When California put its first condemned prisoner to death last week by lethal injection, it inaugurated a "kinder and gentler" form of capital punishment. The result may be a lessening of public repugnance and a growing public indifference to an act reporters now describe as "antiseptic". Even advocates of the death penalty now depict it as almost an act of personal revenge rather than state deterrence. PNS analyst Mary Ellen Leary is a West Coast correspondent for The Economist.

Throughout history, the death meted out to those deemed the worst criminals has been a scene of horror that drew a fascinated mob.

Now, as California joins 23 other states using lethal injection to administer capital punishment, death delivered as a penalty for crime is kinder and gentler than the death God ordinarily dispenses -- just an easy sleep from which there is no waking.

California's first such death, the February 23 execution of "freeway killer" William Bonin who abused and strangled 14 youths a decade ago, was so "coldly antiseptic" according to reporters who covered it that some were frankly disappointed at the lack of drama. "It wasn't much to watch," lamented one in print.

As a procedure, lethal injection, through a needle inserted ahead of time and preceded by a sleeping drug that is itself potent enough to kill, is considered more "humane" than the gas chamber. But its real advantage has less to do with alleviating the suffering of the criminal than with avoiding the clutches of courts which more and more are banning the gas chamber as cruel and unusual punishment.

Like a public relations ploy, lethal injection's is meant to allay public discomfort over the execution process and thereby ensure its continuation as the ultimate punishment. Oddly enough, the gas chamber (like the electric chair) was introduced some 60-plus years ago for the same reason: it was "more humanitarian" than hanging. Even in the seclusion of a prison, a hanging -- the knotted rope, the black hood, the yanked-away footing, and the writhing of the dangling body, viewed and reported by the press -- became more than the public could stomach. In California prison officials wanted it ended to ensure that capital punishment would survive.

Ironically, now that execution has been gentled, death penalty opponents fear public repugnance at the process will turn into public indifference. And with so little drama involved even the news media will cease to take notice.

Coincidentally, arguments for the death penalty have undergone a subtle change. Once portrayed as the most effective way for the state to deter criminals, today execution is increasingly depicted as a way to provide closure for relatives and friends of the victims of the condemned. Once a public act that hyped the power if not the moral authority of government, today execution by lethal injection has become a much more private affair -- almost an act of revenge by the victims' families.

In California, which has the greatest number waiting on Death Row -- 435, including eight women -- a flood of executions is anticipated over the coming months. Yet this is also the state where courts have been more tolerant of legal appeals from the condemned than most other jurisdictions. So far, only one of the 435 has exhausted his appeals in the courts, the U.S. Supreme Court having just refused to hear his case. Keith Daniel Williams, convicted in 1978 of murdering three in a robbery, has spent the intervening 18 years in legal pursuit of clemency. Now his execution date is set for April. But others continue pleading to one higher court after another, or waiting in line to enter their pleas.

Meanwhile juries keep condemning convicted murderers to death . In 1993 42 new inmates were sent to death row in California, a big jump over earlier years when the new arrivals numbered usually in the 20s. In 1994 23 were added, followed by 38 in 1995.

As the numbers rise, both courts and Congress have taken steps to reduce the long process of appeals. In addition, California death row inmates find it increasingly difficult to get legal counsel, as Congress and the state cut back funds for such cases.

Opinion surveys show overwhelming public support for capital punishment (77 percent in California according to the Field Institute), yet organizations seeking to abolish it are also growing in numbers. But the strongest opposition voice may be Amnesty International which has added abolition of capital punishment worldwide to its exposure and denunciation of human rights violations. With the U.S. the only major democratic country outside of Japan which continues to use death as a punishment for crime, international repugnance may fill the gap created by public indifference to this latest form of capital punishment.