Today’s Obfuscating Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Examples of bureaucrating distancing of responsibility during modern executions: Oklahoma uses three lethal injectioners, each of whom injects one of the drugs; Georgia, Missouri and Utah use the old standby of the blank bullet placebo: three lethal injectioners, only one of whom has the lethal drugs in the drip bags on his IV stand; and Georgia has three keys that activate the switch to the electric chair. Tennessee’s electric chair, activated by one of two men turning keys simultaneously in a blue enamel box labeled Electric Chair Control, has computer software that randomly decides which of the two keys starts the voltage cycle. It’s a nice sci-fi touch, meant to hide the executioner’s identity from himself, but every sci-fi reader sees through the ruse: computers, by definition, cannot create randomness. Therefore, the author of the software is the executioner. Tennessee’s answer for that is simple: the author of the software doesn’t know what he wrote it for. New Jersey’s death penalty statute has a measure, written by a Metuchen dentist who served as an assemblyman, that mandates that “the procedures and equipment [of a lethal injection] shall be designed to ensure that the identity of the person actually inflicting the lethal substance is unknown even to the person himself.” In Texas, he is no longer even called the executioner; he is the “designee of the Director”.
Culled from: The Last Face You’ll Ever See: The Culture of Death Row