The key to a “good execution” is adherence to procedure. Procedure in an execution sanitizes the most profound event experienced by living beings—the loss of life. Process makes an execution commonplace, normal and every day. The act of taking a life is simplified and made “peaceful” and “dignified,” commonplace, unremarkable, acceptable, justified and in the last analysis, no big deal. But of course, it is!
I witnessed an execution the other day in a Monmouth County Municipal Court. Nobody was taken outside to face a firing squad. There were no gallows, injections of questionable drugs, no gas chambers, no grotesque beheadings. There was, instead, the beginning of the end of a military career for one of the finest young men in the United States Army, who reached the rank of captain before his thirtieth birthday, served honorably in combat in Iraq and graduated with distinction from the United States Military Academy at West Point.
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