Florida Ponders How Best To Kill Someone

The death penalty is already considered archaic and barbaric by opponents, and now a Florida politician wants to bring back the execution methods of yesteryear. Carl Hiaasen writes in his new column, “A ‘Lead Cocktail’ Or Old Sparky Not A Laughing Matter”:

Every time Florida starts to fade from the national spotlight, somebody like Brad Drake comes along and gets everybody laughing at us again.

Drake is the state representative who is sponsoring a bill to give death row inmates the choice between the electric chair or a firing squad — “a lead cocktail,” in Drake’s words.

Not even Clint Eastwood could say the phrase, “lead cocktail,” with a straight face, but Drake claims to be serious. He says he’s frustrated by the questions about whether lethal injection, Florida’s current method of execution, is actually painless.

“I say let’s end the debate,” Drake said in a prepared statement. “We still have Old Sparky. And if that doesn’t suit the criminal, then we will provide them a .45-caliber lead cocktail instead.”

Drake is a Republican and proud Baptist from the Panhandle community of Eucheeanna. At the tender age of 36, he has already been named one of the World’s Worst Humans by TV commentator Keith Olbermann.