January 16, 2014
Dennis McGuire (53), who was put to death earlier today by the State of Ohio, ordered a last meal of roast beef, fried chicken, fried potatoes with onions, potato salad, toasted onion bagel with cream cheese, butter pecan ice cream and a Coke.
America, where death sits down at the diner alongside representatives of the Coca-Cola corporation. There’s no need for spicy food, everyone agrees, when you’re gonna have it fried.
That’s not what happened to McGuire: the electric chair is little used nowadays. Instead he was injected with a novel combination of midazolam, a sedative, and hydromorphone, a morphine derivative. The State of Ohio has previously administered lethal injections of a barbiturate, pentobarbital. But Danish manufacturers Lundbeck have refused to supply the drug to the United States for use in executions.
America, is your Big Pharma so belittled – so much in decline – that you can’t come up with a new killer drug? Is this what you call R&D nowadays – trying out a new cocktail?
The drugs used on McGuire did not work well. Following the injection (do they rub their arms with alcohol to prevent infection?), his wife and grown-up children watched as he heaved, choked, snorted and gasped, suffering the effects of ‘air hunger’. After 10 minutes of this, McGuire remained still for a few minutes more before he was pronounced dead.
Still as the placid man with a light beard in the mugshot issued by the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. Thrashing around as he and his heavily pregnant victim must have done, when he raped her and slashed her neck so that she bled to death in the woods where her body was found the following day.
America, the Big Country where executions are small and mean……and not very well executed.
January 14, 2014
On his way in to Southwark Crown Court today to face charges of ‘historic’ indecent assault and sexual assault, former Radio 1 disc jockey Dave Lee Travis seems bemused by the sight of so many cameras. Having lived so long on the airwaves, perhaps he cannot stop himself associating media attention with professional success. Because being seen and heard – that’s-what-it’s-all-about, folks. Even though he knows they’re here this time to capture him at his lowest ebb.
Dave Lee Travis might have bumped into his old BBC stablemate Rolf Harris, also facing ‘historic’ charges at Southwark; except that Harris was allowed to use a side-entrance so that he could push his wheelchair-bound wife into the building.
Both men deny all charges.
‘DLT’, Travis’ radio moniker from the old days, sounded a lot like BLT: three fillings in just the one sandwich; proof that we don’t have to pinch pennies any more.
In those days, we took it that everyone should have the price of a BLT because DLT says so. Of course he never really did, but you could hear as much in his radio voice.
Nowadays our intrinsic self-worth is not so readily understood. You can hear as much in the spread of Operation Yewtree and the sexual assault trials sandwiched into Southwark Crown Court.