Category: Capital punishment, solitary confinement, and the prison-industrial complex
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Yesterday was a big news day. The biggest story was probably our Tinpot Dictator’s decision to unilaterally violate the Iranian nuclear deal. In addition to alienating almost everyone not named Bibi Netanyahu or John Bolton, and making the world less safe, the main thing this proves is that Trump can’t see more than ten minutes…
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Tennessee Students and Educators for Social Justice has launched a blog series on issues raised by mass incarceration and the death penalty. This week's post is by Kelly Oliver, W. Alton Jones Chair of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University. Oliver describes the "war of currents" between Edison and Westinhouse that led to the invention of the electric…
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An important and somewhat neglected topic is what happens when biopolitics intersects with juridical power in courts of law. Today, we got a good example of one way it can happen. Several years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that states could not execute the “intellectually disabled.” They also let the states decide what that meant. …
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Yesterday, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam signed a bill to bring back the electric chair as the default method of execution, should lethal injection drugs become unavailable or unconstitutional. While the first version of the bill restricted its application to death sentences issued after July 2014, a last-minute amendment lifted this restriction, making it applicable to…
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Tuesday’s execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma has many people wondering just how far the state is willing to go to kill its own citizens. I think @gideonstrumpet said it best: It’s tempting to understand the torture of Clayton Lockett as a “botched” execution, an unfortunate exception to the rule. But it's important to remember…
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Last summer, thousands of prisoners in California launched a 60-day hunger strike to protest and transform oppressive policies in the California Department of Corrections. One member of the organizing team called their strike action a “multi-racial, multi–regional Human Rights Movement to challenge torture.” This weekend, another prisoner-led human rights movement is gaining momentum in Alabama. …
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Once again I've been called in for Jury Duty. It's nearly a priori that they won't impanel me for death penalty or war-on-drugs type cases, since I'm up front about exercising my right to jury nullify in the case of unjust laws or state sanctioned murder.* But I have no idea what to do with…
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Last week, I suggested that there was no meaningful difference between a “botched” execution and a “proper” one. Today, I will develop this claim and offer some phenomenological support for it. The analysis that follows is rooted in my present geopolitical context – Tennessee – but the issues apply to the US death penalty as…
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Last week's botched execution in Ohio has raised questions for many people about the ethics of experimenting with untested lethal injection protocols. But it’s not clear that the standard drug protocol is any less cruel, even if it is less unusual. On Thursday, January 16, Dennis McGuire was injected with a combination of the sedative…
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Last week, I wrote about Tennessee's unprecedented push to execute 10 prisoners, beginning on January 15, 2014. Today, I'm happy to report that the January 15 execution of Billy Ray Irick has been postponed to October 7, 2014. Why? Because of legal challenges to Tennessee's new lethal injection protocol. Next week, I will fill in…
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