You’ve probably heard about the latest horribly botched execution:



Wood’s execution dragged on for so long that at the midpoint, his lawyers filed an emergency appeal to stop the procedure and called on Justice Anthony M. Kennedy to intervene. Wood died before the federal court could respond, and Kennedy turned down the lawyers’ request. After Wood was pronounced dead, the Arizona Supreme Court ordered that the state “preserve any drug labels and unused drugs pertaining to the execution of Mr. Wood.” The two-hour execution was just the latest debacle made possible by an ever more familiar combination of state secrecy, untried protocols being tested for the first time on live human beings, and a judicial system that can’t quite make up its mind about how much gasping and coughing is reasonable in a state-sanctioned killing. The new wrinkle is that this time we must endure the spectacle of witnesses to the execution fighting over how much suffering they saw.

Another exhibit Kozinski can use in his campaign to bring back the firing squad.

The optimistic take is that given the choice between a more visibly brutal death penalty and abolition, the public will choose the latter. I’m not sure. Most states have either abolished the death penalty or almost never use it. In the relatively small minority of states that are responsible for the vast majority of executions…I’m not sure that explicit brutality or botched executions will matter. I hope I’m wrong.