(C) Verite News New Orleans This story was originally published by Verite News New Orleans and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Gas execution bill is cruel, inhumane [1] ['Naomi Yavneh Klos', 'Ph.D.', 'Jacqueline Stern', 'Verite News'] Date: 2024-02-26 Late last week, the Louisiana state House of Representatives approved House Bill 6, which would allow for the use of nitrogen gas in the execution of death row inmates. The bill, introduced as part of Gov. Jeff Landry’s special legislative session on crime, is now working its way through the state Senate. As Jewish citizens of Louisiana, we find the use of any form of gas for state executions a violation of our ethical principles and of Judaism’s deep commitment to innate human dignity. The Jewish legal tradition, developed over the last 2,000 years, reflects considerable skepticism about the death penalty. While there are Biblical passages that appear to support capital punishment, Jewish legal principles demand that we question, analyze, and interpret those texts in determining how they should be applied. The Talmud, a primary source of Jewish law, requires an extremely high threshold that evidence must satisfy for a court to impose a death sentence. In so doing, it recognized the fallibility of human judgment, something with which we are all too familiar in Louisiana, where, since 1973, 12 citizens condemned to death have been exonerated. We must further acknowledge the tremendous inequity in our legal system, which privileges those with greater financial resources, education, and status, and recognize that this inequity magnifies the possibility of error in capital cases. Even for those who support the role of capital punishment in our criminal justice system, the use of gas as a form of state-sanctioned murder should be deeply troubling. In 1939, the Nazis began experimenting with poison gas (predominantly carbon monoxide) as a means to kill those deemed (in their terms) “unworthy of life” due to disability or mental illness. After it was decided that conducting mass shootings was too emotionally grueling for German soldiers, the Nazis began to use hermetically-sealed vans that filled with gas to kill hundreds of thousands of people (mainly Jewish, Roma, or mentally ill). Finally, the Germans built mass killing centers — at Auschwitz and other camps such as Sobibor, Belzec, and Treblinka — in which gas was deployed to murder as many as 2,000 men, women, and children at any one time. Approximately 2.7 million people were killed by gas at these killing centers. We recognize, of course, that the gassing of innocent victims in the Holocaust is quite different from executing a convicted criminal. At the same time, however, our faith (and the faiths of many others) teaches us that even a murderer is created with innate human dignity — b’Tzelem Elokim — in the image of God. Without condoning their actions, we must recognize death row inmates as fellow humans, however flawed, and remember that we ourselves are called to imitate G-d in demonstrating compassion. It is hard to see the agony of suffocation through gas as anything other than cruel — “cruel and unusual” in the words of the Constitution — and a breach of the obligation of compassion that we owe to each person in this world. Even the legislators promoting House Bill 6 seem to acknowledge a problem with the machinery of execution. Tellingly, their bill includes a “secrecy” component, in which the details regarding the execution, the procurement and administration of drugs, and their effect on the executed will be legally sealed. Anyone publicizing that information could be charged with a felony. Capital punishment without transparency is dangerous to all of us. House Bill 6 would take Louisiana down a road it should not travel. Naomi Yavneh Klos is a Professor of Languages and Cultures at Loyola University New Orleans, where she holds the Rev. Emmett M. Bienvenu, SJ Distinguished Chair of Humanities. A former Fulbright scholar in the Netherlands, she teaches courses in Holocaust Studies, Interfaith Studies, and classics. She is currently completing a book “Anne Frank Anew: Rereading the Diary in a Time of Anxiety and Hate.” Jackie Stern is a Jewish activist in New Orleans, where she was born and where she has raised her five daughters with her husband. She serves the Jewish community in many capacities including as an Executive Board Member of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans, a Board Member of the Jewish Community Center of New Orleans, an Executive Board Member of the Jewish Children’s Regional Service, and a member of the Advocacy Committee of the National Council of Jewish Women, Greater New Orleans Section. She previously worked as a special education teacher and administrator. Related Stories Republish This Story Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. [END] --- [1] Url: https://veritenews.org/2024/02/26/gas-execution-bill-is-cruel-inhumane/ Published and (C) by Verite News New Orleans Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 US. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/veritenews/