The New York Times shows its objectivity again

The New York Times goes at it again. They are covering the scheduled permanent rehabilitation of Robert Campbell at 600pm tonight. I gotta say I love the title.

Confronted on Execution, Texas Proudly Says It Kills Efficiently

HUNTSVILLE, Tex. — If Texas executes Robert James Campbell as planned on Tuesday, for raping and murdering a woman, it will be the nation’s first execution since Oklahoma’s bungled attempt at lethal injection two weeks ago left a convicted murderer writhing and moaning before he died.

Lawyers for Mr. Campbell are trying to use the Oklahoma debacle to stop the execution here. But many in this state and in this East Texas town north of Houston, where hundreds have been executed in the nation’s busiest death chamber, like to say they do things right.

Well, lets look at what little Clayton Lockett did to earn his place on Oklahoma's death row. From Tulsa World:

...(Stephanie) Neiman was dropping off a friend at a Perry residence on June 3, 1999, the same evening Clayton Lockett and two accomplices decided to pull a home invasion robbery there. Neiman fought Lockett when he tried to take the keys to her truck.
The men beat her and used duct tape to bind her hands and cover her mouth. Even after being kidnapped and driven to a dusty country road, Neiman didn't back down when Lockett asked if she planned to contact police.

The men had also beaten and kidnapped Neiman's friend along with Bobby Bornt, who lived in the residence, and Bornt's 9-month-old baby.

"Right is right and wrong is wrong. Maybe that's what Clayton was so scared of, because Stephanie did stand up for her rights," her parents later wrote to jurors in an impact statement. "She did not blink an eye at him. We raised her to work hard for what she got."...

...Lockett later told police "he decided to kill Stephanie because she would not agree to keep quiet," court records state.

Neiman was forced to watch as Lockett's accomplice, Shawn Mathis, spent 20 minutes digging a shallow grave in a ditch beside the road. Her friends saw Neiman standing in the ditch and heard a single shot.

Lockett returned to the truck because the gun had jammed. He later said he could hear Neiman pleading, "Oh God, please, please" as he fixed the shotgun.
The men could be heard "laughing about how tough Stephanie was" before Lockett shot Neiman a second time.

"He ordered Mathis to bury her, despite the fact that Mathis informed him Stephanie was still alive."...

Now this is interesting:

For two years now, Texas has used a single drug, the barbiturate pentobarbital, instead of the three-drug regimen used in neighboring Oklahoma. Prison administrators from other states often travel here to learn how Texas performs lethal injections and to observe executions. Texas officials have provided guidance and, on at least a few occasions, carried out executions for other states....

...More than any other place in the United States, Huntsville is the capital of capital punishment. All of the 515 men and women Texas has executed since 1982 by lethal injection and all of the 361 inmates it electrocuted from 1924 to 1964 were killed here in the same prison in the same town, at the red-brick Walls Unit. Texas accounts for nearly 40 percent of the nation’s executions.

So many people have been put to death and so often — in January 2000, seven people were executed in 15 days — that people here take little notice.

Sounds like we know what we are doing and with people asking for advise, we shoukld be proud!

A lot of this article is the usual tripe on how executions are bad and it really may be a problem, and most of the space is for death penalty opponents. Balance, you see. But take a look at this.

...A Question of Methodology

On Monday, an appeal by Mr. Campbell’s lawyers to stop the execution reached the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans. The lawyers cited the “horrifically botched” execution in Oklahoma, where Clayton D. Lockett writhed and moaned on the table until prison officials halted the procedure. Mr. Lockett died 43 minutes after the delivery of drugs into a vein in his groin began. Oklahoma has declared a six-month stay of the next execution.

A Texas execution in April has raised questions. Jose Villegas, 39, who was convicted of fatally stabbing his ex-girlfriend, her young son and her mother, reportedly complained of a burning sensation as a lethal injection began to take effect. Texas argued that the Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution “does not require the elimination of all risk of pain,” only that the method not be “sure or very likely to cause serious illness and needless suffering.”

Opponents of the death penalty question Texas’ reputation. Austin D. Sarat, an Amherst College professor who has studied the death penalty, put the state’s rate of mishaps at about 4 percent, slightly higher than Oklahoma’s, if difficulty in finding a vein is included in the calculation...

I draw your attention back to the first article. I really doubt Mr. Lockett experienced any pain like the woman he murdered. And he will never commit another crime again. Rest in Piss Mr. Campbell, may your final Judge grant your more mercy that you deserve. And as for you minions at Manhatten's most famous rag, I'll leave you with the great words of Ron White.