Death

Johnny Cash sings ‘”I shot a man in Reno/just to watch him die”. Not very nice, eh? But hey, you’re curious. What’s it like, watching someone die?

And AA Gill, he shot a monkey, just to feel what it was like to kill. Not very nice either. But somewhere in you, your curious too, aren’t you?

Not that we’d ever act on either. We are civilised people. We don’t do killing. We don’t do watching, really – though the scene of an accident can become a macabre piece of theatre for any passing motorists and you can’t blame the “What if it was me?” mentality. It just doesn’t cut it. You want to see the gore. Admit it.

Head over to America, though, and “Hey Presto”, take a trip down death row and you get all the death watching you like. Queue up for a ticket. Watch his eyes roll back. Watch the light go off.

John Allen Muhammad, the Washington sniper, was executed yesterday, despite arguments that he was mentally disturbed. The families crowded around to watch him go. They said watching him die brought them closure. A little odd, a death for a death – or in this case one death for 13 deaths. Did it really give them pleasure to watch him die? And in what way is killing someone right? A life for a life, the Bible says, but should we be listening? The lesson of capital punishment is revenge, not correction.

Death is tricky.

Which brings us to Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the US Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people in a shooting rampage at a military base in Texas. He was shot, obviously, in the attempts to stop his “rampage” and was very ill indeed. But they duly fought to save his life. They bullied him back to health. And soon, no doubt, this being electric chair Texas, they will kill him. While the families of the deceased sit down and watch.

That’s a lot of money spent to kill someone who would have died anyway. Could they not have invited the families to the hospital to watch in the aftermath of the incident?

But why do they want to watch? Does watching a man die bring back their loved ones, justify their deaths? No.

Does watching him die bring some comfort in that they are watching the man who has made them suffer, suffer himself? Probably. But death is a short comfort, the killer does not suffer in the beyond.

But that is the problem, in religious America the belief is that he will suffer in the after life, that God will do the correcting. Ad so the state should not attempt correction, or punishment. Killing him is right.

And so they must bring him back to life. To cure him. And they must then watch him die. They must give him the chance to repent before he goes.

Which just shows how intertwined religion is in the American political and judicial systems. The death penalty is Old Testament. The decision to revive and then kill Major Nidal Malik Hasan New Testament – it is forgiveness and repentence, get ready to meet your maker.

The army will argue they revived him for answers. And well they should. They don’t want it to happen again. But to kill him after, which they will do? That’s not sense. That’s religious America still holding court in an area where it should not belong.