61–70 of 73 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a fantastic documentary called 'How to kill a human being', with Michael Portillo (former UK politician), made back in 2008. It covers this quite nicely - Includes an interview with a death penalty advocate and asks about a 'theoretical painless execution method' and the advocate agrees that if such thing were available it would be ideal. Then later, after Portillo has done a bunch of investigation, hypoxia (…
What is a doco?
Regardless 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.
To me it seems incredibly anachronistic, even more than the US the odd one out in the First world for retaining the death penalty at all.
Over in England they felt that viewing an execution could encourage spectacle rather than sentence. After some changes in public opinion and an enquiry public execution ended sometime in the mid 1800s, before they even ended beheading and quartering for treason! The death penalty itself lasted another century.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a fantastic documentary called 'How to kill a human being', with Michael Portillo (former UK politician), made back in 2008. It covers this quite nicely - Includes an interview with a death penalty advocate and asks about a 'theoretical painless execution method' and the advocate agrees that if such thing were available it would be ideal. Then later, after Portillo has done a bunch of investigation, hypoxia (…
What is a doco?
I'm being an egg (https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Egg).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a fantastic documentary called 'How to kill a human being', with Michael Portillo (former UK politician), made back in 2008. It covers this quite nicely - Includes an interview with a death penalty advocate and asks about a 'theoretical painless execution method' and the advocate agrees that if such thing were available it would be ideal. Then later, after Portillo has done a bunch of investigation, hypoxia (…
So is your thought that the death penalty advocate really doesn't want to do away with the inmate, but instead to punish them?
As a result it's hard to have a conversation when the two sides are ostensibly in agreement, but in reality have a fundamental point of contention. If you can't get everyone on board with 'capital punishment should not be about punishment or revenge', in terms of what they fundamentally believe and not just what they'll openly state, you're not going to be able to make headway.
The documentary illustrated that problem very well, I thought.
All 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.
All 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?
That would require either the state finding a legal source of fentanyl that is willing to sell them the drug for that purpose (challenging, given most pharma companies refuse due to some mix of principles and not wanting their product to be associated with death) or the state contracting with black market suppliers. Given the state imprisons low level illicit drug suppliers, I'm guessing the hypocrisy of granting leg…
More power to him.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Opioid overdose is not as reliably deadly as people think. Yes, it CAN kill, but it doesn’t always, and not in a defined time period, and not always cleanly - respiratory arrest vs. cardiac arrest vs. brain death. The goal of the protocol is to have a process that has a very high likelihood of causing death within a fairly short period.
Why not just dose continually until death occurs?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I thought question: what a more severe form of execution be a deterrent? Let’s say the guillotine is brought back. Would that act as a deterrent?
Most crimes that would qualify for the death penalty are the result of psycopaths (serial killers, and such), or wanton criminals - if someone is comitting armed robbery armed an heavy firepower, they're prepared to die - by either the bullet or the government.