Surge of Executions in the United States

Last week Martin Schindhütte, a bishop in the EKD (Evangelische Kirche Deutschland), sent a letter to the governor of Georgia (USA) protesting the execution by lethal injection of William Earl Lynd:

Schindehütte erklärte in einem Schreiben an den Gouverneur von Georgia, Sonny Perdue, die Hinrichtung nach der sieben Monate währenden Denkpause sei besonders enttäuschend. Die EKD protestiert regelmäßig gegen Hinrichtungen in den USA. Seit der Wiedereinführung der Todesstrafe 1976 sind dort 1.100 Personen hingerichtet worden. Die EKD macht darauf aufmerksam, dass es kaum noch eine westliche Demokratie gebe, in der die Todesstrafe praktiziert werde. (In a letter to Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue, Schindhütte wrote that he was especially disappointed in the execution, coming after a 7-month moratorium on executions.  The EKD regularly protests against executions in the US.  Since the death penalty was reintroduced in 1976, 1,100 persons have been executed there.  The EKD points out that there is hardly another western democracy that has the death penalty.)

Now the EKD will be rather busy in their protest activities.  The New York Times reports on the anticipated surge in executions:

Roughly 15 death row prisoners are scheduled to be put to death between now and October, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. This flood of executions is the result of the Supreme Court’s ruling that upheld the constitutionality of a troubling form of lethal injection. The next few months, as states put their machinery of death into overdrive, are an ideal time for the nation to rethink its commitment to capital punishment.

Don't hold your breath that the nation will "rethink its commitment to capital punishment".  It is ironic that American "Christians" are particularly unmoved by the call of the EKP or the Vatican to abolish the death penalty.  Conservative Catholic justices now dominate the US supreme court, and they are the most ardent supporters of the death penalty.  Leading the charge is Justice Antonin Scalia, who explains why executing human beings is consistent with Christian doctrine:

"The more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral. Abolition [of the death penalty] has taken its firmest hold in post-Christian Europe, and has the least support in church-going United States.  I attribute that to the fact that, for believing Christian, death is no big deal."

Scalia also recently defended the practice of torture, so his decision to approve executions by lethal injections makes sense: subjecting a human being to excruciating pain as you kill him/her is no big deal.

Related Post: Friedrich Wilhelm Wagner and the Death Penalty