In the U.S., the first instance of capital punishment, a penalty for criminal behavior that results in the perpetrator’s death, authorized by colonial law, was carried out in 1623 as a penalty for the crime of theft of a cow. At the time, a crime, an offense in violation of public law, punishable by death ranged anywhere from theft and counterfeiting, the manufacturing and selling of illegally copied products, to violent offenses like murder and rape, and the preferred method of execution was hanging. An important point for consideration, particularly given the opportunity to look back at a different time, is the question of collective conscience, a set of shared attitudes, beliefs, and ideas about how things should be in society, and its capacity to change over time.
One aspect of public opinion’s change over time can be seen through who is considered a criminal and for what alleged crimes (particularly ones deserving of government-facilitated execution). As observed in colonial times, persons deserving of death for their criminal activity were found guilty of a wide range of crimes — some as surprising as adultery and idolatry. Although these capital offenses were narrowed by some states throughout the 1800s, with treason as the only worthy crime in Michigan and the complete abolition of the death penalty in Wisconsin and Rhode Island, this same effect did not extend to all spaces in the U.S. Southern states took a quick lead at this point in number of executions, many of those executions relevant within the context of slavery. The state of Virginia, for example, considered 66 crimes worthy of the death penalty when committed by an enslaved person — a poignant example of differential justice, a set of shared attitudes, beliefs, and ideas about how things should be in society. The motivation to find enslaved Africans guilty of capital offenses came from desires to financially profit off of state compensation from executions and to demonstrate consequences for liberation attempts and resistance. Today, in the federal criminal process, crimes punishable by death are treason, murder, kidnapping of certain government officials, and genocide.
The question of death-eligible crimes and populations aside, what is an appropriate manner of conducting executions? The first executions in the U.S. were primarily completed by means of hanging. British influence extended to the colonies with the implementation of historic methods of execution, such as crushing to death and boiling. These methods likely come across as barbaric and extremely cruel to the 21st-century observer, though they were believed to be appropriate to some degree at the time they were implemented. Some modern methods of execution include lethal injection, electrocution, gas chambers, and firing squads. Currently, all of these methods are legal in at least some states. There is, of course, variability in methodology between states, with a federal court in California declaring lethal gas as cruel and unusual punishment. Defined by the United States Supreme Court, cruel and unusual punishment is loosely defined as the “unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain” and has often been interpreted inconsistently.
A current case for cogitation on the methodology of the death penalty revolves around the recent execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith. Smith was convicted in 1996 of the murder of Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett, as recruited by Sennett’s husband. On January 25th, 2024, Smith became the first individual in the U.S. to face execution by means of nitrogen gas. Smith’s execution was cleared to begin at 7:56 pm, and he was pronounced dead at 8:25 pm. Eyewitness accounts of the execution cite Smith as having experienced seizure-like symptoms for a large portion of those 29 minutes. Following the execution, the murder victim’s son, Mike Sennett, was quoted as saying, “We are not going to be jumping around, whooping and holler, hooray and all that . . . I’ll end by saying Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett got her justice tonight.”
