If you were to pick up that American history book you never really read back in high school and glance over a timeline of international conflict, you would see that the United States has been at odds with nations such as Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and Iraq over various issues.

However, what the text would not tell you is that all five of those nations indeed share a controversial ideal. No, it's not dictatorship — although the United States is making a case for it. The common denominator among these nations is the belief in the death penalty. Despite the abandonment of the practice by most of the industrialized western world, the United States has failed to see the futility and impracticality of the archaic process. That is, until now.

Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court opened its doors to rule on whether the use of lethal injection was a humane means of killing an inmate. In doing so, they have suspended the executions of criminals across the country and have left the justice system scrambling with the possibility of a death-row inmate who legally cannot die.

At risk in the immediate future are the lives of criminals across the country. The lethal injection was adopted by death-penalty states as a safe alternative to hangings, electric chairs and gas chambers, all of which appear excessive and feudal to the 21st-century American. If the Supreme Court rules the current mixture of chemicals making up a lethal injection do not create a humane death, it could bring the justice system to a screeching halt until a new method is developed.

While all of this may seem like a blow to the capital punishment-faithful, it is important to keep in mind that this case does not put the death penalty on trial, but only one way of administering it. This is where the system falls short.

The evidence backing the abortion of the lethal injection is staggering. For instance, a 2006 Washington Post article states that of 49 inmates put to death by lethal injection in the states of Arizona, Georgia, North and South Carolina, 21 of them may have been conscious and feeling pain. If I can be sedated for a routine dental procedure, I do not see it too much to ask to be unconscious while the government puts me to death.

But even so, these technicalities are skirting the real issue: Is the death penalty a just punishment?

It's hard to find a statement more oxymoronic (or merely moronic) than "humane killing." Killing another human being is inherently inhumane, and the fact that all of America's influential allies (France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, among many) have nixed the practice should speak volumes to how backward the death penalty is.

The American prison system was designed to rehabilitate criminals, not baby-sit them until we can strap them to a chair and watch them die. The death penalty bestows a fantastic burden on the judicial system, which has to wade through numerous appeals; the taxpayer, who has to pay to keep a man alive, only so he can be killed later; and the prison system, which has to look after a death-row inmate an average of 15 to 20 years before he finally meets his Maker. With such an immense effect on so many aspects of the community, it is amazing there exists one soul who fails to see the animalism of sanctioned death.

There are, however, many people who would die for the death penalty, and no single entity is more pro-death than the great state of Texas. Don't mess with Texas because they are liable to condemn you to death. When the Supreme Court agreed to hear the Kentucky case on the humanity of the lethal injection, it convinced many states to halt executions until the court ruled. Texas was not one of those states, and it forced the Supreme Court to take special action, halting an execution at the last minute and staying the inmate's sentence. Despite its deliberate action, state government has made no claims as to whether the practice of lethal injection will halt while its constitutionality remains in limbo.

There once was a man who said, as he was being condemned to death, "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do." Those days of ignorance are over. We know exactly what we are doing. Yet we refuse to take the necessary action to change it.

Sean Kittridge ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in journalism.