A judge in Georgia last week allowed the execution of a man named Andrew Grant to videotaped by lawyers representing another death row inmate. Who might end up seeing such a tape?
Making execution videotapes for lawyers and judges to evaluate is a no-brainer. It should be happening all over the country and with greater frequency. Prison officials and prosecutors should no longer be allowed to keep secret from the courts vital evidence in the fight over lethal injections. But after 15 years of covering the death penalty debate I confess I still don't know precisely where I stand on the issue of the public dissemination of such tapes. Executions happen. Sometimes more effectively than others. Sometimes gruesomely. And always at the expense of the American taxpayer. A big part of me thinks the world wouldn't end if an execution videotape were ever made public.
But part of me also thinks the public release of an execution tape would turn yet another dramatic moment into something blasé or, worse, circus-like. If such a release were to start online, as everyone presumes, it's hard to make a reasonable case that the images wouldn't shortly thereafter appear on cable television, to great fanfare. Nor is it worthwhile to pretend that the same dark sensibilities that drew thousands to public executions a century ago aren't still vibrant within people today. The good news, I guess, is that the Georgia case doesn't require us to test this tension, at least not yet.
It's not hard to imagine executions becoming another grotesque media-driven circus; that's a legitimate worry. But there are at least two arguments that can be made for the public release of such videotapes. One is deterrence, which is one reason executions were once public. The other is, for lack of a better term, transparency. Americans should have a chance to see what is done on their behalf and in their name.
There is still overwhelming support for the death penalty, at least so say the polls. But we're not exactly proud of it -- executions are carried out almost completely out of view. Couple that with the fact it takes about 15 to 20 years to go from conviction to execution, and capital punishment's deterrent effect is approximately nil. And as long as Americans don't see an execution -- or at least have the opportunity to -- they are debating this important issue without all the a
