让我们姑且假设，伊朗伊斯兰共和国决定就一名50岁女子18岁时犯下的罪行将其处决。
Let’s pretend that the Islamic Republic of Iran had undertaken to execute a 50-year-old woman for a crime committed when she was an 18-year-old.
姑且假定，那名罪行是杀害一名女同学。再假定，这名即将被处决的女子从还是幼童时起便遭受强奸和性虐待，并被诊断患有精神疾病，后来她承认：“我花费了多年才真正意识到我所做之事有多严重。”想必届时国际社会会掀起轩然大波，指责伊朗竟野蛮地选择杀死一名有着如此不幸过去的女子。美国无疑会站在批评的前列。
Let’s say the crime was murdering a fellow female student. Let’s also say that the woman slated for execution had suffered rape and sexual abuse since she was a toddler and had been diagnosed with mental illness, later admitting: “It took me numerous years to even realise the gravity of what I’d done.”A fair amount of international uproar would presumably ensue, alleging Iran’s barbarity in choosing to kill a woman with such a troubled past. The United States would no doubt be at the helm of the criticism.
然而，自周三田纳西州企图处决50岁的克里斯塔·派克以来，并没有发生这样的喧嚣；上述所有细节在现实中恰恰都适用于她。
And yet no such uproar has transpired since Wednesday’s attempted execution in the US state of Tennessee of 50-year-old Christa Pike to whom all of the above details pertain in reality.
派克原本将成为田纳西州自1820年以来首位被处决的女子——以免有人以为美国社会是在进步而不是倒退。然而，行刑者未能完成任务；在派克被注射了各种致命药物后仍然活着，行动被取消，她被紧急送往医院。
Pike was set to be the first woman executed in Tennessee since 1820 – lest anyone assume US society was advancing rather than regressing. However, the executioners failed in their task, and, when Pike remained alive after being injected with all manner of lethal drugs, the operation was called off and she was rushed to hospital.
派克担心注射药物处死会带来痛苦，因此最初要求改由行刑队枪决——这是美国一些州为死刑犯提供的多种较为文明的处决方式之一。但这一请求遭到拒绝。
Fearing the pain that would attend death by injection, Pike had initially requested to be killed by firing squad – one of various civilised options provided to death penalty victims in some US states. The request had been denied.
据派克的律师称，这次处决失败构成了“化学酷刑”。派克因缺氧而可能遭受的脑损伤程度仍有待观察。
According to Pike’s lawyers, the failed execution amounts to “chemical torture”. The degree of brain damage Pike may have sustained due to oxygen deprivation remains to be seen.
同样，人们只能想象，如果伊朗不仅企图处决一名精神疾病患者，而且还把处决彻底搞砸，甚至可能让她半死不活，那么外界会发出何种自认为正义的谴责。
Again, one can only imagine the sort of self-righteous denunciations that would be occasioned had Iran not only tried to execute a mentally ill woman but royally messed up the killing, potentially leaving her half-dead instead.
当然，伊朗不会是唯一因这种行径招致批评的国家；中东和非洲还有许多国家会因这类野蛮行为受到同样的谴责。
Of course, Iran would not be the only country that would come under fire for such a stunt; plenty of other countries in the Middle East and Africa would be similarly denounced for such savagery.
但在美国，这不过是日常工作的组成部分；在全国50个州中，过半数的州仍允许判处死刑。
But it’s all in a day’s work in the US, where the death penalty is legal in more than half of the country’s 50 states.
当然，死刑的诸多问题之一，就是无辜者被处死的频率之高。死刑信息中心报道称：“自1973年以来，美国至少有203名被错误定罪并判处死刑的人获得平反。”该组织指出，在美国奴隶制时期，死刑“曾被用作控制黑人群体和抑制反抗的工具”，并强调，国家杀戮在这个国家至今仍带有根深蒂固的种族主义色彩；黑人“目前占死囚人口的40%，而其人口仅占美国总人口的12%”。
Among the myriad problems with the death penalty, of course, is the frequency with which innocent folks end up being murdered. The Death Penalty Information Center reported that, “since 1973, at least 203 people who were wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in the U.S. have been exonerated.”Recalling that capital punishment “served as a tool for controlling Black populations and discouraging rebellion” during the era of slavery in the US, the organisation noted the enduring racialised nature of state killing in the country with Black people “currently comprising 40% of the death row population despite only being 12% of the U.S. population”.
的确，美国那套冒充民主的种族主义阶级压迫，在死亡中与在生活中一样不断被复制，这丝毫不足为奇。
To be sure, it’s hardly shocking that the racist classism that passes for democracy in the US is reproduced in death as well as in life.
归根结底，要维护资本主义等级秩序、维持精英对社会的控制，还有什么比让有色人种和穷人被不成比例地监禁，并通过法律将其杀死更有效？
After all, what better way to uphold the capitalist hierarchy and maintain elite social control than by disproportionately incarcerating and legally murdering people of colour and the poor?
派克虽然不是黑人，但她的谋杀企图仍服务于这套控制机制：它提醒非精英人士，他们是随时可以被牺牲的，而他们的命运最终由权力任意摆布。称之为资本主义的惩罚吧。
And while Pike is not Black, her attempted murder still serves the mechanism of control by reminding the nonelite of their dispensability and the ultimate arbitrariness of their fate. Call it capitalist punishment.
与此同时，国家对杀戮的垄断意味着，许多冷血杀人犯能够逍遥法外——今年1月，移民与海关执法局执法人员乔纳森·罗斯在明尼苏达州明尼阿波利斯开枪打死37岁、三个孩子的母亲蕾妮·古德，就是一例。
Meanwhile, the state’s monopoly on killing means that many cold-blooded murderers get off scot-free – as in the case of Jonathan Ross, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who fatally shot Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in January.
巧合的是，罗斯曾参与过对伊拉克的战争，多年来，美国也在那里肆无忌惮地造成大量死亡。而且，和其他不幸沦为美国打击目标的地方一样，只要实施大规模杀戮的是美国，这种行为就会被描绘成正义且文明的。
Ross, it so happens, is a veteran of the war on Iraq, where over the years the US has also engaged in a great deal of killing with impunity. And as in other locations that have had the misfortune to be in the US’s crosshairs, mass slaughter has been cast as just and civilised as long as the US is the one doing the slaughtering.
事实上，无论是在国内实施国家批准的处决，还是在加勒比海法外处决渔民，美国至今都没有因其野蛮行径受到充分追责；如果双方角色对调，美国自己恐怕早已群起反抗。
Indeed, whether it’s committing state-sanctioned execution at home or the extrajudicial killing of fishermen in the Caribbean, the US has yet to be adequately taken to task for barbarism that would have had the US itself up in arms if the tables were turned.
普遍存在的双重标准大致是这样的：伊朗处决人时，这是道德上的滔天大罪，也是一种犯罪；美国处决人时，这却被视为国内刑事司法的合法举措。
The prevailing double standard goes something like this: When Iran executes people, it’s a moral abomination and a crime. When the US executes people, it’s a legitimate exercise in domestic criminal justice.
派克仍在田纳西州一家医院里昏迷不醒，该州已暂停今年余下时间的所有处决，当权者正在琢磨，那场根本不能算作处决的处决到底出了什么岔子。
As Pike remained unconscious in a Tennessee hospital, the state has paused executions for the remainder of the year as the powers that be ponder what the hell happened during the execution-that-wasn’t.
至于唐纳德·特朗普总统——他在第一任期内加快处决步伐，如今又在第二任期内忙着复制这一壮举——他却认为，“用注射方式杀死一个人不该 Very difficult”，尽管田纳西州已经发生了那样的事。
For his part, President Donald Trump – who ramped up executions during his first term and is busy replicating the feat in his second – reasoned that “it shouldn’t be very difficult” to kill someone by injection, notwithstanding what happened in Tennessee.
但在美国继续于国内外掀起杀戮狂潮之际，人们不禁觉得，杀人这件事不该那么容易。
But as the US keeps up the killing spree at home and abroad, one can’t help but think that it shouldn’t be that easy.