Human Decency

The Christian state of Oklahoma's experimental killing of a black man has taken a little longer than usual; though it is as yet unclear whether the delay arose from the pioneering drug combination which was used or from private-sector levels of competence in administering it. A second execution, which might have served as a control, has been delayed until the matter can be investigated. The state supreme court had stayed both executions in order to consider the constitutional implications of administering secret drugs in lethal injections; but the governor, who seems to be an angel of mercy after the fashion of our own Chris Graybeing, decreed that the court had no authority in matters of experimental science, and a member of the state's House of Representatives threatened those who wanted to stay the executions with impeachment. The guinea pig was one Clayton Lockett who, although morally and racially suited to be a subject of human experimentation in a Christian state, does not appear to have had the intellectual advantages of at least one previous beneficiary of Oklahoma justice. Strangely enough, the prison authorities concealed much of Lockett's forty-three-minute test result from view, in spite of the fact that his victim's family were present and awaiting closure. If one did not know better, one might almost think they were ashamed of something.