A Texas death chamber: Can the state properly
judge when to take a life?
Liberation, France
Execution in Texas
a 'Perversion of Politics'
"We
must never forget that in a democracy, the vote can feed barbaric intentions. …
the magic of power lies precisely in deciding against vengeful instincts, which
are invariably futile - and sometimes murderous."
Hank Skinner: On death row since 1995 for murders that took place, he asserts, while he was unconcious, may obtain the DNA tests that will prove his innocence or guilt.
It will be midnight on
Wednesday France time when American justice will be guilty of another
assassination. At 6pm in Texas, the Huntsville prison will with impunity carry
out a mockery of justice. At that time, his wife, a French woman named Sandrine
Ageorges, will become the widow of a man she hasn't been allowed to see for two
years - a man for whom death will be staged 16 years after charges were first
brought against him.
During the long minutes during
which the electric syringe injects death into the veins of a healthy 48-year
old man, other electric syringes in cancer clinics across the world will carefully
inject chemotherapy to save lives. The men of justice will done their costumes
of fatal dispensers of justice, as the men of medicine risk their own lives to
save men, women and children, constantly driven by the central idea that man’s
only true enemy in the world is death, a cruel end and unbearable grief. This
irony about the value of life reminds us that the executioners endure; serving
a justice system that continues to kill in order to satisfy the desire for
revenge held by a sad majority of “right-thinking” people.
[Editor's Note: On March 24, 45
minutes before he was condemned to death, the Supreme Court ordered a temporary
stay of execution in the case of Hank Skinner, pending a decision on whether to
allow DNA testing that the state of Texas has refused].
Must we become accustomed to such
dangerous absurdity? Make no mistake: It isn't relatives of murder victims who
call for the death penalty. When they recall the violent loss of a loved one,
they are wise enough to recognize that one person's death can never make up for
the loss of another. Supporters of capital punishment are more like slaves to
fear, too ready to see potential obstacles to their own existence in their
fellow men, and who, thinking that they are being moderate, continue to
brandish the validation of radical justice for the most serious crimes, such as
child rape, serial murder or abduction. Relief from this perception can only be
found in the irreversible neutralization of their fellows. Such certainly, however,
constitutes a contempt for rationality epitomized by the belief in an imaginary
dissuasive power that no one, anywhere, has ever been able to demonstrate. It's
obvious that in the 21st century, obscurantism [preventing
the facts from coming to light] continues to nourish the craziest notions of criminal
justice.
Guilty or innocent, for 16
years Hank Skinner has pleaded with the courts to consider DNA testing that may
well exonerate him. All in vain. He will die with his blood poisoned by the all-too-famous
chemical injections of Texas justice.
France
24 interviews Hank Skinner's French wife, Sandrine
Ageorges-Skinner,
about the Supreme Court's decision to
This violence emphasizes the perversion
of politics, when it comes to attracting voters from a Manichean divide between the
good and those whose simple minds can be described as “dangerously definitive.”
This extreme severity is based on a cocktail of certitude that confers a lapse
of memory on several levels, but which are nevertheless essential: on the one
hand, nothing has ever rendered respect for others obligatory, and on the
other, violence is an integral characteristic of our species. It's for this
reason that all of those who make death a tool of justice are themselves
guilty.
We must never forget that in
a democracy, the vote can feed barbaric intentions. The instigators will recognize
themselves - all of those who promote law and order, all the inconsequential
people who exploit victimization to benefit the existing order; all the oblivious
ones who demagogically brandish fear to the public as a symbol of
attraction; all those who have yet to grasp that the magic of power lies precisely
in deciding against vengeful instincts, which are invariably futile - and
sometimes murderous.
French citizen, anti-death penalty campaigner and wife of Hank Skinner Sandrine Ageorges-Skinner.
In Texas, judges are elected.
There, as here, it seems easier to win votes by promising unequalled punishment
and severity. There, as here, voters unite around the idea that “the other” is
the enemy. This hackneyed method of political thinking, of organizing society
and of meting out justice has already resulted in eleven deaths in the United
States this year. Executions which one hopes will one day bring the benefit of
eliminating this crime.
Finally, no offense to all of
those naive supporters of radical and dissuasive rectification, in 2010, in 58
countries, crime, whether organized by the law or punished by those same
judges, continues to claim victims. It would be insane to reassure them.
It is in support of Hank
Skinner and to fight against this idea of murderous justice that we, civil
society, call for a rally on Wednesday the 24th [of March] at 5pm at the Place
de la Concorde.
[Editor's Note: Sandrine Ageorges has been an important part of this project, Worldmmets.US and its predecessor, for the past five years. She has translated or helped translate hundreds of articles from French on behalf of the American people and English-speaking world. For a sampling of her work, check out the Worldmeets.US archive].
*Arnaud Gaillard is a
sociologist and the coordinator of the Fourth World Congress Against the Death
Penalty (organized by the French association Ensemble contre la peine de mort -
Coalition Against the Death Penalty).
