PLATFORM : A Step Backward

It’s different when you look through the thick plate glass and see a dear friend of yours strapped in the electric chair. It’s different when the one to be executed is a person whose unique humanity you have experienced vividly over a period of years. It’s different when you are among relatives and friends bereaved by a new killing, as surely as others were by an earlier killing.

The night of July 14, 1989, I could sense the radical, dehumanizing, almost palpable evil in the air as institution and staff pressed ahead to extinguish the life of Horace (Ronnie) Dunkins in the Alabama electric chair.

The intentional killing of any human being is horror beyond comprehension. The horror is, if anything, still greater when the killing, with total premeditation and countdown timing, is carried out by the state. The planned execution of Robert Alton Harris is, as is every execution, a step backward into that abyss of inhumanity.