Alabama’s decision to change how it carries out executions is still drawing criticism. The state’s Supreme Court abolished the one-day time frame for executions allowing the governor to extend the amount of time needed to execute someone. The new policy followed several cancelled executions. Jenny Carroll teaches at the University of Alabama School of Law. She says that the issue of the death penalty requires more than a simple change in the amount of time for an execution…
“We’re not questioning whether or not we ought to revisit how we execute or even why we execute or whom we execute,” Carroll said. “Instead, what we are saying is to the extent we can’t get the job done within the allotted time, let’s just change the window of time we have to get the job done.”
Carroll feels Alabama’s corrections itself needs change. She says the system is disproportionately tilted toward people who are poor, people of color, and men who are young when the commit their offenses. Carroll feels that we should consider a change in the system itself rather than making it easier to execute:
“Should we be doing this, how should we be doing this, to whom should we be doing this, I think that that is a conversation that we should have, and I think that people who live here in this state, really ought to be pushing the state to have that conversation.”
Carroll feels that execution should not be easy. She hopes that people on both sides of the issue agree that it ought not be easy for anyone, an individual or the state, to kill someone.
