Abstract

Minority Report

The essence of capital punishment is that it involves the planned destruction of a human being. In certain countries, and at certain periods of history, this disagreeable consideration can or could be masked by "swift justice." Straight from the "trial" to the firing squad or the stoning field in Iran or Afghanistan, or directly from Newgate to Tyburn in Merrie England, or right from the hanging judge to the necktie party on the old frontier. One result of this obscene practice is that it succeeds in implicating everybody. Not much is going to be found out only when it's too bloody late. Almost every other "civilized" country in the world, the latest being South Africa, has abolished the penalty of death for this reason, among others. But in the United States, a man or woman can first be sentenced to death, then be kept waiting for as much as a decade or more, and in the meantime be subjected to a gradual stripping-away of everything that makes even the most burdensome existence supportable.