How Much Does a Bat Cost?

Good news for all of you out there on death row, it seems that America's execution rate is dropping due to a shortage of sodium thiopental, one of the drugs administered during lethal injections.  According to the Death Penalty Information Center ("Hello, this is the Grim Reaper, how may we kill you today?"), executions decreased twelve percent in 2010.  Texas of course led the nation with seventeen state-sanctioned whackings, followed by Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, and a first time member of the Execution Club, Alaska who sentenced two whale poachers to death-by-freezing.

According to Richard Dieter, the DPIC's executive director, "Whether it's concerns about the high costs of the death penalty at a time when budgets are being slashed, the risks of executing the innocent, unfairness, or other reasons, the nation continued to move away from the death penalty."

Executions were postponed or canceled in five states due to the sodium thiopental shortage, leading disgruntled inmates to complain about the inconvenience of having to adjust their personal calendars accordingly.  Convicted murderer/rapist William Michael "The Richmond Ripper" McFarland said, "Ya just can't count on the prison system for anything these days.  First, they go and drop the Discovery Channel from the cable programming, then they change from Coke to Pepsi in the cafeteria, and now my Goddamn execution gets canceled?  I'd already sent out the invitations and hired a DJ.  Someone better reimburse me for the tuxedo rental, or I'm liable to lose my temper.  And who knows what that could lead to, ya know?"

Since everyone seems to be overlooking the obvious here, I may as well ask the question myself.  If sodium thipental is so dang expensive, why don't we come up with a cheaper way of executing these scumbags?  Murderers don't seem to have a problem financing their operation, even those who don't have a huge sum of money left over from their career in the NFL, royalties from Hertz Rental Car commercials, and from appearing in the movie The Naked Gun.  If serial killers can finance their brutality on the cheap, why shouldn't the government?  Even if we still want to use lethal injections, who says it has to be sodium thipental in the syringe?  Why not use plain ol' gasoline?  I'm sure a healthy dose of Chevron super unleaded in the bloodstream would do the trick. 

Here's another idea.  What about arranging an execution so the killer dies by whatever method he used to murder his victims?  Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, fifty-seven stab wounds and defiling of the corpse for fifty-seven stab wounds, etc., etc.  Knives are cheap, you can get a complete set for $29.95 by calling 1-800-44-GINSU and if you act now, you'll get a second set absolutely free.  That's much cheaper than sodium whatever-it-is and twice the fun.

Whatever it takes, we need to reverse this downward trend and get the execution rate back up where it belongs.

The folks in Texas are getting antsy.


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