“Still the earth moves…” (2)

The most interesting and heroic character in Charles Dickens’s “Tale of Two Cities” novel is Sydney Carton, who in the end gave himself up for a supreme sacrifice.  “It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done.  It is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known,” went his famous last line at the scaffold.

Breeding sometimes comes to the fore during executions.  Back in England, the most senior in title goes to the block first when two or more noblemen were to be executed at the same time.  In 1746 Lord Balmerino and Lord Kilmarnock were led to the scaffold.  Lord Kilmarnock, a compleat gentleman, offered to go to the block only after Lord Balmerino to spare him a gruesome spectacle.  Equally polite, Lord Balmerino declined the offer.

A different kind of grit was shown by the Countess of Salisbury, Margaret Pole, who fell victim like the rest of her family to the revenge of King Henry VIII who had a falling out with Cardinal Pole, Margaret’s son.  The issue behind the revenge was Henry VIII’s divorce.

On the day of her execution after two years of imprisonment without a trial, the aging mother refused to put her head on the block.  “So should traitors do, and I am none,” she said, and moved and swiveled her head in all directions, daring the executioner to try harder that it took many blows before her head was cut off.

As public spectacles, executions in the old days doubtless were made worse when the condemned were dragged to the gallows in front of a cheering or jeering crowd.  Still there were stories of men who have danced and joked to please the hordes.  Yet it was not only the condemned who joked.

William Calcraft, London’s infamous executioner, was reputed to have cracked a joke or an obscenity before he hanged the condemned.  Such behavior of both the condemned and executioner may have inspired the term “gallows humor,” the other term for sick jokes.

On the home turf, we all know of another kind of last words, the “Mi Ultimo Adios” poem written by national hero Jose Rizal prior to his execution by firing squad.  “…To die is to rest,” he had declared in the poem.

Most Western European countries now have done away with the death penalty as punishment for crime.  In the United States, where the death penalty is still enforced, Italian immigrant Nicola Sacco, executed with fellow immigrant Bartolomeo Vanzetti in 1927, had written:  “If it had not been for these things I might live out my life talking at street corners scorning men.  I might have died unmarked, a failure, unknown.”

Now we are not a failure.  This is our career triumph.  Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice and for man’s understanding of man.”

Barbara Graham was to die in the gas chamber of San Quentin on June 3, 1955.  She arrived at the execution site with a toothache and refused a last meal.  “Why waste good food on me?  Give it to someone who can enjoy it.”

But it was gangster George Appel who showed a streak of gallows humor as he was strapped to the electric chair in 1928.  He had told the watching newsmen:  “Well folks, you’ll soon see a baked Appel.”  In 1966, James French did likewise as he was strapped to an electric chair in Oklahoma. “How about this for a headline for tomorrow’s paper?  French fries.”

In 1979 in Florida, John Spenkelink, executed in electric chair, declared, “Capital punishment: them without the capital get the punishment.”

“I am innocent, innocent, innocent.  Make no mistake about this.  I owe society nothing.  I am an innocent man and something very wrong is taking place tonight,” were the last words of Lionel Herrera, executed by lethal injection in Texas in 1993.

Whether all the condemned in history merited their convictions or not, the death penalty will continue to be debated.  Some see it as a protection of society and as a deterrent to crime.  Those who are against it regard it as nothing but state-sanctioned murder and point to studies that disprove its deterrent effect.  Still the earth moves.

(2004)