And Tell Sad Stories of the Death of Kings

Shakespeare's Richard II, feeling sorry for himself, recognizing that his situation is hopeless and he will shortly be deposed:

For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!

Richard lived (and died) in the 14th Century.  George V lived closer to our own time.  He wasn't deposed, but he was killed.  Euthanized, actually.  Killed by lethal injection.  A two drug sequence: Morphine followed by cocaine.  Injected into his jugular vein by his physician, Lord Dawson of Penn, late at night on January 20, 1936.  Dawson acted from the, well you can decide for yourself how you feel about his motives.  The King was clearly dying.  He'd been drifting in and out of consciousness. Dawson wrote in his diary:

At about 11 o’clock it was evident that the last stage might endure for many hours, unknown to the patient but little comporting with the dignity and serenity which he so richly merited and which demanded a brief final scene. Hours of waiting just for the mechanical end when all that is really life has departed only exhausts the onlookers and keeps them so strained that they cannot avail themselves of the solace of thought, communion or prayer. 

Dawson also wanted to be sure (I'm not making this up) that George's death would first be reported in the morning editions of the London Times rather than in "less appropriate ... evening journals."

Richard Kopf, Senior U.S. District Judge and distinguished blogger at Hercules and the Umpire, told that story in a post Wednesday.  Then he added this.

After reading the account of Lord Dawson’s use of lethal injection to kill King George V, the sardonic might well say “If lethal injection was good enough for a King, it is good enough for a killer.” But that would facile wouldn’t it?

Of course, it would be facile.  Equally of course, it's more than the sardonic who would ask that question.  That question, generalized a bit rears its head repeatedly.  

• It's too good for these people.  
• Who cares if he suffers?  
• Forget this lethal injection shit.  He should be disembowled.
• He should suffer like he made __________ suffer.

The same day Judge Kopf raised a sardonic eyebrow, the Tennessee House approved the electric chair as Plan B if the state's official killers can't get their hands on sufficient quantities of pentobarbital (the Tennessee Senate has already signed off on the chair, though the bills need to be reconciled before the chair goes to the governor for approval), it seems appropriate to take a few moments to explain just what the fuss is about lethal injection - and to give an answer to the question Judge Kopf suggests the sardonic might pose.

Begin, with this.  All the concerns about lethal injection, all the litigation, all the delays, all of that.  It's not about whether lethal injection is in principle and necessarily so painful a means of killing that even if there are going to be executions they could never be done that way without violating the Constitution. The concern is about how it's done.  The choice of drugs, the purity of them, the competence with which they're administered. 

None of that would matter, of course, if the goal were to make the killing brutal.  But the 8th Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishments prohibits that.  We must kill as gently as we can. Moreover, and maybe more importantly, it has to look gentle.  Witnesses must not be disturbed. Executioners are to be coddled.  So we've abandoned not only stoning and burning at the stake and the gibbet.  We've left behind hanging and the firing squad and the gas chamber.  We won't behead, not with a sword and not with a guillotine.

Florida's electric chair malfunctioned.  A couple guys had their heads engulfed in flames. Everyone in the room had to deal with the smell of charred flesh.  Florida switched to lethal injection.

But the pharmaceutical industry doesn't want to be in the business of supplying drugs for executions. And the healing professions don't want their practitioners in the killing business.  And so we have drugs made up by - well, too often we don't know by whom.  Texas is keeping it a secret.  See, if they said where they get the drugs (presumably from a compounding pharmacy and not, as Stephen Colbert suggested, from a guy loitering under the overpass), then that compounding pharmacy wouldn't want to provide them.  And the drugs are administered by - well, seemingly anybody who isn't actually trained and certified as competent to do it.

We want the killings, the legislators are saying, but we don't want anyone actually doing them.  Used to be the town square with hundreds, perhaps thousands attending.  Now it's behind the prison walls, with a few witnesses as provided by statute.  And killed by whoknowshow.

The King was put to sleep by a physician at least i part to put him out of his pain.  He had drugs, he had the knowledge to know which ones to use (morphine and cocaine) and in what quantities.  And, of course, he had the skills to inject them into the King's jugular.

That might be good enough for the condemned.  But we won't make it available, so it probably doesn't matter. 

--------------

Here's the entirety of that speech from Richard II.

No matter where; of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let's choose executors and talk of wills:
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own but death
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence: throw away respect,
Tradition, form and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me, I am a king?