Attention! Two flashing, clanging alarm bells have just gone off, drawing the gaze of Americans to the futility and inhumanity of capital punishment.

The first alert is the non-execution of 50-year-old Christa Pike by the state of Tennessee. Pike, who was convicted of the brutal torture and murder of fellow teen Colleen Slemmer, was escorted to the death chamber on the evening of September 30. There, reports say her executioners attempted to give her fatal doses of the drug pentobarbital. It didn’t work; Pike remained conscious and in pain for an extended period and finally was heard “snoring” before officials called things off.

A painfully ironic sequence of events followed. Pike was taken to the hospital and placed on a ventilator, as expensive American medical know-how, rich in sophistication and billing codes, swung into action to save her life and preserve her brain function. Initially things looked grim, but soon Pike was awake and asking confused questions about what happened, as well she might. She may have suffered some brain damage, and she lost function in her arms, but by October 8 was gingerly walking around her hospital room. She is reportedly a bit irate about the whole situation.

And the fine people of the state of Tennessee should be livid, as well. They’ve had the misfortune of paying for their government to try to kill a fellow citizen, and then bring her back from the brink of death, in order to possibly try to kill her again (Pike’s attorneys have strenuously requested that she never be subjected to such an attempt again, on humanitarian grounds).

Tennessee has paused its other execution scheduled for this year, the state’s chief prison official has resigned, and an investigation is underway. Ultimately there is really not much to investigate. There is no swift, sanitary, humane, guaranteed foolproof way to kill a human being. Even in the various legalized suicide schemes now running full-tilt in Canada and parts of Europe, where the victim is supposedly psychologically willing and often weakened by disease, it can take days to die; complications like vomiting, muscle jerks, gasping, and choking occur regularly. The cruelty is baked into the experience.

A second wake-up call is still on the way in the form of a scheduled federal execution. The Pentagon, led by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth,  announced that convicted terrorist Nidal Malik Hasan will be executed by an Army firing squad on December 3 at Fort Hood in Texas. Hasan, who was enlisted in the military at the time, murdered 13 people in a shooting rampage at the military base more than 15 years ago. Officials had also said that the execution will be live-streamed so the general public can gawk at the bloody violence.

Those details, apparently arranged for the delectation of Americans, have prompted revulsion even among defenders of capital punishment. “The death penalty should be kept on the books for cases where it is necessary to protect society, as even Pope St. John Paul II acknowledged. It should never be turned into a ghoulish spectacle or public entertainment,” one prominent proponent, Dr. Edward Feser, commented on X. And yet, is the death penalty any more coarsening and brutalizing for our society if it is carried out on a stage, instead of un-filmed in a private room before a small group of witnesses? In either case, the execution is accompanied by baying commentary from parts of the public wallowing in the sensation of socially-sanctioned revenge, followed by the strange emptiness and anti-climax that attends any death. In some ways the livestream might have made clear to everyone that death is an unclean, hideous task to put in the hands of any human being, let alone uniformed representatives of our ever-growing state.

In the end, the government backed off: Hasan is scheduled to die, but his death will not be available for Americans to view.

Whether Pike or Hasan “deserve” to die is quite beside the point. The question is, do we deserve to do this to ourselves?

The tragic absurdity of Pike’s situation, so ludicrous and so horrible, should prompt Americans to reconsider whether we want to put the government in charge of anybody’s life or death. The barbaric consideration of Hasan’s “live” on-screen appearance should make us ask what damage capital punishment has already done to the American character.

It’s time to stop.