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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or carbon monoxide?
Carbon monoxide is an awful way to die, as it triggers the hypercapnic alarm response. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercapnic_alarm_response Inert gas asphyxiation would be a more "humane" way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inert_gas_asphyxiation
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or carbon monoxide?
Or you know, literally, just a gun to the head. Out of all possible execution methods that were tried in the last century, the lethal injection seems to be one of the most horrific ones, possibly beaten by the electric chair.
I always thought that the movie, Capote, had the most visceral depiction of execution I've seen in film. The idea of being led to your death, the hood, the waiting for the platform to drop. Oof, makes my heart race a bit. The hanging or shooting may be quick, but the moments leading up to it certainly are not. And imagine if you were innocent!
The movie 'Pierrepoint' shows this pretty well (and has a very good performance by Timothy Spall as the eponymous professional but slightly conflicted hangman).
Why not a firing squad? I’ve never understood why we are so concerned with the pain and suffering of a condemned murderer. I get that the 8th amendment is there and we shouldn’t want to make anyone suffer but some criminals are alive simply because it’s illegal to kill them.
For federal executions, the Trump DOJ changed the rules effective December 24, 2020 to allow federal executions to use any method that the state in which the prisoner was sentenced allows so federal prisoners sentenced in Utah could now be executed via firing squad.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or carbon monoxide?
Or you know, literally, just a gun to the head. Out of all possible execution methods that were tried in the last century, the lethal injection seems to be one of the most horrific ones, possibly beaten by the electric chair.
I always thought that the movie, Capote, had the most visceral depiction of execution I've seen in film. The idea of being led to your death, the hood, the waiting for the platform to drop. Oof, makes my heart race a bit. The hanging or shooting may be quick, but the moments leading up to it certainly are not. And imagine if you were innocent!
This is one reason why, when the UK had capital punishment, a premium was placed on speed. The condemned cell was set up a few yards from the scaffold and the idea was that the time from the executioner entering the cell to the trap being dropped could be well under one minute. The movie 'Pierrepoint' shows this pretty well (and has a very good performance by Timothy Spall as the eponymous professional but slightly c…
"It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working — bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming — all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned — reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone — one mind less, one world less.
It's powerful stuff, whatever your thoughts on capital punishment.
[1] https://orwell.ru/library/articles/hanging/english/e_hanging
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or carbon monoxide?
Or you know, literally, just a gun to the head. Out of all possible execution methods that were tried in the last century, the lethal injection seems to be one of the most horrific ones, possibly beaten by the electric chair.
(Personally, I find the death sentence in any form barbaric, given how it nullifies any form of recourse in cases of wrongful conviction. It might however be an agreeable option to offer "voluntary execution" of some form: allow inmates convicted for life an alternative to using bedsheets in ways they weren't intended for. What a depressing topic, this.)