.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)