The Machinery of Death

In 1994, after twenty years on the Supreme Court, Justice Harry A. Blackmun declares in his dissent in Callins v. Collins, that:

From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death. For more than 20 years I have endeavored--indeed, I have struggled--along with a majority of this Court, to develop procedural and substantive rules that would lend more than the mere appearance of fairness to the death penalty endeavor. [n.1] Rather than continue to coddle the Court's delusion that the desired level of fairness has been achieved and the need for regulation eviscerated, I feel morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed. It is virtually self evident to me now that no combination of procedural rules or substantive regulations ever can save the death penalty from its inherent constitutional deficiencies. The basic question--does the system accurately and consistently determine which defendants "deserve" to die?--cannot be answered in the affirmative. It is not simply that this Court has allowed vague aggravating circumstances to be employed, relevant mitigating evidence to be disregarded, and vital judicial review to be blocked. The problem is that the inevitability of factual, legal, and moral error gives us a system that we know must wrongly kill some defendants, a system that fails todeliver the fair, consistent, and reliable sentences of death required by the Constitution.  [Emphasis added; case references deleted.  Full dissent.]

He sees the challenge of the death penalty as balancing two considerations: the constitutional requirements of consistency and fairness.  All too often, the death penalty is imposed in inconsistent ways--particularly in regard to the question of race--and similar crimes are not punished with the same degree of severity.  If "if the death penalty cannot be administered consistently and rationally," he argues, "it may not be administered at all." 

What, precisely, is the "machinery of death" to which Justice Blackmun refers?  It is not simply the execution chamber on death row.  Rather, there is a long chain of factors that culminates in the death penalty.