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閱讀問題：Are you for or against the death penalty?
Cornhusker dues
The death penalty is becoming more popular again in America
Nebraska has just executed its first prisoner for 20 years
THE first of the four drugs was administered on August 14th at 10.24am at the state penitentiary in Lincoln. Fifteen minutes later a curtain was lowered, and by 10.47 Carey Dean Moore, aged 60, who had been incarcerated for 38 years for murdering two taxi drivers, was pronounced dead. It was the first time in 21 years that Nebraska had executed a prisoner. And it was the first time ever that fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid, had been used for an execution.
After declining for years, public support for the death penalty is on the rise; 54% of those surveyed are in favour, compared with 49% two years ago, according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Centre. Death sentences are also a little more frequent than in the recent past, says Robert Dunham of the Death Penalty Information Centre. That may be related to the political rhetoric in Washington. President Donald Trump has proposed executing drug dealers to curb the opioid epidemic.
Nebraska is a deeply conservative state and its Republican governor, Pete Ricketts, is a fervent supporter of capital punishment (not least, some say, because he was so shocked by the gruesome murder of one of his cousins). Yet the state has been unsure about the sentence for years. In 2015 a bipartisan group of lawmakers overrode the governor’s veto of their vote to abolish the death penalty. The next year Mr Ricketts used his family fortune to bankroll a referendum on its reintroduction; voters endorsed the measure overwhelmingly. But in the weeks before Mr Moore’s execution, Nebraska’s Catholic bishops again appealed to the governor, a practising Catholic. They asked him to consider the doctrinal change announced by Pope Francis in early August, whereby the Catholic church now holds that capital punishment is always wrong.
The bishops’ appeals fell on deaf ears. Mr Ricketts considers the death penalty to be an important tool for public safety and the only appropriate punishment for the most heinous crimes. Yet there is scant evidence to suggest that deterrence works. The murder rate in New York, New Mexico and Connecticut continued to go down after those states abolished the death penalty. Southern states execute more people than any other region of the country, yet the murder rate in the South is the highest. The death penalty is also much more expensive than imprisonment for life, because of costly trials and lengthy appeals. Ernest Goss of Creighton University estimates that each death-penalty prosecution costs Nebraska’s taxpayers about $1.5m more than life without parole. Ten people remain on the state’s death row.
Since the death penalty returned to America in 1976, 162 death sentences have been reversed and 1,480 people have been executed, so roughly one in ten was found innocent. Mr Dunham believes that, of those who were executed, at least a dozen were innocent. He cites the case of Carlos DeLuna, who was executed for murder in Texas in 1989 and who is now generally believed to have been convicted in error.
Nonetheless, it may get technically harder for Nebraska to carry out executions. After giving Mr Moore Valium to sedate him and fentanyl to render him unconscious, the executioner administered cisatracurium besylate to paralyse his muscles and potassium chloride to stop his heart. If the first two drugs did not work well, says Eric Berger of the Nebraska College of Law, then Mr Moore would have been in excruciating pain, much like being burned alive from inside. According to eye witnesses, he turned red and purple before the curtain was lowered. If an autopsy reveals that he suffered extreme pain, Nebraska will find it even harder to buy drugs from pharmaceutical firms fearful of the public outcry over their use.
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "Cornhusker dues" (Aug 18th 2018)
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