Being a lover of nature and the environment, and basically anything that walks, crawls or flies, I have always been on the fence about capital punishment. There are instances when I believe in the old adages, "an eye for an eye" and "a tooth for a tooth". I think the punishment should fit the crime. If someone murders another person, he/she should be executed either by lethal injection or the electric chair.

Well, I've changed my mind. I was pushed off the fence, so to speak, after reading a March 27, 1997 newspaper column in the Miami Herald by Carl Hiaasen titled, Death Penalty Should Be Fair, Certain, and Swift. His columns are compiled in a book called, Kick Ass, lamenting the despoiling of Florida, as he relieves his rage with dark laughter.

It seems there is a malfunctioning electric chair in the state of Florida (or at least there was in 1997) called Old Sparky. It is infamous. It went haywire when Pedro Medina caught fire. The convicted killer's hot-wired skull cap caught fire as flames shot from Medina's head while the death chamber filled with smoke.

The last time Old Sparky sparked out of control was when cop killer Jesse Tafaro ignited not once, not twice, but three times. That's because someone decided to substitute a synthetic household sponge for a sea sponge, probably to save money. You see, when a sea sponge is moistened and placed under the cap, it absorbs some of the scorching heat generated by 2000-volt surges. Without a buffer, the condemned man tends to catch fire.

To avert such ghoulish fiascos, many states switched to lethal injection. An inmate is reclined on a table and hooked up to an intravenous tube. Toxic chemicals are dripped into his veins, and he basically goes to sleep.

Is this humane? I guess the death penalty is not supposed to be. But lethal injection is a lot less painful and morbid than electrocution. In my mind, the whole thing is disgusting.

Electrocution has got to be the most primitive form of execution there is starting with the shaving and lubricating of the doomed man's scalp; the leather bonds, the death mask; the hooded executioner.

It is a failure as a crime deterrent and costs taxpayers millions more to execute a man than to lock him away forever. It does take a life for a life, but in the long run, it still doesn't help the grieving family who lost a loved one to a murderer.

It's revolting to know that an 84-ear old wooden contraption call Old Sparky is dependent on a sponge to work properly. What is even more disturbing is our cavalier attitude toward a condemned man as it relates to our barbaric grotesqueness as a society.

I'm off the fence. I think capital punishment is disgusting. God forbid if we convict an innocent man!

Source of information: Kick Ass, by Carl Hiaasen

Copyright 2006 by Pamela Beers. All rights reserved.