Powerful piece in The Nation today on the “cruel and unusual punishment of Doyle Lee Hamm,” with a brilliant closing paragraph:

“Without any practical justification for carrying on this tradition, law-and-order prosecutors and legislators have argued that the death penalty functions as symbolic justice, the only fit way for the state to respond to the worst of crimes. In Hamm’s case, though, this “symbolic justice” involved strapping an infirm, long-incarcerated man to a gurney and stabbing him repeatedly in the groin until he gushed blood. Such torture is certainly symbolic of something, but that something is not justice.”

Read here: https://www.thenation.com/article/the-cruel-and-unusual-punishment-of-doyle-lee-hamm/