The principled objection of pharmaceutical companies to supply drugs for lethal injections of condemned prisoners has led states like Ohio to delay executions for want of those drugs. Nebraska is desperately trying to import them from India. (Of course, the governors could also call off the execution.) Meanwhile, some states and legislators (Republicans, of course) are considering going back to the tried and true methods of hanging, firing squads, and even electric chairs. Alabama.com reports;
Other death penalty states also are looking at alternatives to lethal injection. Tennessee passed a law last year to reinstate the electric chair if it can’t get lethal drugs, and Utah has reinstated the firing squad as a backup method.
Oklahoma approved nitrogen as an alternative method. But that’s just as flawed as lethal injection because it confuses medicine with punishment, said Robert Blecker, a New York Law School professor who favors capital punishment for the worst offenders.
Blecker, author of “The Death of Punishment: Searching for Justice Among the Worst of the Worst,” notes there has never been a botched execution by firing squad.
“How we kill those whom we rightfully detest should in no way resemble how we put to sleep beloved pets and how we anesthetize ourselves,” he said.
But of course we shouldn’t confuse “medicine with punishment,” for that leads to less violent and more humane ways to kill someone. We mustn’t have that.
The electric chair is, of course, a horrible way to die, and many executions using it have been botched. The firing squad used to be standard procedure in Utah: it’s how Gary Gilmore was executed in 1977 (he had requested the execution). Here’s what the Utah setup looks like (photo from Ala.com):
When opposing lethal injection, Robert Blecker clearly desires MORE SUFFERING. What a horrible man he must be! But there is still no rational excuse for executing prisoners when compared to the alternative of life in prison without parole. Executions are not deterrents, they eliminate the possibility of exoneration if new evidence is found, and of actual rehabilitation, which can occur. (See my earlier piece on Norway, whose maximum sentence is 21 years for any crime, but can be extended if prisoners aren’t considered rehabilitated.) The only motive for state execution is retribution, pure and simple—the motivation touted by Robert Blecker.
By the way, here’s Blecker, and part of his profile—taken from the New York Law School’s own faculty page!
“With a gleam in his eye, Robert Blecker, a nationally known retributivist advocate of the death penalty, has managed to alienate both sides of the debate on the politically divisive and morally complex issue of capital punishment. But his position as designated outcast is nothing new, nor is his strongly held conviction that the most vicious and callous offenders deserve to die and that society is morally obliged to execute those “worst of the worst” criminals.”
Mocking Ohio’s efforts to get the drugs, The Onion has an article that is at once grim and hilarious, “Desperate Ohio now exploring homeopathic execution methods.” I’ll reproduce it all as well as the photograph atop the piece:
COLUMBUS, OH—Facing a critical shortage of key lethal injection drugs with over 100 inmates currently waiting on the state’s death row, desperate Ohio officials announced Tuesday that they were now exploring homeopathic execution methods. “Supply restrictions prevent us from obtaining the thiopental sodium or pentobarbital used under our old system, but we’re confident that our new combination of noxious herbs and lethal dilutions will allow us to swiftly and humanely execute our worst offenders via natural means,” said Ohio prisons spokesperson Michael Ewert, adding that the state had consulted with a number of leading homeopaths, gurus, and yogis to ensure their new, holistic method of capital punishment would be effective for killing inmates in mind, body, and soul. “The linchpin of our new system is a potent three-herb cocktail of foxglove, wolfsbane, and deadly nightshade, which will shut down the inmate’s chakras one by one before completely extinguishing their ch’i and then, finally, stopping their heart.” At press time, Ewert confirmed that the state had scrapped the new procedure after an inmate’s spirit had been trapped at the threshold of the natural world for three hours before finally passing into a state of infinite wisdom.
I’m not sure they get homeopathy quite right here, though they do mention “lethal dilutions” (i.e., execution by water), and there’s no water in the photo; but it’s still funny.
h/t: Barry
If there is a hell, it is pretty clear who will go there.
I don’t know. Anyone who would design hell might be on his side.
Execution by water would be pretty easy.
I’m reminded of the homeopathic doctor who fell out of a boat and died of an overdose
By air too. 10% Oxygen. A little fatigue, confusion, and then unconsciousness.
Becker is the guy who Michael Portillo spoke to on his documentary about alternative ways of executing people. Becker was vehemently against a painless death.
What a slimeball. But I guess that’s why his own profile points out that he’s alienated both sides.
I’m actually ambivalent about the firing squad. Yes absolutely I think being shot in the chest causes much more immediate pain than lethal injection or some other methods. But for me (YMMV), the psychological angst/pain associated with the run up to your final moments is a factor too. I’d rather be marched out in front of witnesses 5 minutes before the shot and stand up, on my own, than spend my last two hours strapped down to a guerny in a theater with people in literal frakking theater seats watching me the whole time. Street clothes vs. medical paper gown? Time under observation? These things matter to me too, not just the physical pain part.
If we’re really, truly going to murder prisoners, there’s really only one method that could even remotely be hypothetically considered justifiable.
First, remember that crimes are always prosecuted by the state on behalf of the people.
So, the prisoner is hogtied and left on the courtyard of the capitol building.
The executive of the state — the governor for the states, the President for federal crimes — goes to the prisoner. The executive is barefoot and without any other implements; clothing for modesty, but the clothing may not be removed. It’s then up to the executive to personally execute the prisoner by whatever means the executive is capable of. Beating, strangulation, biting…that’s the executive’s personal choice. But it has to be done by the executive, personally, without tools.
As the personal representative of the people and the single person with the unquestioned authority to commute or pardon the prisoner’s sentence for any reason or no reason at all, it morally falls upon the executive’s shoulders that the prisoner’s life should be in his hands. It therefore only follows that the prisoner’s death should physically be in his hands as well.
If an executive can bring himself, emotionally and physically, to kill a captive prisoner, in cold blood, in public, without the use of tools…and to himself politically survive the ordeal…then I’d be willing to concede that there might have been hypothetical justification for the killing. I likely wouldn’t agree that the hypothetical had merit, but I’d at least consider the possibility.
Anything less than that is nothing but the rankest and vilest and most shameful cowardice on the part of all concerned.
b&
Shoeless…that’s a nice touch. Fingernails sharpened into daggers?
Sure, but it won’t make much difference. Fingernails will break long before they can stab very far.
b&
This made me remember the Star Trek fight music.
Yes, I realize my smart ass remarks don’t really move the conversation forward. I am a bad person.
Some damned good music came out of the TV studios of past eras!
…and some badly-choreographed action scenes, too…but the music was fantastic!
b&
How is that not cruel and unusual?
I don’t see it as cowardice to use tools to execute prisoners. I’m generally opposed to the death penalty but have no problem using technology to make it less traumatic to the victim as long as we’re going to do it. My point was that “trauma” is not limited to the pain you feel in the last few moments. It includes the build up and your state of mind during the process. Hours strapped down in a hospital gown while a theater of people watch you can be as much a form of trauma and pain as a large-caliber physical puncture of skin and nerves.
It wouldn’t be significantly worse for the victim. Cruel and unusual? Sure — but no more cruel and no more unusual than any other execution method in practice today.
But it would, first of all, be far more honest and transparent as to what’s actually being done and by whom…and, secondly, with that honesty, the bar would be raised to the point that no more executions would ever happen again.
Can you imagine, especially in this day and age, any governor or the President personally executing somebody with his bare hands? Or said governor or President making it to the next election before being recalled or impeached, even on trumped-up charges if necessary?
The people would not tolerate such naked brutality in their representative leadership — yet they cheer the exact same brutality when fully clothed in the mystique of the execution chamber.
Fuck that shit. Strip the evil bare. These people have moral blood on their hands; they damned well can handle actual real blood on their hands. If they’re going to morally swim in the blood of their victims, they might as well literally physically drown in it. And those cheering them on need to be liberally splattered in the blood, too. The blood on their faces most emphatically should not be merely figurative.
Now do you understand how cowardly the current system really is?
b&
Darn I just replied without putting in email. Sorry PCC! Well, the short version is I see Ben’s suggestion as far more cruel and unusual as other forms of execution so reject it. IF we’re going to execute, I’m okay with trying to do ‘least-traumatic’ versions…but trauma beyond mere physical pain needs to be considered in that.
The general approach bears consideration … but Homo sapiens is very much a tool-making animal. I’d allow him to use a tool. Which he made himself.
Does Utah have sufficient mineral resources for knapping a decent knife? Obsidian, or a good quartzite? Seems so.
The last person to be executed in Utah was Ronnie Gardner in 2010…and it was by firing squad.
Just slightly off-course from the subject but I was reminded of a manager at work, when discussing the inside company fighting and finger pointing. His best remark was – Ready, Fire, Aim.
a few more liberal justices added to the supreme court and maybe the death penalty will be gone for good.
the composition of the supreme court is one of the most important issues of the 2016 election.
a few more scalias or alitos on the court and teacher-led christian prayers will return to public schools and it will be open season on racial minorities and lgbts.
And women…
Christ Almighty. Just go down to the street corner, score enough H to cause an overdose, and have the perp go out happy.
Not enough pain involved for a death penalty advocate.
Hey, if it’s pain that Blecker wants, how about burning at the stake?
Worked pretty good for the RC Church in the 15th Century.
Decapitation and crucifixion seem to work for the Saudis. /sarcasm
All of the expected replies to my post have been, well, posted. 😉
Does Ohio have no tall buildings?
/@
Define, “tall.”
It’s got this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_Tower
…but its hight in feet is about the same as the height of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Khalifa
in meters.
Clearly, it is thereby demonstrated that the Islamic world has at least three times the commitment to the execution of criminals as does Ohio.
b&
I’m sure they have helicopters.
Once the French perfected the guillotine, the executions were somewhat humane. The ones that were botched up until then though….eek.
The guillotine was designed as a humane method of execution, I believe. Of sheep.
But what’s so difficult? Nitrogen works perfectly well. Or carbon monoxide, I believe. And it’s pretty foolproof, just keep the gas turned on for long, long beyond the survivability time and you won’t have any crippled half-dead brain-danaged victims drooling and staggering and twitching untidily around the place.
Cut the smack with strychnine.
The Onion is often brilliant, as it is here. But I see an opportunity of a different form of dual mockery has been missed b/c the writer of the Onion piece did not understood homeopathy. Homeopathy is the idea that dilution and shaking of a drug amplifies the drug b/c water has memory.
So one could take the remaining amount of execution drugs (thiopental sodium or pentobarbital), and run it thru the homeopathic amplification procedure and have an unlimited supply of it. I am of course being sarcastic.
But in homeopathy, diluted magic potions have the opposite effects of the ingredients before dilution. Caffeine makes people alert, so magic diluted caffeine makes people sleepy.
So, magical diluted water memory barbiturates should make people alert and energetic.
…and magic diluted water memory death potions should make people immortal….
b&
And thus homeopathic lethal poisons should make one immortal?
Great minds, Ben…
Lots of telepathetic people here….
b&
The solution (pardon the pun) is trivial.
As water keeps people alive, dilute the magic potion water to homeopathic concentrations and you’ll have stuff that kills people.
I would love to see diluted water.
Wouldn’t purified water be diluted water? Everything else has stuff in it, especially the ocean.
Maybe you are referring to the point that ‘like treats like’. Where for example a treatment for pain might be something that causes pain.
But one of the two batty principles of homeopathy is “like cures like” — so diluting poisons would only make the recipient stronger. To make a homeopathic execution drug one would have to dilute something that’s good for you — dark chocolate, or perhaps a fine Kona coffee.
Homeopathic broccoli.
That’d give George W. Bush superpowers.
Let’s think this through a bit, though. Water is essential to life, right? So, an homeopathetic preparation of water should be lethal? That means all we have to do is take some pure water, dilute it in pure water, shake it, dilute it some more, keep repeating a lot, after which we’ll have a concentrated potion of anti-water so powerful the tiniest drop will kill all life on Earth!
b&
It strikes me that whisky is literally “water of life”, so homeopathic whisky should be highly lethal. (That’s why I don’t water down mine.)
“Water of life” seems a favorite term for distilled spirits; see aquavit, eau de vie, and so on. I suspect a cunning linguist could trace the etymology to some ancient distillery.
b&
The problem is that people are reading “dilute” but translating it into “dilute with water”.
In petrogenesis work, for an example, we frequently deal with water dilutely dissolved in a solvent of molten silicate minerals. So homeopathic water in such a solution should be perfectly adequate.
Someone should think of Luke’s father.
Yes, but how good is the rock’s memory? The magic doesn’t work if the rock doesn’t remember the contaminants….
b&
Rocks have excellent memories. they’re a bit lacking in communication skills, needing assistance from things like socks and ion microprobes to communicate in detail, but there’s nothing wrong with the memories of rocks.
So, the infinite torture Jesus has in store for these people the moment they die isn’t enough, and we’ve got to get an head start?
The compassionate thing for the Christians to do would be first to put off Jesus’s wrath for as long as possible and to mitigate suffering as much as possible before then. But, then again, compassion is a foreign concept to Christianity — as obviously evidenced by Jesus’s own eagerness to infinitely torture everybody at the drop of an hat in the first place.
b&
If Christians really believed in the afterlife, they would not support the death penalty.
I think it is because they are wholly unsure the transcendent is real, therefore they have to shovel on the pain and suffering that their made up prophets aren’t going to get around to doing.
Some don’t. The Catholic church is officially against the death penalty, for example. And not a few Christians are very interested in converting criminals in order to save them from Hell. Of course, many others are as vindictive as can be imagined. Inconsistency is a hallmark.
A lot of it is just cherry-picking — the usual salad-bar Christianity. If hellfire is good enough for Jesus to use on sinners, what’s the problem with a bit of earthly torture for criminals?
b&
I once converted an ultra-conservative Roman Catholic (to death penalty opposition) by pointing out this quote
“Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends.”
Gandalf in “The Lord Of the Rings: The Two Towers”
There is a blood-curdling scene of a botched electrocution in Stephen King’s “The Green Mile”. It is deliberately botched by a sadistic security guard who has a grudge against that prisoner. There’ve been a few times I felt like screaming in the movies- it’s the only time I’ve felt like screaming reading a book.
Watching The Green Mile was very difficult for me too. It is one of those movies that I would rate as excellent, but I really have no desire to ever watch it again.
I came across the relevant scene in the novel on a weekend I was visiting my parents, and yelled “Oh, GROSS!” The folks wanted to know what this was about and I said you don’t want to know.
That same evening, my father and I went out to a cabaret to see famous Judy Garland impersonator, Jim Bailey. We were sat next to an elderly lady who was also reading…The Green Mile. My father leaned over and said, “My son tells me there’s a very gross disturbing scene in that book, but he won’t tell me what it is”. She rolled her eyes and slightly laughed and said, “Oh, lands sake, Yes inDEED.”
I know it won’t be a popular opinion in these parts, but I happen to agree with Blecker that retribution is a perfectly legitimate reason for applying the death penalty. Put quite simply, I’m satisfied that the very worst of the worst criminals – principally sadistic, serial or child killers, and terrorists – deserve to be killed. I’m not interested in rehabilitating such people, even if it were possible to do so. And I believe that Society is perfectly within its rights to rid itself of them, permanently, and not have to spend a fortune keeping them accomodated in prison for decades on end. I acknowledge the theoretical possibility of a miscarriage of justice, but in practice I don’t consider it a significant objection. The guilt of the worst criminals is very seldom in any real doubt.
As for the method, the Chinese practice of a single bullet to the back of the head seems to me the best option – quick, instantly lethal, more or less foolproof, and requiring no complex technology or involvement of medical personnel.
I expect to be a very lonely voice in putting forward this view, in this company, but there you have it. This is a civilised forum and I think it’s sometimes useful for unpopular or controversial views to be aired.
I’ll ignore your barbaric bloodlust for the moment and simply point out that prosecutorial misconduct is rampant in this country. Even ignoring the many well-documented cases of such, it’s right there in the statistics: even after controlling for confounding factors, the best indicators of the likelihood that a citizen will be murdered by the state are the victim’s skin color and net financial worth. Low-income Blacks are no more likely to commit capital crimes than anybody else, but they’re far more likely to be the victims of state-sanctioned murder.
b&
If you think that sanctioning the execution of a very small number of felons – the worst of the worst, and only then at the end of a long and exhaustive judicial process – constitutes “barbaric bloodlust”, then you obviously set the bar for that very low. What term would you apply to Ted Bundy or Jihadi John ?
And if your argument about the disproportionate application of the death penalty to low-income black people is valid (I don’t know the statistics as well as you, but I’ll concede the point), then that’s a clear imperative to overhaul and improve the judicial system in the United States so that such inequities are rectified. However it doesn’t negate my argument that people, (including “low-income blacks”) who are correctly found guilty of the most heinous crimes should face the possibility of capital punishment.
You’re exhorting us to kill people who cannot possibly pose any significant future threat to anybody. That’s the very definition of bloodlust. In this day and age, any form of bloodlust is barbaric.
What term would you apply to Ted Bundy or Jihadi John ?
Norway has it about right. No more than 21 years with the option for extension should recidivism be considered significant. Bundy would likely be a significant risk for lifetime recidivism. Jihadi John could potentially come to his senses. And during those 21 years, the focus must be on rehabilitation, not punishment. Society failed those people spectacularly in the first place as evidenced by the horrors focussed upon them; to fail them a second time is simply inexcusable.
You’ve just conceded that the people convicted of the most heinous crimes, in too many cases, didn’t actually commit said crimes…and yet you still want to kill them anyway?
And you object to being labeled a barbarian with bloodlust?
Had you suggested a moratorium on murdering prisoners until after judicial reform, I might have cut you some slack. But that that wasn’t the first thing that you chose to write, that you instead chose to double down, demonstrates that, yes, indeed, you’re a bloodthirsty barbarian who cares more about satiating your own bloodlust than building a peaceful, non-violent, and just society.
b&
“…you’re a bloodthirsty barbarian who cares more about satiating your own bloodlust than building a peaceful, non-violent, and just society.”
Well, I would carry on this discussion but in the face of such spittle-flecked abuse I doubt if it’s worth the effort. In your sanctimonious fervour you’ve managed to misrepresent virtually everything I said. I knew at the start that mine would be a minority view but I thought a civil exchange might be possible. Obviously not.
You must excuse me, I have some bloodlust to satiate.
What civility is there in killing those who don’t want to be killed?
I’m at an utter loss to think of anything more uncivilized than that; it’s the very antithesis of civilization.
If ever there were an oxymoron, “civil execution” is it.
b&
I’ll just look at this pragmatically. The “very small number of felons” who meet the criteria you’re describing is extremely small. The fact that one of your examples is from 40 years ago kind of attests to that rarity. So you’re talking about a form of punishment that nationwide would be justified maybe once a year. Is it really worth every state having the infrastructure and procedures in place to carry out such a rare punishment, when it’s simpler just to incarcerate those criminals for life? The Bundy case illustrates another down side to the death penalty – how many unsolved murders did he commit? I don’t believe that the majority of mass murderers will easily confess to their crimes, but it definitely shuts down one avenue of investigation when the suspect is dead.
Perhaps the worst of the worst deserve to be killed. What about the affects, short, medium and long term on the individuals that perform the executions and the society as a whole?
I think that price is too high. The worst of the worst have presumably already negatively impacted individuals, severely, and I see no reason deal with them in such a way that involves additional negative impact when there are viable alternatives. The cost of life imprisonment is a small price to pay to avoid that in my opinion.
Not to mention that the way things are currently life imprisonment is less expensive than the death penalty. Yeah, it doesn’t have to be. After all it doesn’t cost much for a single bullet or even for the more expensive lethal injection cocktail. But do you really think it would be wise to remove all the processes that cause the death penalty to be so expensive? And accept the increase in executions of innocents that would without doubt occur?
Which leads to your opinion that the theoretical possibility of mistakes is so slight that it is not a significant objection. If it is probable that a single mistake will be made on average once a year would that price be acceptable to you? Once every 5 years? Every 10? How many innocent lives is it okay to extinguish to satisfy the emotional desires of people who want retribution? Despite your skepticism the evidence is pretty clear that innocents have been executed. Given politics, people that feel as you do, and the inevitable corruption and greed that exists in our law enforcement and justice systems, and merely chance, it is highly improbable that we could devise and operate a system that didn’t occasionally execute someone who should not have been.
There are crimes committed that are so heinous that my gut reaction is “Execute the bastard.” HOWEVER, the issues of executing a person innocent of the crime, constitutional questions of capital punishment, and even the morality of state-sponsored executions mean
I do not advocate the gut reaction response.
If nothing else, life imprisonment is much less expensive than the death penalty, as Darrelle points out. One would think the expense alone would have those more people advocating for a better use of tax dollars.
I feel the gut reaction frequently. This is simply being human. And the tit-for-tat reaction may be hard wired, may even be a prerequisite for social behavior (e.g. you know that defecting is likely to cost you because other people are like you innately).
Viscerally, one wants reciprocity, for the villain to get what harm they gave. In a very real sense, though, this is not possible. Some killers have engaged in sadistic torture of their victims, for example. To pay them back in kind, we would have to become sadistic torturers ourselves.
At it’s core, this is the problem for civilized society. We can either repudiate what we hate, or we can join in and become another facet of it.
I think when you look world wide, there is scant evidence that joining in accomplishes anything except that it allows us to give into an emotional impulse. It is not, for example, more dangerous (in terms or murder risk) to live in countries that have no death penalty than in those that do. Quiet the contrary.
“What about the affects … on the individuals that perform the executions …”
Hemlock, then?
/@
What is the purpose of such punishment? Here are some possibilities, you can weigh in on which of these purposes you think validates executions:
Deterrence
Make the victim’s survivors feel better.
Make society feel better.
“Justice”… achieving some kind of Platonic balance in some abstract thing called “Justice”
Cheap removal from society.
For each of these, you’d have to ask if capital punishment really achieves the end, or if the end is even meaningful.
You’ve just talked yourself into the job.
I’ve killed more people than I want to. I wouldn’t do the job that you’ve just volunteered for.
I don’t see any reason to make your self-appointed job easier. If you want to use a tool, make it yourself. Rope, club, laser pistol – whatever you can make for yourself.
Dave,
They can’t deserve to suffer for what they have done because they don’t have the sort of free will that could make that possible. They are fundamentally just unlucky to have the past they have. You are fundamentally lucky that you don’t have the past they have.
I am strongly against the death penalty — I think it is barbaric for a state to kill its citizens in the name of justice, and the inequities and false convictions are well documented.
All that said, I really don’t understand why it is so hard to figure out a humane way to kill people. For example, at least 200 people in the US die unintentionally every year from carbon monoxide poisoning. Inhaling concentrated CO will cause painless unconsciousness after two or three breaths, and death in a couple of minutes. Similarly for breathing helium (which is a suicide method widely recommended by right-to-die organizations). Both of these are widely-available industrial gases, so states should be able to acquire them quite easily.
If states really wanted to kill people gently and painlessly, they could. It is a further indication of the barbarism of capital punishment that only more visually spectacular methods of execution are considered.
I agree.
I’ve often thought you could just drop a multi-ton slab of concrete on them and be done with it, if you just want quick and hard to screw up. Might even satisfy the vindictive itch that is the real reason that people (not me) are for the death penalty.
DAESH has figured out an even cheaper way to achieve the same effect: defenestration.
b&
Yes. And besides the inequities and wrongful convictions, there’s a logical fallacy at the heart of the death penalty which should immediately rule it out.
The State says it’s wrong to murder people, and so to prove it will execute anybody who does…
I live in a country where the death penalty was abandoned – about 1960, if memory serves.
BTW, the herbal cocktail in the Onion article would be quite effective at full strength. Compulsory suicide by herbs was was how Socrates died.
I am reminded of the words of Dostoevsky that “Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands” because of its cold-blooded and deliberate nature.
I am sure that those who still advocate this repulsive act in the twenty-first century will come to be regarded by history in the same way that their barbaric European counterparts from the Middle Ages are today.
“Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands”
That really does capture my feeling on the subject. I don’t want a government capable of such a thing.
Ramen.
The worst form of murder is premeditated murder in cold blood, right? Is that not something we can all agree upon, whether or not we support the state-sanctioned murder of convicted criminals?
What could be more premeditated, more clinically cold-blooded than what happens in the states’s execution chambers?
Imagine you’ve got two prisoners sharing a cell. One of them is a murderer with a death sentence; the other is a rapist with no murder convictions and a life sentence. The rapist suffocates the murderer with a pillow while the murderer sleeps. The rapist is now going to be convicted of murder and executed for doing exactly what the state was going to do anyway — and the rapist even used a less-excruciating means to kill the murderer.
How anybody can even pretend to paint such barbarity as civilized and humane is utterly beyond me.
b&
I’m curious. What do you do with the rapist in that case? Give him another cell mate? Put him in solitary, which is what he might have wanted to begin with?
It would depend entirely on the individual and whatever was most likely to maximize his chances for a successful rehabilitation. Mental health care is far from a precise science, and we can already be confident that there’ll never be any sort of one-size-fits-all solution.
b&
I don’t think that prisoners want solitary….that’s normally viewed as punishment.
It would depend upon who your cellmate is and then there’s the other issue of sex and not wanting it.
“…there has never been a botched execution by firing squad.”
Ask the Romanovs.
The Onion has an even better take on this:
http://www.theonion.com/video/ohio-replaces-lethal-injection-with-humane-new-hea-36077
It’s a video: Ohio Replaces Lethal Injection With Humane New Head-Ripping-Off Machine.
And it is beyond beautiful.
It’s really embarrassing that we are so desperate to kill people. Maybe the universe is trying to tell us something?
I question the actual effectiveness of hanging, firing squads, and electric chairs.
Much more testing needs to be done.
I suggest the legislature members volunteer to have these tested upon them.
Then we will know for sure whether it is a benefit to society.
As long as its done as a proper randomised controlled trial.
Oh, I think we can manage that.
All legislators are given a slip of paper on which they each write a single method of execution — any means at all, including, perhaps, “old age of natural causes despite comprehensive end-of-life care.” All submitted forms of execution are prepared to be carried out on the statehouse courtyard on a given day. The legislators assemble behind a screen, don an hood to prevent identification, draw a slip, and are escorted outside (still hooded) where the slip is handed to the executioner to read. After all the legislators have been executed by their randomly-drawn means, whichever method had previously been selected as the most popular is made the one used by the state.
A side note: since at least some of the legislators will go for the “old age” method, implementation of the death penalty will have to wait until after the last of those who draw those slips die. Obviously, it’ll then be up to that future generation to decide if they want to go through with the implementation…but they’ll certainly have a wealth of data to draw from!
b&
I would write on my slip “10 kg of C4”. Nothing like going out with a bang!
(And of course there’s a tiny chance there might be 72 randy virgins waiting for me…)
cr
This Pete Ricketts, the gov. in Nebraska is a real piece of work. The legislature over-road his veto of the bill to stop capital punishment so he started a movement to have the people vote it back in during the next election and is throwing money at that. He is also working to bring the drugs in from India so they will be ready to go, soon as the vote goes his way.
Welcome governor crazy. A good family man and a great Catholic.
I should also report that Ricketts has ordered the two drugs they are missing, although they got into trouble attempting to import them due to documentation issues. They currently have the Potassium chloride (to stop the heart) but have ordered Sodium thiopental (to knock out) and Pancuronium bromide (for paralysis). I believe they said the stock on hand is expired.
Homeopathic injection: Drowning. or perhaps over basting?
One thing shown here is that pharmaceutical companies are not the through-and-through forces of evil they are sometimes portrayed as being.
Of course they aren’t.
heck,they can find good ol’ locoweed (datura) right on a stream bank. Why use anything else?
just found some myself, didn’t know it grew in PA.
Hmmm, Wikipedia says that
Is it really as bad as you’re implying? An All-Murican Hemlock?
eating the plant itself, especially the seeds, is quite a bit different than eating the meat or milk. the seeds aren’t very big and “The highest concentration occurs in the seeds: approximately 0.1 mg of atropine per seed or 3-6 mg/50-100 seeds.(4) An estimated lethal dose in an adult is >10 mg atropine or >2-4 mg scopolamine.(5)” erowid website (numbers are references)
It does seem that the poisoning isn’t as dangerous as actions under the influence. water hemlock *is* the all-murican hemlock 🙂
That’s quite low doses. I think there was an Edinburgh surgeon a decade or so ago who attempted to solve his marital problems with atropine.
“scopolamine” – hmmm, not the “truth serum” I was thinking of. But I remember it’s alternative name “hyoscine”from somewhere.
Glad to see how everybody on this site is so supportive of the death penalty. Last year I caught an NPR interview with the guy in TX who is in charge of executing those whose appeals have all run out. It was at a time when there was quite a bit of hand wringing over botched executions in other states. This guy (wish I could remember his name and title) was almost bragging about how efficient TX was when it comes to executions. They have all the right chemicals and never botch the job. So my solution for all those states who are squeamish, don’t have the right chemicals, etc. Just send your death row inmates to TX. TX will do the job right. No problem. And, if TX should run out of chemicals, there’s always lynching. That state has a storied history in that regard. Problem solved.
To assist the gentlemen in their search, here is the definitive list:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJNR2EpS0jw
Hopefully it may give them some inspiration.
cr