“It is so ordered and adjudged that Joel Leyner be sentenced to State Discretionary Execution and promptly discharged from this institution, this sentence to remain in force until Mr. Leyner’s decease.”
“En inglés, por favor,” I chafe, gnawing my lollipop stick.
“Basically, Mark, your dad’s free to go, but the State reserves the right to kill him the minute he walks out the front gate,” says the warden. “Plus, the State has complete latitude in terms of execution protocols and rules of engagement. In the next ten minutes your dad could be pithed with an English pub dart in the car on the way home from here. On the other hand, he might never be killed — he could live out his life unperturbed and die of natural causes in his slobbering dotage. Or the State could wait until he’s 99 years, 11 months, and 30 days old and then, on his 100th birthday, replace his dentures with molded plastique so that morning, as Willard Scott is telling America what a goodlooking man he is, god bless him — BA-BOOM! Now, if you’ll excuse me for just a moment, there’s some material I’d like you to have before you leave, Mr. Leyner,” she says, exiting her office.
“And this is called what, again?” my father asks the superintendent.
“NJSDE — New Jersey State Discretionary Execution.”
“I think I read about this in Elle,” Dad says. “It’s sort of like an optional fatwa.”
“The feature we like to stress to releasees is the indeterminacy,” continues the superintendent. “You’re living your life, rowing merrily along, and suddenly one morning you wake up and there’s a dwarf ninja crouched on your chest who deftly severs your carotid arteries with two honed throwing stars. Or you’re on a flight to Orlando, Florida, giggling to yourself as you read the Confessions of Saint Augustine, and meanwhile, 35,000 feet below, a New Jersey state trooper steps out of his car, kneels alongside the shoulder of I-95, aims a shoulder-held antiaircraft missile launcher, and blows your 727 into friggin’ curds and whey.”
“They’d do that?” I ask excitedly. “They’d sacrifice all those people just to kill my dad?”
“NJSDE gives us a lot of leeway. We’re no longer encumbered by the federal government, by the FDA, the FAA, the Justice Department … it really unties the hands of the state. I think it’s an extremely innovative piece of statutory legislation. And you have to give the Governor the bulk of the credit. She takes a lot of flak for the narcolepsy and the lathery horse posters, but she was committed to this and very savvy about the politics.”
“How do you feel about it?” my father asks, turning to the rabbi.
“It’s a very postmodern sentencing structure — random and capricious, the free-floating dread, each ensuing day as gaping abyss, the signifier hovering over the signified like the sword of Damocles. To have appropriated a pop-noir aesthetic and recontextualized it within the realm of jurisprudence is breathtakingly audacious. I think you’re going to find it a very disturbing, but a very fascinating and transformative way to live, Joel.”
Personally, I don’t find it all that innovative, audacious, disturbing, fascinating, or transformative. It just seems like normal life to me — not knowing from day to day if you’ll be pithed with a pub dart or sliced into sushi by some hypopituitary freak in black pajamas, or if your false teeth will blow up in your head. That’s just late-second-millennium life. I mean, isn’t everyone basically sentenced to New Jersey State Discretionary Execution from, like, the moment he’s born?
Although, OK — I have to admit — a statutory algorithm designed to amplify the anarchic cruelties of human existence and arbitrarily inflict its violence upon innocent bystanders, exponentially expanding the nexus of fatal contingencies, is pretty intense. And also, I assume that any ninja who works for NJSDE is involved in the state civil service bureaucracy — and there’s something really appealing to me about the image of ninjas waiting in lines for hours at state offices for application forms and photo IDs. And I absolutely adore the notion of elite units of New Jersey State Troopers, magnificently loathsome in their Stetsons and jackboots, sworn by blood oath to enforce the stringent dicta of NJSDE, wending the corniches of the French Riviera or the Spanish Costa del Sol in their emblazoned cruisers, in inexorable pursuit of some targeted releasee, some hapless New Jersey expatriate shambling along the boardwalk, camera and wine sack slung across his belly, oblivious to the cataclysmic, surreal violence in which he’ll be momentarily engulfed.
But do I say any of this when the rabbi, in turn, asks me what I think of NJSDE? No, of course not. Instead I mutter some facile, meaningless catchphrase.
Why do I nullify my own intelligence with this willful, stereotypical inarticulateness? Why do I immure my thoughts in this crypt of sullen diffidence?
Do I perhaps derive some sadomasochistic pleasure in the mortification of my own intellect, akin to those who cut and burn their own bodies? After all, isn’t the act of making oneself mute a mute-ilation?
Am I ultimately knowable?
Is it ludicrous and stilted for a 13-year-old to describe himself, even facetiously, as “an individual of daunting complexity”?
Why is it, then, that when the rabbi, in turn, asks me what I think of NJSDE, I glibly reply: “It’s cool, like a video”?
The warden returns.
“This should help answer any questions you might have, Mr. Leyner,” she says, handing my father a booklet, which I peruse over his shoulder.
The glossy brochure is entitled You and Your Discretionary Execution.
Q. What is New Jersey State Discretionary Execution?
A. NJSDE was developed by Alejandro Roberto Montés Calderón, a cashiered Guatemalan Army colonel who fled Guatemala after his counterinsurgency unit was accused of “crimes against humanity” by Americas Watch and Amnesty International. Mr. Calderón resettled in the United States, where he became a gym teacher at Emerson High School in Union City, New Jersey. The Governor, who had Mr. Calderón for gym in both her junior and senior years, appointed him to chair the Select Committee on Capital Punishment and Tort Reform.
NJSDE is a pioneering sentencing program designed to give the State of New Jersey maximum — one might even say giddy—latitude in dealing with condemned inmates, like yourself, who have survived unsuccessful institutional executions.
Q. Am I responsible for the cost of my unsuccessful institutional execution?
A. You are responsible only for the cost of the lethal drugs. Most health insurance plans and HMOs cover lethal prescription drugs, paying for them directly or through reimbursements to the insured individual. Check your policy and consult with your broker or benefits administrator.
Q. How does the State determine whether I will live or die?
A. Your status is reevaluated on a daily basis. At precisely 9:00 P.M. each night, at the New Jersey State Discretionary Execution Control Center in Trenton, data processors insert every NJSDE releasee’s social security number into an intricate equation whose variables include the current pollen count at Newark International Airport and the total daily receipts collected at toll-booths along the Garden State Parkway as of 7:45 P.M. If, factored through this algebraic operation, your SS number yields a prime number, any five-digit sequence from pi, or the Governor’s PIN code for her MAC card, you are subject to Discretionary Execution over that ensuing 24-hour period.
Q. Is NJSDE painful?
A. Yes! The State avails itself of a potpourri of execution methods including bare hands and teeth, sharpened stick, flint ax, bisection by lumberyard circular saw, car bomb, drive-by shooting, rocket-propelled grenade, Tomahawk cruise missile, etc., any of which can cause significant discomfort. The degree of pain you experience may vary in accordance with the efficacy of the execution attempt and with your body’s ability to produce natural opiates, called endorphins, at moments of extreme stress. If you choose to augment your endorphins by prophylactically self-anesthetizing through heavy alcohol consumption and you develop cirrhosis, bear in mind that some hospitals in New Jersey will not perform liver transplants on patients who face possible execution within 48 hours of surgery.