by Emily Parzybok

Here on Missouri’s death row, we take every possible precaution to preserve human life. As we continue our scheduled executions, we have instituted strict protocols to ensure continued human safety and wellbeing, especially for those people whose lives we are not planning to terminate. For example, everyone entering the prison must submit to a temperature check. We also provide a mask to anyone entering our facilities who does not have one. We are asking folks to cover their faces—and not just so we don’t have to watch the light leave their eyes. We don’t want our death row inmates to die from COVID-19 either; we want them to die from lethal injection or in a proper gas chamber, as intended.

Additionally, we adhere to all social distancing guidelines. We’re very familiar with distancing. Every day we distance ourselves from the humanity of the people awaiting execution. To maintain safe distance, we ensure that only one reporter be present at executions during the coronavirus pandemic. Everyone stays six feet apart physically. Mentally, we all stay miles away from our compassion in order to function. Witnesses to the execution are divided into three rooms and into a fragmented state of confused mourning that lies somewhere between false retribution and gross miscarriage of justice.

The inmates on our block already know all about isolation. Many of them have spent decades in solitary confinement. Here in the United States, we throw people on death row and pretty much forget about them with regularity. That’s why Texas is considering ramping their executions back up in June. After all, “the death chamber is not a heavy traffic area and is isolated from all parts of the prison in Huntsville,” according to Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jeremy Thanos. The space is “constantly cleaned” anyway to remove the nagging moral stain.

Why not just wait? you might ask. And it’s true—some states have postponed executions in light of the global health scare and massive mortality rates. But mortality doesn’t concern us. You could say it’s our bread and butter. We don’t let prisoners’ intellectual disabilities get in the way of executing them so we’re not about to be stopped by a little physical weakness.

The world is brute and random, just like the United States justice system. Viruses don’t care who they infect so why should we care who we execute? The virus has made the procedural piece of our work a bit challenging. So we’re not concerning ourselves with things like accurate records, clemency petitions and pesky court appeals. It’s not our job to determine whether someone is innocent. It’s our job to slowly and painfully end their life with whatever lethal means our state has given us to liquidate our citizenry.

We’re doing our best to keep everyone safe, even the people we are going to intentionally kill. It’s difficult because there’s not a lot of evidence-based information about how to best prevent the spread of coronavirus. The disease is novel and scientists are still learning about its spread. But, like we said, we’ve never relied much on evidence as it is. Hell, for every nine people executed on death row, one is exonerated posthumously. We execute folks who have had mistrials. We execute people who are convicted with only circumstantial evidence. We’re not fussy. Even if there were evidence-based public health guidelines, we’d probably ignore them. We ignore evidence that the people we execute are innocent all the time.

Luckily, the Supreme Court is with us. They see no reason in the midst of this crisis to issue stays of execution or to look into the mundane facts of the case.

Coronavirus might be new, but here on death row, we’ve always been aware of respiratory function. Mostly, we focus on the ragged breaths of the human beings we pump full of poisonous chemical cocktails—sometimes for hours—before they expire. But now, we’re making use of our expertise to we protect everyone from this respiratory illness including the people whose respiratory function we plan to end as soon as humanly possible.

Yes—continuing executions could lead to the spread of COVID-19. But what do you expect us to do? In order to protect human lives, we have to end human lives. And we’ll keep ending them until everyone is safe.

Emily Parzybok is a writer, political consultant and mindfulness teacher based in Seattle, Washington. Since 2014, she has run a variety of political campaigns in Washington state on issues ranging from voting justice to workers rights. In her spare, time, she can be found writing essays, teaching silent meditation retreats, and spending time with her cats.