CBS's Botched Death Penalty Report

We watched the 60 Minutes expose the other night on the supposedly "botched" lethal injection of an Arizona  inmate last year. (The show originally aired in late November.)

An execution of a man in Arizona with a new cocktail of drugs was supposed to take about 10 minutes. It took almost two hours, the longest execution in U.S. history.

To which America replied, "Big F-ing Deal."

A priest, a reporter, and a lawyer who witnessed the event all voiced their dismay over the fact that the execution took longer to kill its intended victim than usual.  (Understandably, two family members of the murder victims voiced no such feelings. Quite the contrary.)

It is hard to imagine a sizable portion of the American public mustering any outrage over this alleged "botching." But CBS did it's best to gin up those feelings.

Anti-death penalty advocates have made it so tough to carry out death sentences in this country that states have to go great lengths to carry out such sentences. In this case, Arizona allegedly broke federal law by illegally importing the drugs used in the execution.

Federal judge Alex Kosinski, also interviewed, had a solution to the problem. He suggested going back to firing squads and/or the guillotine. When a horrified Bill Whitaker said that sounded "barbaric" Kosinski all but shrugged, "So what?"

As Gary Gilmore, the last killer executed by firing squad, said, "Let's do it."

Taking the life of a convicted killer is a violent and brutal act, said Kosinski. Almost every state that has a death penalty has gone to using lethal injection because it is supposedly more civilized and humane. But that certainly hasn't slowed down the anti-death penalty crowd in their pursuit of banning the practice altogether.

We're ambivalent about capital punishment. It takes decades in some states to actually put a killer down. It costs millions. It's dubious that it has a deterrent effect. The one thing we're not skeptical about is that capital punishment is fundamentally just. It is one of the purest forms of justice there is. You kill - intentionally, brutally and with malice aforethought - you die.

Nothing unfair about that.

As one commenter on the story wrote:

I do not think it is inhuman to kill someone that treated others inhumanly.  I also as a nurse am unclear why they are having trouble finding the right mix of drugs, the two that i saw listed in the brief glimpse of paperwork are independently capable of killing someone if given in a high enough or fast sequence of infusion.  But I am kind of an eye for an eye person, he shot his victims, he should be shot.

Americans support for the death penalty remains quite strong (almost 2 to 1 for) despite the best efforts of liberals and the MSM. Reports like this one, like the Democrats demands for greater gun control, are likely to backfire.

But never mind. What the anti-death penalty crowd can't win in the court of public opinion, it will win in federal courts controlled by liberal judges.