Norman Mailer wrote his 1979 Pulitzer-winning EXECUTIONER’S SONG about Gary Gilmore’s execution by the State of Utah.

His crime had been murder.

Gilmore had a slim choice of methods; shooting squad or noose.

He opted for the shooting squad rather than the noose and refused any reprieve from his fate.

“Death is the only inescapable, unavoidable, sure thing. We are sentenced to die the day we’re born.”

Norman Mailer considered this insight extraordinary, yet didn’t extrapolate further to the fact that everyone was privy to the hour of Gary Gilmore’s date with destiny, especially the shooting squad.

He walked the Last Mile on the morning of January 17, 1977.

His last meal from the Utah State Prison consisted of steak, potatoes, milk and coffee and a six-pack of beer. He ate nothing and drank the milk and coffee. Smuggled Jack Daniels was his last sustenance on Earth.

The Death House was an abandoned cannery. Five riflemen from the local police served as the Death Squad.

His last words.

“Let’s do it.”

Chavoret Jaruboon, Thailand’s # 1 executioner, was familiar with such bravado.

Thailand’s method of capital punishment has combined a ritual crucifixion with shooting the victim in the back. The target was the heart and the state killer shoot his victim from behind a screen. Fifteen bullets were allotted for each occasion. Even the best get sloppy with a blind shot.

Chavoret Jaruboon’s total number of kills was 55.

55 victims are less than the 150 Texans killed by GW Bush’s stroke of a pen.

Americans rationalize that death by injection as a merciful method.

Personally I’d choose a hot shot of heroin over a chemical concoction of dubious origins. 

The majority of this country also consider the death penalty as an effective weapon against murder. The FBI reports that each execution deters at least 3-17 extra victims. Guess they aren’t taking into account Columbine or Virginia Tech, where the killers don’t make it to court.

China kills thousands of criminals each year. None of them can make an appeal. The manner of death comes as a bullet to the head and the family has to pay for the bullet.

Back in 1995 I witnessed a parade of trucks in Chengdu transporting about thirty death row inmates to the nearby sports stadium. People watched the procession from the sidewalks without comment and the resignation on the condemned faces betrayed none expected a last minute reprieve.

Neither had any of GW Bush’s 150.

China even has a mobile execution van.

Death is by injection with comfortable sitting for six witnesses and no body damage for better organ harvesting. 

During the lead-up to 2008 Beijing Olympics the Chinese cut their executions from 12,000 to about 7500 per annum, which was more than all the other countries in the world combined.

Thailand tried to do its part in reducing the criminal population.

A bullet is better than previous methods.

Until 1934 Thailand decapitated criminals. A swordsman would leap from behind the victim and lop off their head. This ambush was to designed to prevent the dead man’s ghost from haunting the killer. The head was then stuck on a pole and the bodies fed to birds of prey i.e. vultures. This was an improvement on earlier techniques such as inserting a red-hot iron in the brain or immolating a bound and impaled prisoner.

Unlike Gary Gilmore, none of the prisoners on Thailand’s Death Row are told the time of their death. Guards show up one morning and select a victim.

Surprise.

No last meal.

No phone calls. Just, “Mung, bpai.”

Most are dragged kicking and screaming according to Mr. Chavoret, who was promoted to Warden of the Foreign Prisoners’ Section at Bangkok’s Bang Kwang Central Prison. He deemed that capital punishment acted as a deterrent to crime, despite its prohibition by Buddhist teachings.

“An eye for an eye,” he quoted the old Hebrew standard of retribution.

Of course no one speaks about the 3000-plus killings during Thaksin’s War of Drugs.

Not if they know what’s good for them.

Gary Gilmore’s last words were ‘Let’s do it.”