Regardless of one's view on the death penalty, I've always found allowing people to view an execution to be incredibly disturbing.
IMHO seeing the death of someone who may have tortured or killed many others is far from disturbing.
The Electric Chair That Might Soon Be Used in Tennessee
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Re: The Electric Chair That Might Soon Be Used in Tennessee
#32Regardless of one's view on the death penalty, I've always found allowing people to view an execution to be incredibly disturbing.
I feel the same way, but I guess allowing people to view the execution is a way to show the public that the person is in fact executed and the state didn't just say that the person was executed.
Right. My concern is mainly that there is a common unspoken view that executions aren't more humane because it's a mix of being a public spectacle and the victim's family wanting the person to suffer.
Re: The Electric Chair That Might Soon Be Used in Tennessee
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
The whole point of death penalties is to kill someone gruesomely as a warning to everyone else. Electric chairs do that, opioids not so much.
Citation needed. From what I understand, 1) that theory is incorrect and the death penalty is not seen as a deterrent by potential future criminals (rather it may be the opposite) [citation coming]; and 2) Policymakers who say it is a deterrent are either lying or disinformed. My understanding of the death penalty is that it is intended as violent punishment and is done gruesomely for the purposes of revenge. Read an…
That's what I was saying. The death penalty is about making a violent example of someone (regardless of whether it is effective). A compassionate execution is a failed execution because it fails to make the statement that was the point of the exercise.
Re: The Electric Chair That Might Soon Be Used in Tennessee
#34OK, USA has the death penalty. Good or bad that's another story. Meanwhile, just use a firing squad. Efficient and humane.
What's to say a particularly notorious criminal doesn't get the firing squad aiming a bit too far to the left (victim's right) to miss the heart and deliberately inflict additional suffering? I know there's more than one of them but still...
I mean... we could use a tank. Take the entire head off...
Re: The Electric Chair That Might Soon Be Used in Tennessee
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nitrogen gas appears to be what states* are looking into [1] [2]. [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudenc... [2] http://time.com/3749879/nitrogen-gas-execution-oklahoma-leth... *Edit: Changed "statesn" to "states".
Nitrogen would be a lot safer for everyone else around. You can release lots of N2 in a reasonably ventilated room without harm but that's not the case with CO.
Helium would likely be even safer, since any that leaked would rise towards the ceiling/ventilation.
Re: The Electric Chair That Might Soon Be Used in Tennessee
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understand the desire to make it humane. But killing someone is not particularly humane in the first place. You also have to wonder about whether it’s worth making killing someone super humane since, you know, they’re gonna die anyway. So they have an unpleasant few seconds, or perhaps minutes, and then they’re dead. I mean, they just suffered some 10 years or more of imprisonment, often solitary, which is extremel…
It always struck me as odd that for lethal injection, the medical staff sterilized the needle site before hooking up the line.
The governor might issue a pardon before you actually inject the drug.
Re: The Electric Chair That Might Soon Be Used in Tennessee
#37All this complication around methods of execution baffles me. Why don’t we use a massive dose of fentanyl or some other opioid? I’ve got to be missing something, because that seems like a simple, one-step process that doesn’t risk the pain of paralytics and potassium chloride. I think the death penalty is a useless relic, but if we’re going to do it, why make it so bizarre?
Yes, it is mindbogglingly barbaric. What's weirdest is that we seemed to have regressed from even historical levels. A simple long drop hanging or guillotining would probably be more humane than most of the methods in use today - and with administration of a strong sedative beforehand even more so.
Re: The Electric Chair That Might Soon Be Used in Tennessee
#38All this complication around methods of execution baffles me. Why don’t we use a massive dose of fentanyl or some other opioid? I’ve got to be missing something, because that seems like a simple, one-step process that doesn’t risk the pain of paralytics and potassium chloride. I think the death penalty is a useless relic, but if we’re going to do it, why make it so bizarre?
The whole point of death penalties is to kill someone gruesomely as a warning to everyone else. Electric chairs do that, opioids not so much.
But that’s definitely not the point of lethal injection. It was adopted as a “humane” way of executing the condemned. So, for those who truly want a painless and non-messy death, it really isn’t as hard as they’re making it on themselves.
A handful of sleeping pills and a solid dose of Fentanyl will do it.
Re: The Electric Chair That Might Soon Be Used in Tennessee
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd say use carbon monoxide. No taste or odor, no sense of suffocation, just a quiet loss of consciousness and then death.
Nitrogen gas appears to be what states* are looking into [1] [2]. [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudenc... [2] http://time.com/3749879/nitrogen-gas-execution-oklahoma-leth... *Edit: Changed "statesn" to "states".
Gas chambers herewecome!
Re: The Electric Chair That Might Soon Be Used in Tennessee
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understand the desire to make it humane. But killing someone is not particularly humane in the first place. You also have to wonder about whether it’s worth making killing someone super humane since, you know, they’re gonna die anyway. So they have an unpleasant few seconds, or perhaps minutes, and then they’re dead. I mean, they just suffered some 10 years or more of imprisonment, often solitary, which is extremel…
It has nothing to do with being humane and everything to do with appearing humane and, even more importantly, avoiding association with otherwise extremely similar killing. Shooting prisoners in the head would be humane, but it would invite comparison to terrorists, revolutionaries, and other unsavories. However warranted the comparisons are, dressing up executions in medical nonsense avoids them, so our government d…
Agreed. Yet they somehow manage to over-complicate the medical dressing up.