Executioner’s Thong

Much has been made of the “executive” experience of half-term Governor Palin (Alaska). Running smoothly on some combination of Astroglide and Chutzpah, this week the Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin asserted that she “knows how to execute.” George W. Bush knew how to execute too.
According to the ‘pedia, “During his tenure, Bush signed the execution warrants for more death row inmates than any other Governor in the history of Texas, averaging a death every nine days.” About Bush’s “executive” experience, Anthony Lane wrote in June 2024…

… The Chicago Tribune published a compelling report on an investigation of … death cases in Governor Bush’s time. It made chilling reading.

In one-third of those cases, the report showed, the lawyer who represented the death penalty defendant at trial or on appeal had been or was later disbarred or otherwise sanctioned. In 40 cases the lawyers presented no evidence at all or only one witness at the sentencing phase of the trial.

In 29 cases, the prosecution used testimony from a psychiatrist who — based on a hypothetical question about the defendant’s past — predicted he would commit future violence. Most of those psychiatrists testified without having examined the defendant: a practice condemned professionally as unethical.

Other witnesses included one who was temporarily released from a psychiatric ward to testify, a pathologist who had admitted faking autopsies and a judge who had been reprimanded for lying about his credentials.

Asked about the Tribune study, Governor Bush said, “We’ve adequately answered innocence or guilt” in every case. The defendants, he said, “had full access to a fair trial.”

There are two ways of understanding that comment. Either Governor Bush was contemptuous of the facts or, on a matter of life and death, he did not care.

Sadly for Alaska Governor Palin, her state abolished the death penalty in 1957. But even absent a level playing field, there is proof that she knows how to “execute:”