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The First ‟Humane‟ Execution?
It was shortly after midnight and Charlie Brooks Jr. lay strapped to the white-sheeted gurney in a red-brick chamber at the state prison in Huntsville, Texas. In a different setting, he might have been an emergency-room patient, but the catheter that had been slipped into a vein in Brooke‟s arm was hardly meant to save his life. Warden Jack Pursley asked the 40-year-old convicted murderer if he had any last words. “I do” Brooks said, gazing at his girl-friend Vanessa Sapp. “I love you.” Then he chanted a Muslim prayer, paused briefly and told Sapp: “Be strong”. At 12:09 a.m a lethal dose of sodium thiopental was added to the intravenous solution, followed by Pavulon and potassium chloride. At 12:16 a.m, Brooks was pronounced dead – the first person in the United States to be executed by injection.
The Execution in Texas last week was only the sixth in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstituted the death penalty in 1976 – and the first involving a black man. But opponents of capital punishment feared that execution by injection, already legal in five states, might quickly spread – making the death penalty more palatable to juries and speeding up the executions of 1,150 inmates across the nation currently on death row. Even proponents of the death penalty were divided over the new method of execution. “it‟s too lenient”, said student Jon Cabeen, who demonstrated the night of Brooks‟s execution. “They‟ve got to go out painfully.”
How Painless Brooks found it, of course, no one could really know. One witness, Walker County Sheriff Darrel White, said “it was very peaceful.” Others present disagreed. “There were two series of apparently involuntary efforts to breathe,” wrote UPI reporter Bruce Nicols, and a “churning of his stomach muscles.” In any event, Brooks‟s execution rekindled the debate over capital punishment – and deeply divided members of the medical community, many of whom believe that it is unethical for physicians to participate, even indirectly, in taking a life. Dr. Ralph Gray, medical director of the Texas Department of Corrections, said that he and a team of medical technicians were involved only to the extent that they had helped to prepare Brooks for his execution. “Doctors have no busi-ness killing people,” says Dr. Ward Cassells, founder of Physicians Against The Death Penalty. “We are being asked to pervert our role.”
Newsweek, December 20th, 1982
QUESTIONS
I / BEFORE READING
A) Fill in the following grid with the information you’ve got.
Nature ?
Source ?
Title ?
Date ?
B) Recap all these information to introduce the document.
II / GLOBAL COMPREHENSION
1) The text mainly deals with:
- The first execution of a criminal in the USA
- The pros and cons of the death penalty in the USA
- The questioning of the lethal injection as a « good » mode of execution
- The testimony of a witness of a lethal execution
2) Match the following titles with the corresponding paragraphs:
A) The lethal injection as a new mode of execution arouses polemic amongst supporters and opponents to the death penalty:
Paragraph ………….
B) The first execution by injection in the history of the USA.
Paragraph ………………
C) Execution by injection raises the issue of ethics and triggers off discordance amongst the medical community.
Paragraph ………..
III / DETAILED COMPREHENSION
Focus on paragraph 1
a) Answer the following questions:
1) Who was the first person to be executed by injection in the USA?
2) Where did the first execution by injection take place?
3) How old was he when he died?
4) What was the name of his girlfriend?
6) What substance was added to the intravenous solution?
5) What did he do just before dying?
b) True or False? Justify by quoting from the text
1) The catheter in Brook’s arms was there to make him feel better.
2) Charlie Brooks was executed because he had killed someone.
c) Find a synonym for:
To be tied
Put into
Focus on paragraph 2
a) Answer the following question
1) How many inmates are currently on the death row?
2) When was the death penalty reinstituted by the Supreme Court?
b) Find a synonym in the text for:
Implicating
To expand, to propagate
Agreable
At the moment, at present
The place where convicts wait to be executed = the ...
c) Tick the correct answers and justify by quoting from the text
1) Opponents to the death penalty disagree with execution by injection because:
- They think it’s too painful for the convict
- They fear that more and more States might adopt this new form of punishment
- They fear that the number of executions might increase sharply
- They think it will be less painful and horrible for the people who come to watch the execution.
2) Some proponents to the death penalty also disagree with this form of execution because
- They think it’s too painful for the convict
- They think it’s not painful enough for the convict
- They fear the rate of murders might increase
- They think the convict must suffer a lot before dying
Focus on paragraph 3
a) Find a synonym in the text for
Restarted, relaunched
doctors
b) Tick the correct answers
Most doctors are against execution by injection because they think that
- A doctor’s role is to save lives, and not to kill people.
- Doctors should be better paid to participate in lethal injection
- Participating in lethal injection means that doctors have a responsibility in the person’s death
- Doctors have no right to decide that a person must die.
Oklahoma's botched lethal injection marks new front in battle over executions
Oklahoma's botched lethal injection marks new front in battle over executions
Click here for a more recent blotched execution.
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