DIALOGUE ON THE DEATH PENALTY

The Quest for a Humane Method

Christopher Hayden with Mr. Death" - Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.

MODUS ARTS GROUP

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MODUS ARTS GROUP

Copyright by Christopher Hayden 2014
All rights reserved.

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. - AMENDMENT VIII

Ohio proved we were not more civilized.

- Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.

following is a rendering (lightly edited for spelling, punctuation and grammar) of a spontaneous conversation which took place on Facebook on January 18, 2014. In addition to Mr. Leuchter and myself, two other individuals contributed a few comments to the conversation - Kerry F. and Andre W. I kicked the whole thing off by posting the following web link to Mr. Leuchter's Facebook 'wall.' After my first comment, he graciously engaged me in the dialogue that followed. Thank you very much, Mr. Leuchter! Your courage and sincerity are an inspiration. - CMH] "Inmate's family sues Ohio after agonizing execution with untested drug protocol - Convicted killer Dennis McGuire struggled noticeably for his life during a lengthy lethal injection procedure in Ohio on Thursday, and now his family plans to sue the state for violating his Constitutional rights." http://rt.com/usa/mcguire-family-sues-ohio-787/#_=_

[The

www.rt.com

Executed killer Dennis McGuire

Christopher Hayden : What a shame, Mr. Leuchter, that the

aggressive, retaliatory arrogance of the 'holocaust industry' resulted in your being 'disqualified' from your sane and heroic work as an engineer of humane modes and means of state executions. The medieval character of the outrageous events which just transpired in Ohio's death house are all the proof any rational, reasonable arbiter could ever want to demonstrate the very real and ongoing need for your thoughtful and civil brand of expertise. I am personally opposed to capital punishment but if it is going to occur we must do better than randomly pumping any old combination of untried toxins into the bloodstream. They might as well have pumped ammonia into one arm and bleach into the other 'just to see what would happen' like a child with a magnifying glass burning the heads off bugs in the sunlight. Boy oh boy, doesn't that sound fun?

Fred Leuchter : Christopher, you should send your remark to the

Governor of Ohio and let him know what responsible people think of his states irresponsibility!
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Christopher Hayden : Good idea. I will do that very thing right

now.

Fred Leuchter : Go for it Christopher. If nothing else they should fire

the man who made the decision since he knew, or should have known, that would have happened. You can quote me if you wish.

Christopher Hayden : Thank you. And they did know he would

have 'breath terrors' or whatever it is called because the press was citing this possibility prior to the execution. I hope his family are able to win a large monetary judgment and I hope this throws a monkey wrench in all the pending executions in Ohio and elsewhere. In Russia, to the best of my knowledge, they commonly just shoot you painlessly in the back of the head and they never tell you the date you will die because they consider that cruel also.

Fred Leuchter : A bullet in the head is cruel, also. I assume breath

terrors are associated with suffocation. That is probably true. What I do know is that you cannot substitute a tranquilizer for an anesthesia and expect it to work. This is common sense and the persons in charge of the execution know better. These people should be fired forthwith!

Christopher Hayden : Yes a bullet to the head is cruel and unusual

but I would personally prefer it to what they did to this fellow. As I understand it, they overdosed him on a tranquilizer and an opiate. The opiate agent would have caused respiratory failure all by itself and so the idea of using the tranquilizer is obviously flawed to the extent that the idea is to kill the man quickly. To do this 'humanely' with these chemicals it might have been better to administer the tranquilizer in a massive dose and then give it time to render him totally and utterly unconscious prior to the lethal overdose of opiates - and of course I am talking about an hour or more, which is unacceptable from the point of view of the witnesses, which included his adult children. So the whole scheme was a misadventure from the beginning. And the fact that a US company refused to sell the state the ordinary death cocktail because
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their European manufacturer refused to be involved is ridiculous. The state of Ohio must have a chemical engineer under its employ that could have synthesized the same stuff under license from the same company to keep everything nice and legal and tidy.

Fred Leuchter : The FDA is seizing supplies of drugs that can do the
job. The FDA has no jurisdiction since the "Drugs" are not for medical purposes but for killing!

Fred Leuchter : A medical license is required for purchase and

possession of the chemicals. Since they are not used for medical purposes this should not be. The Jewish groups caused the DEA to revoke my license and then reported me to the police for having illegal substances.

Christopher Hayden : I'll bet the Federal Bureau of Prisons has

plenty of what it needs for its Terre Haute death house whether the FDA likes it or not. I have seen the statistics on public support for the death penalty and I always say " "Bull**t." The reason this punishment is so popular is because the whole protocol has been to sanitize it and hide it behind a curtain. Maybe I am wrong but I believe that if ordinary, tax paying, decent people were given the option to watch the process live on television and really see what their government is doing in their names that it would ultimately be banned, as it has been in most of the civilized world. (And if that didn't work I would want watching the executions to be made mandatory.) To me, the idea of all these petty little corrupt state governments having the power of life and death over their citizens is just insane. They can't even keep the pot-holes out of their busiest roadways.

Fred Leuchter : I think that executions should be filmed and made

available to all those who want to see them for the very reason you suggest. They should not be public.

Fred Leuchter : The chemicals have less than a 2 year shelf life so
the supplies may be useless!
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Christopher Hayden : Why not public, if I may ask? Fred Leuchter : It causes a circus - hot dogs, popcorn - we need more
decorum when anyone dies!

Christopher Hayden : I agree with that for sure. But there is often a
circus atmosphere just outside the prison gates anyway. Wouldn't a live broadcast originating from an array of cameras inside the execution area be the same thing as a video tape recording - except that the psychological impact of knowing this is really happening now would lead to a very different experience for the viewer? I believe that essential difference is what would either validate the state's act or - as I would prefer - utterly invalidate it.

Kerry F. : Just use a firing squad, simple and effective. Fred Leuchter : Not simple, very messy and very painful! Fred Leuchter : That would work, Christopher but you would want to
restrict it to children!

Christopher Hayden : I agree of course. In the end, what children

see and hear of media content is the responsibility of their parents. In the Internet age, the material at the fingertips of all of us is also available to un-supervised kids and that is a dark fact of the world we live in today. In the hangings of the frontier west, children were present, of course. The events were picnic lunch gatherings for the whole community. We may look back - and down - on those times with a certain modern chauvinism and fancy ourselves more 'civilized' or less 'barbaric' but how justified are we in those conceits?

Fred Leuchter : Ohio proved we were not more civilized.

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Christopher Hayden : I wish I could remember the name of the

show but I once saw on TV where they were reproducing the effects of the extreme high Earth's atmosphere in a chamber. People were exposed to those conditions and the resulting state was dangerous but wholly painless - and actually apparently quite pleasant. Death was only a few heartbeats away but the subjects were perfectly relaxed and even euphoric. The whole point of the show was exploring humane new methods of execution. My thoughts were that people would never go for it since the whole point of taking someone's life is revenge and this method was literally the most delightful way to die I had ever heard tell of.

Fred Leuchter : I imagine you go to sleep similar to freezing to death. Christopher Hayden : Much more peaceful than hypothermia,
actually. From what I understand, there is commonly a late stage of freezing to death where a person's core temp. has been lowered to the point where the relative 'warmth' of their surroundings actually feels burning hot to the touch. Many freezing victims are found with their clothes stripped off, something they did near the end, for this very reason. Were it not for this phenomenon, states might elect to execute people by placing them in a walk-in freezer, restrained on a gurney in nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. This would certainly be an economical option. Every fast food restaurant on the planet has all the gear you would need! Jack London's TO THE MAN ON THE TRAIL comes to mind as a romanticized description of 'peacefully drifting off' in the freezing cold but, alas, the truth is rather less kind. And whatever happened to good old hemlock tea anyway? After all, Cicuta douglasii has been used in suicides for centuries.

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Crito, we owe a cock to Aesculapius; please pay it and don't let it pass. - SOCRATES
Aesculapius was the God of Medicine and these words implied that Socrates felt that he owed a debt to the God of Medicine because of the cup of Hemlock he had just
drunk.

After Socrates' death opinion in Athens turned against his accusers. - http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/greek/philosopher/phaedo.html

--------------------------------------------------------------------------MY FACEBOOK POSTS GET AUTO-CANNIBALIZED FOR OTHER PURPOSES FREQUENTLY. I OFTEN FIND THAT SOMETHING I DRAFT OFF-THE-CUFF FOR A RANDOM COMMENT OR POST COMES OUT MUCH BETTER - OR AT LEAST MORE NATURALLY - THAN WHEN I WRITE WITH THE CONSCIOUS INTENTION OF SAYING SOMETHING IMPORTANT. AND SO I BROKE OFF FROM MY DIALOGUE WITH MR. LEUCHTER. BORROWING LIBERALLY FROM THAT CONVERSATION, I WROTE MY MESSAGE TO OHIOS GOVERNOR JOHN R. KASICH AND THEN SENT IT TO HIM VIA THE ONLINE 'CONTACT THE GOVERNOR FORM PROVIDED BY HIS OFFICE AT THE STATES OFFICIAL WEBSITE. - CMH
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OHIO GOVERNOR JOHN R. KASICH

Dear Governor Kasich The medieval character of the outrageous events which just transpired in Ohio's death house are all the proof any rational, reasonable arbiter could ever want to demonstrate the very real and ongoing need for the thoughtful and civil brand of expertise that Fred Leuchter was once permitted to bring to these matters before Jewish hysteria over his involvement in the Canadian 'holocaust denial' trial of Ernst Zundel led to his un-ceremonial 'disqualification.' I am personally opposed to capital punishment but, if it is going to occur, we must do better than randomly pumping any old combination of untried toxins into the bloodstream. You might as well have authorized your kill team to have pumped ammonia into one arm and bleach into the other 'just to see what would happen' like a child with a magnifying glass burning the heads off bugs in the sunlight. By no coincidence, I have been in communication with Mr. Leuchter regarding this grotesque and heinous error in judgment. Mr. Leuchter asserts, and I quote, "If nothing else they should fire the man who made the decision since he knew, or should have known that would have happened."

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Of course, you did know the condemned man would likely have 'breath terrors' or whatever it is called because the press was citing this possibility, proffered by independent experts, prior to the execution. Mr. Leuchter went on to say, "I assume breath terrors are associated with suffocation. That is probably true. What I do know is that you cannot substitute a tranquilizer for anesthesia and expect it to work. This is common sense and the persons in charge of the execution know better. These people should be fired forthwith!" Governor Kasich. It is my sincere hope the condemned man's family are able to win a large monetary judgment against the state of Ohio. I further hope this throws a monkey wrench in all pending executions in Ohio and elsewhere. As I understand it, they overdosed the man on a tranquilizer and an opiate. The opiate agent would have caused respiratory failure all by itself and so the idea of using the tranquilizer is obviously flawed to the extent that the idea is to kill the man quickly. To do this 'humanely' with these chemicals it most certainly would have been better to administer the tranquilizer in a massive dose and then give it time to render him totally and utterly unconscious prior to the lethal overdose of opiates - and of course I am talking about an hour or more total, which is unacceptable from the point of view of the witnesses, which included his adult children. So the whole scheme was a misadventure from the beginning. And the fact that a US company refused to sell the state the ordinary death cocktail because their European manufacturer refused to be involved in American executions is ridiculous. The state of Ohio must have a chemical engineer under its employ that could have synthesized the same stuff under license from the same company to keep everything nice and legal and tidy. I have seen the statistics on public support for the death penalty and I always say "Bull**t." The reason this punishment is so popular is because the whole protocol has been to sanitize it and hide it behind a curtain. Maybe I am wrong but I believe that if ordinary, tax paying, decent people were given the option to watch the process live on television and really see what their government is doing in their names
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that it would ultimately be banned, as it has been in most of the civilized world. (And if that didn't work I would want watching the executions to be made mandatory.) To me, the idea of all these petty little corrupt state governments having the power of life and death over their citizens is just insane. They can't even keep the pot-holes out of their busiest roadways. Responsible people around the world are shaking their heads in dismay with your name on their lips, Governor John R. Kasich. This is a bad mark against you as a leader that will surely prove to be indelible. Good day, sir. And may God have mercy on your soul. - CHRISTOPHER HAYDEN
BURLINGTON, VT

I THEN SHARED MY LETTER TO GOVERNOR KASICH WITH MR. LEUCHTER.

Fred Leuchter : Good for you, Christopher! Fred Leuchter : Thank you Christopher Hayden : Thank you, sir.
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Andre W. : I agree. I believe the torture session was deliberate. Christopher Hayden : You know, Mr. Leuchter, as I have already
said, I oppose the death penalty. I was born with a natural tendency to distrust government and for me that kind of arbitrary and capricious power is just beyond anything I would ever willingly agree to cede to the kind of people who work for state corrections departments, to say nothing of the lawyers in black dresses with their gold-fringed flags. A life sentence with no hope of parole, enhanced in the worse cases with permanent solitary confinement, would certainly be less desirable than the easy way out, as far as I am concerned. If you ever have a few minutes, please consider reading my short story SHE WAS ENGLAND. [It is posted - free to all - here : http://www.scribd.com/.../SHE-WASENGLAND-A-Short-Story ]

Fred Leuchter : I will, Christopher! Fred Leuchter : I wonder if the Governor has seen all this? Christopher Hayden : Well, given the circumstances I'm guessing
his inbox is pretty full but I did send it and eventually someone on his staff will read it. They probably read every word that comes in through that portal just to make sure he isn't being threatened.

Christopher Hayden : Hopefully my email will stand out for its

sheer loquacious audacity and make it to his desk!

Andre W. : They dont read emails, you must send a registered

certified copy by snail mail, so there is a stronger record of it. But they still wont care.

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Christopher Hayden : They read them here in Vermont. I can

GUARANTEE you that. I'm not shy when it comes to telling government folks what I think of their chicanery and I've been put in chains for it more than once.

Fred Leuchter : I think all politicians have a finger on the pulse of

Facebook, today! Reader's seeking a fuller understanding of Mr. Leuchter's personal expertise in these matters should watch the Errol Morris documentary "MR. DEATH : THE RISE AND FALL OF FRED A. LEUCHTER"

Viewable on youtube, for free, at this URL :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A1NMFtvWUw

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AUTHORS NOTE : A few years back I discovered a documentary

film by Errol Morris titled "THE FOG OF WAR : 11 Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara" If I have watched it once I have watched it 300 times. In addition to being a fascinating interview-based piece, it features a musical score by Philip Glass. This soundtrack, along with the soundtrack to the Brad Pitt film THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES (scored by Nick Cave & Warren Ellis) is what inspired me to get back into writing and playing music after many years of neglecting that part of my Soul. Much later I discovered that Errol Morris had previously made a film called MR. DEATH : THE RISE AND FALL OF FRED A. LEUCHTER. I had seen portions of this film somewhere but had not been aware of the fact that Errol Morris had made it. And so I watched 'MR. DEATH' with new interest. Shortly thereafter I realized that certain threads I comment on within the universe of Facebook were also being frequented and contributed to by none other than Fred Leuchter himself. When I first contacted him directly, I sent him a facebook friend request and the blog link to one of my short stories titled PROCESS 38, adding, Okay. If killing people is the best way to teach people that killing people is wrong....

PROCESS 38
A SHORT STORY It was in a sweaty little east Texas town near the Louisiana Border that I met up with Dagz and we settled on a plan. Over heaping plates of dry barbecue washed down with Budweiser we agreed we were both there to proceed past the talking stage. We were sick of talk. There had been too much talk. Dagz was a brainy redneck with a red bandanna tied on his skull and a battered copy of Hemingway's FIRST 49 SHORT STORIES shoved into the breast pocket of his red, plaid, flannel buttondown which had been relieved of its sleeves all the way up to the frayed shoulders. He wore it open and unbuttoned, revealing a white, bony chest emblazoned with a bad tattoo of a skeleton swinging a saber. The skeleton was also wearing a red bandanna. Sitting there across the picnic
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table from me on a grassy lot just outside a worn out old joint called Uncle Billy's Big Time Barbecue, I would look at him as we ate and think, "This guy is perfect." I had dressed as I always do when I'm on the road with my Harley. Blue denims and black leather, a bit dusty from the road but clean enough to eat in. My head was shaved to the scalp and burnt dark by the southern sun, to which my Yankee hide was not accustomed. I kept my voice down in an attempt to conceal the fact that I do not drawl. Our table was set off and away from the others anyway. The other patrons of Uncle Billy's paid us little mind there in the cloudy and sweltering Sunday afternoon. Dagz was talking to me in a low voice with his mouth half full of pig, "I'm in for one reason. They don't want to listen. They don't care if they get it wrong and kill somebody innocent. They don't see the wrongness of it." I nodded and chewed and swallowed, answering him, "I've always said that killing people is no way to teach people that killing people is wrong. It never made any sense to me." I pointed at him then for punctuation and added, "Even if they have the right guy, I'm against it. But the fact that there is no guarantee that they even get it right makes the whole thing just insane to me." "Insane." Dagz agreed, chewing. "And morally wrong." I added. "How can killing somebody teach everyone else that killing is wrong? You're basically saying killing is okay so long as it's done by these guys over here but not those guys over there. So long as it's sanitized and hidden from the public view, premeditated murder and conspiracy are okay-just-fine. It's bullshit." Dagz pulled a piece of unchewable gristle out of his mouth and dropped it on the edge of his plate. "But you still think this is the way to go?" He was studying my face with a ton of doubt expressed in his own, "We're gonna kill a cop, man. A cop. Just up and blow his head off. Soon as they announce they've executed Manuel Garza, we're gonna do a cop in retaliation. Then it's gonna get announced in the World press why we did it. And we're going to keep doing it every time a state executes someone. This week it's Texas. Next week it's Texas again. Next month they've got one they're gonna do in Colorado. By Christ,
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we're gonna go to Colorado and kill a cop there too. If the Feds execute Bobby Jameson this winter we're gonna pick us out a F.B.I. man and dust him. And so on. Until they stop this bullshit." I half stood and reached across the table, grabbing his forearm with my fist and squeezing. I looked him in the eyes and assured him, "I think it is the only way to go. I think if we do this, and do it right, the national discussion will get a kick-start and maybe we can end this thing for good." Finally, I added, In the Name of Christ. I unhanded him and sat back down, making a thoughtful and confident face which Dagz instantly emulated, probably unconsciously. I added, "So if there has to be a little puddle's worth of blood spilled to stem the tide, so be it." "So be it." Dagz agreed. We sat there eating for a little while. Dagz then said, "You know this is Texas." "It took me two days to get here, Dagz. I know where I am." "So you know what's waiting for us if something don't go right." "Yeah. I know. I ain't thought about much else since the pastor called me in and set this thing up." "Let's not talk about the pastor." Dagz winced. "Let's not mention anyone else from here on out until we're done with it and part ways. Okay?" "I'm sorry." I told him, nodding my assurances. "That's the best way for everybody." "Indeed." He nodded. When we had filled our stomachs with the salty-sweet fare of Uncle Billy's Big Time Barbecue, Dagz jumped in his dilapidated Chevy pick-up and had me follow him out to the edge of that east Texas town to the motel I was to stay at. When we were about to pass the place, he tossed some litter out his window to let me know this was it. I applied the brakes to my bike and rolled into the parking lot of an old soggy strip motel called, typically, THE COLONIAL INN. Dagz kept going. I watched his truck until it rounded a slight bend a ways down the highway. Now that we had met and sized each other up and still
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intended to go forward with the plan, the idea was to minimize the number of people who could place us together. I was fine with that. I climbed off my bike and took a look around. The place was okay as far as those types of places go. Fresh paint on an old building and a surprisingly robust and well-tended garden growing beside the oval pool, which was empty except for the knee-high weeds growing out of the meandering crack that ran down the center of its pale pink floor. That was okay. I wasn't here to swim. I walked into the office and was instantly chilled by the air conditioning, which the proprietors had cranked way up. A young Asian man, probably still in his late teens, signed me in and counted out my change. I paid for three nights in advance. He gave me the keys to room 106. Without starting her up again, I pushed my bike over to the parking spot directly in front of my room and grabbed my helmet and travel bag before going inside. A few dog-eared looking people were taking some sun out in front of their rooms. I suspected they were "pay by the weekers" who lived here more or less permanently. The room was small and clean. Cable TV. Microwave. Mini-fridge. AC already running. The bed was oversized and firm enough when I kicked my boots off and dropped onto it. I was exhausted from the road; the two-days ride had been chock full of anxious moments that kept my guts fluttering the whole way. With a belly full of the local fare and better than twentyfour hours to keep myself entertained until show time, I thumbed on the TV with the remote and set it to CNN. I waited for any mention of the pending execution Texas was planning for the next evening and as I waited I dropped into a deep sleep, still fully clothed and with the bed made up beneath me. I slept a long time and had a dream just before waking. During the ride down to Texas, a rude and snippy Black girl in her late teens had sold me a bucket of chicken at a KFC just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. She had rolled her eyes a certain way when I asked for extra napkins and it must have bothered me on some level. In my dream there in room 106 of THE COLONIAL INN I was, for reasons that escape my memory, beating the snot out of that same Black chicken girl with a tire iron. I
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think we were on an abandoned back road somewhere in the middle of America. I was not angry as I did it. Rather, I was shocked and disgusted by my own violence even as I kept hitting her and hitting her. The tire iron made the most awful, hollow, thumping sounds when it connected against her body. Throughout the beating she kept getting to her knees and then her feet and I kept knocking her back down, bashing her for all I was worth. She was screaming fit to raise the Devil. I smashed her across her shoulder blades. I cracked her on the top of her cranium thrice. I beat her in the ribs and then her guts and then her ribs again. Finally she stayed down. When she was close to unconsciousness and her shrieks had finally turned to a low sobbing, laying there at my feet as I stood trying to catch my breath, she looked up at me with a make-up stained face and said, in an angry, choking voice, completely devoid of any shred of fear, "I ain't gonna be able to have kids...." I woke up then. My clothes were soaked through with sweat. I tried to shake it off as I undressed and jumped in the shower. I killed a bunch of people in Iraq; it never bothered me much. I 'd go back and do it again right now if they asked me to. Even so, I confessed it all to Jesus Christ when I was alone in the woods the night before the pastor baptized me one Sunday morning, last year, in Ogden, Utah. But that dream of that chicken girl really had me tipped over for a few days. That kind of shit always fucks me up.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Novelist. Poet. Journalist. Musician. Film maker. Artist. Social critic and political activist. Born in Portland, Maine and raised in Cape Elizabeth. Began writing in the late 1980's. Founder of the digital media label MODUS ARTS GROUP and experimental rock music project WHITE DEVIL WHISKEY. Lives in Burlington, VT. Mr. Hayden recently purchased an electric violin and intends to spend 2014 learning how to play it.

www.modusartsgroup.com

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And as for me, just look and see I'll kneel here by the Cross Christ's company - no tyranny Lucifer's Fall - no loss. And as for me, just wait and see I'll stand tall with the Man A Crown of Life upon my head What don't you understand? - CHRISTOPHER HAYDEN
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