Carson begins his sermon recounting his experience with the execution of Timothy McVeigh. He describes McVeigh as being guilty of committing a horrible crime. If guilt and regret are clearly seen in this case, what would capital punishment accomplish if it is not to make the inmate feel guilty? Carson’s first point about executions is figuring out the “why” of capital punishment rather than the guilt of the inmate (Carson 58). One of the main reasons of …show more content…
Being killed by lethal injection or being electrocuted is not always smooth and painless, sometimes it causes a painful death. An essay written by Kelly Oliver, “Death as Penalty and the Fantasy of Instant Death”, discusses the contradictions about the death penalty being painless and humane and argues “that the fantasy of instant death is at the heart of tension between death as painless and death as penalty” (Oliver 137). She recounts the execution of Dennis McGuire, where his death by an “untested combination of drugs” took 25 minutes and sounds of “gasping, snorting, and choking” were heard (138). In other words, McGuire clearly suffered the execution, which makes it a cruel and inhumane treatment. This is one of many examples of the execution process being painful and cruel to inmates. Besides killing people, the death penalty also tortures physically by the brutal nature of execution and psychologically by forcing individuals to wait to be