The Saddam Hanging: Post-Mortem Thoughts

I have always felt ambivalent about the death penalty. When we were in high school Bro wrote a term paper on the death penalty and read a book called "Agent of Death." It was written by an executioner who had put many people to death in the electric chair, including some famous criminals. At the end of his book the author repudiated the death penalty, stating that he hoped someday it would no longer be used.

I understand. Putting another human to death is a sobering and serious undertaking. I always go through the thought process again when someone is executed. In the end, I usually wind up supporting the decision to execute. The main reason for this is that those executed usually committed some grievous act of villainy. They didn't care about the fear or pain of those they killed, and so their own fear and pain in the face of death deserves little sympathy. In a few cases I had no qualms at all - the execution of Ted Bundy for example. I would have been happy to pull the switch myself on that S.O.B. Bundy killed around 100 women, raping many of them first, but sometimes just bashing their heads in for the fun of it. Sweet dreams, Ted.

After viewing the crime scene pictures of the people he murdered, I didn't have much sympathy for Tookie Williams either. He killed people for fun, not out of any necessity. His robberies netted him small amounts of money and the people he robbed were not a threat to him. He blasted a family of three with a shotgun to steal $10 from them. The picture of the daughter's face, peppered with hundreds of small pellet holes, was memorable. Screw you, Tookie, and sayonara.

Nevertheless, it's natural to put yourself in the shoes of the person being executed. The grim execution chamber, the steps leading up to the gallows (traditionally, thirteen steps), the fixing of the noose, or the buckles on the chair, or the needles in the vein, are pretty gruesome. In the case of Saddam, I had to wonder what it must be like once they have affixed the noose and pushed the prisoner onto the trap. Those few seconds before they spring the trap must seem an eternity.

They say Saddam was trembling with fear on the scaffold and had tears in his eyes just before they sprung the trap. I wonder if he thought about the many people who went before him to the same trap, people he had ordered executed for trivial reasons? Hundreds, if not thousands of people were hanged on his orders. I'm sure he didn't spend five minutes thinking about their fear of death or wondering what it was like to hang, or what their families felt about their deaths. Killing people made him a tough guy, someone to be feared. It fed his ego to have the power of life and death, and it was a power he wielded ruthlessly. Saddam once had one of his generals hanged for criticizing him in public, but had his tongue cut out first.

So Saddam was scared and trembling and had tears in his eyes when they killed him. Now ain't that just too damned bad.

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