The Case of Billy Frank Vickers

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The Case of Billy Frank Vickers

According to the article, Prosecutors Doubt Inmate Confession True, by Angela K. Brown, Billy Frank Vickers, condemned inmate, received a lethal injection on Wednesday night January 28, 2004 for a 1993 murder after confessing that he was involved in about a dozen other crimes, including the shootings that placed a cloud of suspicion over Davis for three decades (Brown). Jack Strickland, a former prosecutor in the Davis case, said he had never heard of Vickers and that his claims were a last-ditch attempt to get attention and monkey around with the system. Now the question arises of whether lethal injection was the best option for punishing Billy Frank Vickers, not because he is innocent, but because of the question of whether it is humane to take away someone’s life by inserting chemicals into his or her body that may cause more pain than can ever be imagined. I personally believe that there is no justifiable reason to give someone the death penalty as a form of punishment.

In the minds of the American public and jurors in capital cases the perception of lethal injection is of a clean, clinical, and painless end. As stated in the article, Lethal Injection, seventy-one percent of those responding to a 2001 survey considered injection to be the least cruel form of execution (Lethal Injection). This perception is an advantage to the state because the public is much more willing to accept execution in this form and jurors are more willing to convict and pass the death sentence. At times it is understood why the death penalty would be considered in cases. Maybe the people are a threat to not only society but also to themselves, and need to be put to death so they can do no harm to anyone. Vickers gunned down a grocery store owner who was probably trying to make a living for himself and his family. Now this man is gone; his family is left in agony, and maybe Vickers deserves to die. Some people may say an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, but do two wrongs make a right?

Some people may consider the death penalty as inhumane. As stated in the article, Naked City, by Rita Radostitz, Texas uses three chemicals in the lethal injection process: sodium thiopental (an extremely short-term anesthetic), pancuronium bromide (which paralyses the diaphragm and other muscles so the inmate is unable to move or speak, even if he is in pain), and potassium chloride (which stops the heart).

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