Reinstatement of the death penalty, I thought, died with the demise in 1996 of longtime Westbrook legislator Stanley “Tuffy” Laffin. It was entertained briefly by Gov. John McKernan. Unfortunately, Sen. John Benoit tried to resuscitate it and he failed too. Now comes Rep. Debra D. Plowman of Hampden with LD 2214.

Poorly conceived, and just as barbaric, it is also as unconstitutional as its predecessors. It serves nothing more than a means of giving society an opportunity for vengeance. Application is usually discriminatory.

Prompted by the murder of a young Massachusetts boy whose body was dumped in Maine, Rep. Plowman believes the death penalty will prevent similar murders.

Since the crime was committed out of state, what effect will a Maine death penalty have on such criminals? The criminals are being tried in a Massachusetts court.

Barbaric? Though the type of execution is not described, I’m sure Rep. Plowman is thinking “Death by Lethal Injection?” Today’s death penalty proponents see this as “a sanitary and humane way” of disposing of killers. The firing squad, hanging, electric chair and gas chamber in some states, are usually considered “too messy.”

Poisoning a person to death requires an execution chamber and death row — tiny 5-by-7-foot cubicles within five to 10 steps from the clinically clean killing room.

Death row houses those prisoners whose execution is imminent. However, wealthy attorneys can keep prisoners rotating between death row workhouse (usually a jacket or T-shirt factory) and death row, anywhere from 15 to 20 years or more. It is a lot like the Texas practice. Or in any other state that has a death row.

That is torture. It is cruel and unusual punishment, according to the Constitution.

After strapping the condemned to a hospital gurney, an anaesthetic of sodium thiopentone is injected into a vein in the crook of the arm. It has to be accurate. Pancuronium bromide is then injected to relax the muscles and paralyze respiration resulting (hopefully) in unconsciousness. The final injection is potassium chloride which stops the heart beat.

The executioner is in an adjoining room pressing buttons or pulling levers which administer a computer-measured dosage. Witnesses peer though a window and watch this grisly spectacle until the curtains are drawn and the corpse taken away for an autopsy.

Witnesses are usually not privy to the tapping the vein-spectacle. The condemned in Texas show numerous needle stab wounds where executioners have failed to find a vein. Various medical problems, such as drugs, or small veins, contribute to this hunt and peck operation. The American Medical Association forbids doctors from participating in executions, so an $8- or $10-an-hour state employee does the job.

The death penalty is usually applied in a discriminatory manner. Prosecutors and committees usually decide prior to a trial whether or not they should seek the death penalty.

It is usual in most murder cases for the accused to be booked and jailed. That is, if the “killer” is poor. On the opposite side of the room, high-profile cases such as with Simpson and other cases, the accused are usually permitted their freedom. And there is a reluctance to prosecute by district attorneys.

Wealth, prestige, and popularity, must have been the criteria for Marcia Clark and the committee to decide not to seek the death penalty in the double grisly murder charge brought against O.J. Simpson.

Compare it with the macabre trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a poor German immigrant, charged in the death of Charles and Ann Morrow Lindbergh’s son in 1932. The prosecutor wanted Hauptmann to die. Despite intervention by New Jersey Gov. Harold Hoffman who attempted to prove Hauptmann innocent, and statements by Lindbergh employees which proved someone other than Hauptmann killed the baby, Hauptmann sizzled in the electric chair.

Wealth, prestige and worldwide acclaim of Charles Lindbergh ultimately led to what many consider the death of an innocent man. How many more innocents have been killed since that horrible chapter of American “justice”?

As a deterrent, the death penalty is a total abysmal failure. It is society’s way of extracting revenge. Nothing more.

Since most murders are usually committed by relatives or friends of the deceased in a fit of rage or passion, threat of the death penalty does not even enter their minds. Criminals who bomb buildings or hijack planes have absolutely no concern for their own lives.

Did the two Littleton, Colo., high school students show any concern that they could get the gas chamber before their onslaught? Besides killing 13 they had bigger goals of killing 500, plus hijacking a plane and crashing it into New York. All of these acts carry the death penalty.

The death penalty does not work. It does not prevent murder or terrorism. It is cruel and unusual punishment. It is applied in a discriminatory manner. It is nothing more than an act of revenge.

Surely our esteemed legislators can concentrate on something more constructive than building a killing shed and hiring executioners. What about our students and schools? The threat of a state possibly interlaced with multi-high speed highways crisscrossing Maine and the Maritimes, lined with fast food joints and pharmacies?

Aren’t these items worthy of consideration?

Last year Rep. Joseph Brooks attempted to get state approval of his Dr. Jack Kavorkian-styled killer bill, but sanity prevailed in the Legislature.

Debra Plowman’s LD 2214 should get the same fate.

It should be: Dead Bill Walking.

Ken Buckley lives in Bangor.