From the Wool-sack

• Publication year: 1997
• Pages: 15

26 Colo.Law. 15 Colorado Lawyer 1997.

1997, December, Pg. 15. From The Wool-Sack

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15

Vol.26, No. 11, Pg.15

The Colorado Lawyer
December 1997
Vol. 26, No. 12 [Page 15]

Departments
From The Wool-Sack
From The Wool-Sack
by Christopher R Brauchli

Civilization advances by extending the number
of important operations which we can perform
without thinking about them.
Alfred North Whitehead,
An Introduction to Mathematics (1911)

It's good to be civilized. Nothing brings it to mind more dramatically than the crisis in Saudi Arabia, where two women have been sentenced to what those of us in the civilized world recognize as inhumane sorts of punishment

One of the women, Deborah Parry, a British nurse, has been sentenced to death for murdering Yvonne Gilford, an Australian nurse. Lucille McLauchlan, another British nurse was convicted of being an accessory to the crime and has been sentenced to eight years in prison

The death sentence is distressing to the British because the British do not believe in capital punishment. It is distressing to me, and others in the United States, because the kind of capital punishment imposed seems so much less humane than the kind we enjoy in this country. Instead of death by lethal injection (which has always seemed particularly humane) or the electric chair (which seems fairly comfortable so long as it works properly and does not smoke its victims), the Saudis resort to the gruesome device of beheading the guilty party.

There is, it goes without saying, nothing in the least bit humane about beheading someone. Furthermore, unlike we in the United States, who do our executions semi-privately and have deliberately excluded TV coverage, the Saudi beheadings are public. That is hardly the mark of a civilized society.

Although Ms. Parry is the only woman slated to be beheaded, her accomplice does not get by with a simple prison sentence. In addition to her prison sentence, she is to be given 500 lashes.

At the same time as the papers were filled with the dreadful fate awaiting these two women, there were stories in the local press that once again made me grateful to be living in a society where we deal humanely in all things.

The two daily newspapers in the metropolitan Denver area got into a fight over the available seat for a major metropolitan newspaper at the first execution to take place in Colorado in more...