Brush away the doubts you had
If ever they existed
Forget the hints of innocence
You must be iron-fisted
Forget that seven witnesses
Were pressed, they say, to lie;
Cos someone killed a cop, you see
So someone’s got to die.
Push aside the arguments
Of bias in the system
The courts have heard them all before
And this time, they’ve dismissed them
Forget the lack of evidence
To say he is the one
It’s eye for eye, and life for life,
And justice must be done
Sleep with guiltless conscience
That’s assuming that you can
Do what it takes; convince yourself
You’ve got the guilty man
You may have killed the man you blame
But in your dreams, you’ll see
The man you killed was not the one…
The killer has gone free
Yeah.
Damn.
Well said. Guilt is nevertheless a very complicated emotion!
One of the things that has always fascinated me (in car-crash kind of way) about USian execution methodologies is the way that they are set up to, as far as possible, separate the executioners from the act of execution. If I understand it correctly, the controls of the mechanisms that start the execution process are out of sight of the condemned, and the operator has no direct contact with the condemned so that they are as far divorced from the process of killing as, say, a combat pilot or artilleryman.
… and a piece of execution trivia: which US President performed an execution (earlier in his career, not actually while President)? Hint – he is also unique among them for a more well-known reason.
Without googling, I’d think perhaps Grant, during the Civil War. But now, I have to run and find out!
Heh…. right logic, wrong president, wrong war. Very cool, Didaktylos!
So… which president was it?
Andrew Jackson.
http://www.johnhorse.com/trail/01/b/24.1.htm