Sympathy For The Devil’s Handmaiden?

Alexander Chancellor has yet another wail about the US and the death penalty in CiF (I must have missed their announcement of ‘We hate the US week no:597’):

As Amanda Knox starts her long wait in a Perugia prison for her appeal against her murder conviction to be heard, reports suggest that she is being well cared for. She shares a cell with a fellow American woman, is allowed to watch television, has won first prize in a creative writing competition, and is being regularly visited by nuns with whom (odd though it sounds) she spends time singing, reciting poetry and dancing.

Just what every convicted murderess should be doing, I suppose?

And according to an Italian MP who went to see her in jail, she believes that her "rights were respected" during her trial and still "has faith in Italian justice".

Which is to shut up her idiot supporters, no doubt, and prevent the Hildebeest from stepping in to make things worse…

All this is in sharp contrast to the depiction of her by supporters in the United States as a simple girl-next-door demonised as a she-devil by anti- American bigots and wrongly convicted on the basis of flawed evidence, a botched investigation, and a forced confession. Americans automatically assume that their justice system is superior to that of any other country and that no American citizen can rely on a fair trial abroad.

When they read the ‘Guardian’, it’s no wonder they get that view, isn’t it?

The fuss seems even more inappropriate when one contemplates the fate that Knox would have endured if she had been convicted of the same crime in the US. In all but the 15 of America's 50 states that do not have capital punishment, she would most probably have been condemned to death. She would then have languished for many years on death row – with no opportunity to dance with nuns – until all appeals were exhausted.

There’s no opportunity to dance with nuns in the US system?

That’s odd – they obviously don’t mind you talking to them…

And then she would have been put to death by one of those ghoulish methods for which the US is famous.

Ah, yes. Like stoning, or beheading by sword?

Oh, sorry. Wrong country...

…it would most probably be by lethal injection – the method used in 1,013 of the 1,185 executions carried out in America since 1976. This is a method now widely suspected of being inhumane because it involves administration of three separate drugs – one to induce unconsciousness, one to paralyse the muscles, and one to stop the heart from beating; and there are fears that the anaesthetic used in the first injection may wear off before the other drugs take effect, which could mean that the condemned person, being paralysed and incapable of moving or crying out, could suffer terrible pain without anyone knowing it.

Furthermore, there have been so many botched executions with this method – ages spent searching for suitable veins in which to inject the drugs – that Ohio has controversially, and for the first time in America, killed somebody with a single drug.

It’s hardly the thought of the prison authorities that they can’t find a vein, is it? A lot of these people are also long-term drug abusers.

It is extraordinary that a country as technologically advanced as the US finds it so difficult to put someone to death in a painless and efficient manner.

Point of order, Alexander. It’s not the fact that the US is lacking in technology, but a feature of the fact that looney ‘liberals’ like you and the odious Clive Stafford-Smith and the various anti-death penalty movements you champion keep throwing legal roadblocks in their way.

But the reality is that neither of these methods is as reliable as the traditional ones – hanging, beheading or shooting.

OK, then, Alexander. So if they go back to those methods, they won’t hear a peep out of you, right?

Yeah, right…

The good news is that disillusion with all these methods, and growing evidence of their unjust application, continues to weaken America's faith in capital punishment and could lead one day to its abolition.

‘Yes! It’s great if criminals suffer. Because it means I might get what I want, which is abolition of the death penalty!’

A man of principle, I see, Alexander…

In the meantime, if convicted of murder, justly or not, I would much rather be in Perugia than the US.

And they say it isn't a deterrent...