Beheading, lethal injection, the firing squad, and being beaten to death by sweet-smelling wood (a method of dispatch reserved for royals) have been used variously as methods of execution in Thailand, but the same nagging question persists: Can the death penalty ever be humane?

Until January of 2004, when lethal injection was introduced as the official mode of execution, criminals in Thailand were executed by firing squad (and until the 1930s, they were beheaded). As part of this transition, the director of the Thai prison system sent prison officials to Texas on an educational trip to study the process of lethal injection. Nathee Chitsawang, Director General of Prisons, explained: “It is more humane than when we used the firing squad … With the old method, sometimes they were crying and shouting … and sometimes they did not die immediately, so we had to take them and shoot again.” Nathee Chitsawang’s statement should sustain a tired but crucial aspect of the debate about the death penalty — whether execution can ever be humane.

There are legal, social, and moral arguments made for the death penalty, and there are deeply rooted religious convictions that undergird concepts of just punishment, including the death penalty, in the American and British criminal justice systems. In his 1996 book “God’s Just Vengeance,” Timothy Gorringe dissected Western concepts of penal strategies and asserted that Christian theology has been and continues to be the powerful undercurrent that lies beneath the legal system. The question of the humanity of the death penalty, however, cuts across cultural barriers and the issue of racial inequity in the administration of capital punishment and applies to the issue in all regions.  
  
Amporn Birtling, one of the 883 inmates on death row in Thailand’s Bangkwang prison, will only receive two hours warning before he is executed.  He states: “I have no clue when I will die … they could inject me today or tomorrow.”

While his execution will no doubt be horrific, the waiting process has created a hell unto itself in the prison that is notoriously known as the “Bangkok Hilton.”

Mimi Hanaoka