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US Executions Threaten Supply of Anaesthetic Used For Surgical Procedures
ananyo writes "Allen Nicklasson has had a temporary reprieve. Scheduled to be executed by lethal injection in Missouri on 23 October, the convicted killer was given a stay of execution by the state's governor, Jay Nixon, on 11 October — but not because his guilt was in doubt. Nicklasson will live a while longer because one of the drugs that was supposed to be used in his execution — a widely used anesthetic called propofol — is at the center of an international controversy that threatens millions of U.S. patients, and affects the way that U.S. states execute inmates. Propofol, used up to 50 million times a year in U.S. surgical procedures, has never been used in an execution. If the execution had gone ahead, U.S. hospitals could have lost access to the drug because 90% of the U.S. supply is made and exported by a German company subject to European Union regulations that restrict the export of medicines and devices that could be used for capital punishment or torture. This is not the first time that the E.U.'s anti-death-penalty stance has affected the U.S. supply of anesthetics. Since 2011, a popular sedative called sodium thiopental has been unavailable in the United States. 'The European Union is serious,' says David Lubarsky, head of the anesthesiology department at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in Florida. 'They've already shown that with thiopental. If we go down this road with propofol, a lot of good people who need anesthesia are going to be harmed.'"
We should just go back to hangings. It works for killing Nazis and war criminals.
I think a country/state that is very proud of (1) their inalienable right to own and wear guns, and (2) insists on killing people found guilty in a very imperfect process, should have the guts to just shoot those people. Executions aren't supposed to be nice, so just get over the squeamishness and just shoot the buggers.
Capital punishment is barbaric. Leave it back in ye olde days. Or maybe it just appeals to your blood lust?
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Don't understand why people are obsessed with "humane" executions.
FFS you're killing a guy, and it's supposed to be a punishment.
Let's just go back to a short rope and a tall tree at sunrise.
I never understood why they don't perform executions via massive heroin overdose. It's cheap, reliable in sufficient quantity, and they'd feel amazing right up until their heart stopped.
Without taking stand on the death penalty, I have to ask, why can't we make anaesthetics here, instead of buying it from overseas? is there some law that says we have to buy everything from overseas and not allow American workers to earn a living?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
They do make bullets in the USA, right?
Trolling is a art,
I think it's time that America invent, patent and produce it's own lethal injection drug.
And that we then move that production to China where cheap costs will allow us to execute 100x the number of people.
People that have turned to a life of crime because of losing their jobs to overseas manufacturers.
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
How does killing killers make us any better then the killers themselves?
Hegemony is no longer fun when it is Europe doing it to us in the USA.
(However, turnabout is fair play.)
Completely disregarding the whole capital punishment debate, history shows that eventually every place on the planet is going to have a natural disaster, trade dispute, regime change, or something else is going to disrupt production or distribution. If you don't have a second source that is completely independent, you are going to have a bad time.
It's quick, it doesn't miss, and doesn't need a doctor to operate it.
They are switching drugs in Missouri, while adding a team of compounding pharmacists, so the drugs will be made on site and therefore not subject to Europe's politics. Also some of the European flexing here is a direct result of NSA wiretapping.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
And I thought after Michael Jackson's death, the problematic Propofol supply would get better.
May it cause the powers that be to rethink ending a person's life out of some misguided and ultimately incorrect notion of "deterrence".
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Reading disorder??
As the summary says: the drug it imported from Germany. If used for execution even once, the EU ban would kick in, preventing Germany to import it. Import is banned - USA gets no drug, regardless if for executions or treating patients.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Hanging is too good for these people, they should be forced to live in American society.
Preface: Capital punishment is never justified because it cannot be appealed by new evidence once carried out.
THAT BEING SAID.
You're killing someone! Is it that hard?! WE DO IT ALL THE TIME FOR NO REASON AT ALL!
You didn't even read the summary, did you ?
Now, instead of not reading the TFA, it would appear that we're not even reading TFSummary.
The Slashdot commenting community is evolving like a Pokemon!
Maybe it's time for the US to take the hint and stop this barbaric and medieval practice?
Seriously, why does it not bother more Americans that by having the death penalty they find themselves in the illustrious company of countries such as Libya, Sudan, China, Iran, Iraq and North Korea (the "Axis of Evil") and Syria?
You should attempt to read the link.
The threat is that Germany would stop exporting the drug to the US as a whole. Then the US hospitals would no longer be able to resupply it.
I think the problem is, that if the US uses this anesthetic, other countries couldn't export it because it might be used in such a scenario. It's not an issue of a shortage, but rather, the inability of EU countries to export it if it is also used for execution. It's pretty ridiculous, given that it's less than a 1 in a million chance of it happening, but apparently that doesn't matter.
If I had to excuse any one country for being squeamish about how its chemical products are used, it would be Germany. (But maybe Gov Nixon could ask them if they had any leftover Zyklon B hanging around...I bet that stuff doesn't go bad...)
As European, I am sorry for those who can't access anesthetics: nevertheless, I absolutely blame capital penalty and I find EU point of view correct. As well as US adopted and still have embargo against Cuba for political reasons, thus condemning "good people" to lower access to medicines and other basic stuff, then Europeans are allowed to stop selling anesthetics that can be used for lethal injections.
Use all that heroin\crack\cocaine that gets seized for this purpose.
It does look like I missed the point of the article, but I was talking about the idea that a "shortage" of the traditional stock is becoming a problem, when you are only talking about a few dozen cases annually. You mean to tell me that you can't find something else to use that doesn't "threaten millions of patients"?
...of importing anaesthetics and to make them in the US instead.
I don't think this is intentionally a troll post, just an idiot who only read the headline, and not the summary or the article.
Because any drugs used in the executions are restricted when it comes to importing them into the US. That means if this drug Propofol is used in ONE execution, it will be restricted and will not be available for 50 million patients annually.
But you'd have to read the summary...
I could *perhaps* be convinced of the death penalty if the USA was willing to truly fund its justice system to ensure that trials were fair - And I mean fund to the tune of BILLIONS of dollars. You're never going to convince me of state-sanctioned killing while rich white guys are getting away with murder and poor black guys are being executed.
How costly would it be to flood the chamber with nitrogen?
On the downside, in some people's opinion, it's apparently not an unpleasant way to go*.
*because they've tried it on people in slightly less-than-lethal concentrations, before some wiseguy asks.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Europe doesn't have magic fairy dust that lets them manufacture drugs nobody else can.
If they are going to cut-off the US market, that opens up a HUGE opportunity for any other manufacturer to step in and produce it, without ANY competition in the US.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I do not support the death penalty, but if you have to have it, why make it complicated? Just slip on a mask and feed in pure nitrogen. Painless, panic free, lose consciousness in under 10 seconds, death in 2 minutes.
If we could just figure out how to execute murderers humanely using imported water, beer and wine we could fix our balance of trade without any tariffs. http://pierstransportation.wordpress.com/2013/05/14/top-u-s-imports-exports-with-europe/ Car parts would work too but its hard to figure out how we could do that humanely.
the idea that somehow by murdering prisoners we make society a better place is as ridiculous as having a doctor whos taken the hippocratic oath commit the execution. To kill a prisoner is to at best wash the states hands of their responsibility to do anything more constructructive, like engage in corrective efforts that beget the name "correctional institution" in the first place. At worst, its incredibly condescending to assume intelligent americans would be comforted with this pittance of "biblical retribution" we call execution.
And it is. Capital punishment is derived from, and entirely indistinguishable in the 21st century from, biblical retribution. The idea that killing the killer will somehow make everything OK is nothing more than a laughably exotic attempt by the state to appease constituents clammouring for a reduction in violent crime.
and there has been a reduction in violent crime in america since the 1970's. its not lauded however. Peace and low crime rates dont win elections. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States
so we gin up the voters with "suburban warzone" rhetoric and the voters insist on ever more stringent "tough on crime" criminal charges. We shuffle ever closer to a police state because we're told to. in turn our elected officials in contestable elections are morally reprehensible when facing a pink slip, so they fuel these flames for their own professional gain. our religious leaders sit idly by, as the notion of murdering the guilty is business as usual to them.
killing prisoners detracts from the big problem. low employment for unskilled labour combined with a gutted public education system and a criminal code designed to ensure everyone can be convicted if necessary is packing prisons to bursting. the 'wars' on drugs and the 3 strikes laws are nothing more than throwing sawdust on vomit. that if somehow we can contrive a repository for anyone not willing to live the life of a subservient peasant working 3 minimum wage part time jobs and living in squalor, then american is OK, freedom is preserved, and that pepperidge farm dream of the olden times punctuated by dean martin and bing crosby can go on unabated in the suburbs. the real problem is as a society, we have not accepted the fact that we cannot just ignore poor people. to do so created a culture, and class of individual that inevitably becomes determined with absolutely nothing to lose, and that person when they emerge will be as remorseless and callous as the hand of the free market under which they toiled.
Good people go to bed earlier.
If the EU position were a principled one, they would not be sending the same drugs to Iran. In fact, the policy remains popular among citizens in Europe.
#-#
Ad Astra Per Aspera
A rough road leads to the stars
Outsource, outsource, outsource everything!
We should be making the stuff we need here in the US. It's not like we don't have the manpower (what's the unemployment at again?) or the skills (so many college-educated people out of work). I'm tired of depending on others for our essential materials and being subject to their political whims.
Is always the right answer. Honestly, why cant we have a running man island where they all have to fight to the death? WE try and act as if we are civilized but in reality we are so far from it. And you know that the ratings on a TV show where inmates kill each other would be higher than the NFL has ever had.
It would fit perfectly with the completely corrupted and screwed up legal system we have, so why not just make the jump and go all the way? It would be highly profitable!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
And it's not getting any better either, is it?
Well sense we know the fucking formula, why in hell don't we simply invalidate the EU patent in the US and make it ourselves. Then it's not imported and there is no shortage. Hell that's what Taiwan did in regards to the Tamiflu (avian flu epidemic) when the Patent Holder refused to license it. They invalidated the patent for the public health and made it themselves. Got sued in world court and the court agreed with Taiwan. Public health trumped the damn patent law.
Of course, I'd much rather the revert to Hanging - ropes cheap and reusable plus mandate that hanging be public along with many of the other punishments as proscribed in Heinleins Star Ship Troopers novel - not the fucking tv series.
Fast Turtle
If access to the drug is the actual problem, then it just becomes a matter of diplomacy with the EU to get them to provide the drug. None of the arguments about capital punishment are the issue here. Have Canada buy it for us.
Why are you guys in the U.S. using lethal injections? Did you run out of stones? Can't sharpen an axe?
-- Using the preview button since 2005
....and assuming the point is not to punish them with the sort of pain and fear that they inflicted on their victims, why don't we just use that cow-killing boltgun thingy?
I mean, if we seriously believe that's "humane" why not?
-Styopa
Even the very wise cannot see all ends
HIGHLY misleading headline. I read the headline and thought, "wow, so many executions are occurring in the US that there's not enough of this drug for non-execution purposes"... which is a much more straightforward interpretation than what the article eventually gets into, which is that the use of the drug in a single execution would make an EU regulation kick in.
BOOOOOOO, slashdot editor. Boooo.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
For "those who are a threat to society," read "old people sucking up precious resources."
That's why we now have death panels.
If you're going to be barbaric enough to use the death penalty, you might as well go all the way and withold the anaesthetic.
We can't stop you from killing......
We simply don't want to have any part in it.
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
"If this hypothetic event hapens" and "taht hypothetic event happens" [repeat several times} then we are in deep trouble! There are mroe important things in the world to worry about.
There's little point in bickering about the method when the decision has already been made that the criminal is too dangerous/incorrigibly evil to live in society.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Welcome to America where killing our citizens is more important than saving their lives.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
The problem with your argument is that there are a number of people sentenced to death that are completely innocent. It also costs more to sentence someone to death in the US than life imprisonment.
You will *never* convince Americans that blowing someone's head off is merciful and common (as opposed to "cruel and unusual," like the electric chair).
An interesting fact about firing squads is one person has a blank.
"One of the sharpshooters is secretly armed with a blank round, which means that each shooter can rest comfortably in the knowledge that there is a 20% chance that she never shot the prisoner."
Firing Squad History
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
I am not responsible for the decisions of those who hold coercive authority over me. The notion is absurd, and fails to acknowledge that coercion requires that its target has no choice in the matter -- otherwise it cannot be coercion. The "social contract" theory (a popular rebuttal to the above) holds no water: a man cannot volunteer to be subject to coercion (as the "contract" ultimately claims), any more than he can coerce another man into volunteering. The two modes of human interaction, coercion and voluntary association (i.e. physical force vs. free association), are mutually exclusive and opposite. That is precisely what gives them meaning; they are defined in terms of each other.
Secondly, the reason why the death penalty should be abolished (and never should have existed in the first place) has nothing to do with ethics, or expense, or even philosophy. The reason is that government makes mistakes, and this particular mistake is the only one which is absolutely, utterly, 100% irreversible and impossible to restitute. Considering the statistics (the number of death-row inmates per year who are later found to be innocent), it is very probable that the US government has already executed an innocent man, likely more than one. This neatly defeats any notion that capital punishment serves innocent men.
You want cheap health care, but you want to be safe... This takes killers off the street making everyone safer... using a drug on only hospital patients only makes them safer
I don't understand why they would be screwing around with anesthetics like Propofol. Wouldn't it make more sense to go to the local vet or dog pound and get the same kind of drugs that are used to euthanize pets? We know these work effectively, and they shouldn't cause unnecessary suffering because they are specifically designed not to. I was in the room a couple of years ago when our family's elderly Basset hound (who could barely walk any more) was put to sleep; she was gone before the vet even finished pushing the plunger.
For what it's worth, I oppose the death penalty, largely on pragmatic grounds. (If we could limit it to only the Ted Bundys and Timothy McVeighs of the world, I'd be fine with it, but in practice we're more likely to execute some poor bastard who committed a robbery gone wrong and couldn't afford a good lawyer. Or, worse, someone who had the misfortune to be a poor African-American in the wrong place at the wrong time.) But if we're going to do it, I don't know why it has to be so complicated.
when you have a captive audience and quality control is not exactly an important issue.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
If we are bound and determined to execute people, and a criterion is that it be done "humanely", then we can use asphixiation by nitrogen gas.
Many nitrogen accidents have occurred in the past, including a fairly recent one at NASA where people have entered spaces filled with nitrogen and just passed out and died without any awareness of the danger, or any indication that bad things were about to happen. Aviators used to be required to experience anoxia (lackof oxygen) due to altitude, and as one who has experienced this, I can state from personal experience there is no discomfort whatsoever.
As a method, this is akin to a gas chamber except that no poisons are used. The chamber is flooded with nitrogen gas, which does not support life. As the oxygen content of the subject's blood falls, they experience a short period (seconds) of tunnel vision, then lose consciousness, and shortly thereafter, die. There is no choking or strangling sensation, no feeling of not being able to catch one's breath. So if you want to talk about "humane" in the same sentence as "execute" this is the way to go. it's cheap, doesn't require any toxic drugs and doesn't have any disposal problems.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
When all you need a chemical to do is kill someone, this is why you should buy American. Whats the worst that happens, the first dose isn't enough so you keep giving him/her more?
I am not quite sure whether I am entirely against death penalty for certain crimes, but what I am against is dragging it out indefinitely and then finally doing it with so much meaningless, but complicated ritual. It you have made a decision like that, then you should just go and get it done.
As to the method, we know that electrocution, shooting, hanging, garroting, gas and lethal injection as it is usually carried out are all likely to cause an amount of suffering, and if you deliberately cause suffering in another living being, what are you? In my view not much better than the person that you are executing. There is however a simple and cheap way: asphyxiation with 100% nitrogen. You basically pass out feeling extremely euphoric, so no suffering.
Economies of scale. To simplify, the most efficient method of producing this chemical only requires one plant for the entire world.
We could set up a table top production facility to produce it but that table top production facility would have to approved and regulated by the FDA which is a expensive process. After all we would not want to execute prisoners with substandard drugs. (And maybe not. If it were not the right strength then the execution would be botched.)
I am delighted to see the RoW (EU) pay the US back in the same coin. For 200+ years, the US has exercised export restrictions (IMHO unconstitutional). Mostly, these restrictions have been strategic (oil against Japan in 1941, crude oil currently) but sometimes a matter of taste ("horses by sea").
Diplomacy works a lot like the "Prisoners Dilemma" where tit-for-tat appears to be the optimal strategy.
Send those on death row to countries like Saudi Arabia or Iran that still have beheadings, and pay them to execute these prisoners
Fine, go with a heavy nitrous mix, then. Although it would do the job, I'm sure there would be right wing whinging that the condemned aren't supposed to go *too* easy.
Luke, help me take this mask off
I think you meant "miss hitting anything vital" ... because if they "missed" then he wouldn't be "horribly wounded" .
pardon me for being pedantic ... it's a curse :(
All the liberal moonbats come out and say how we should end capital punishment and spend $80,000 a year to house and feed murderers who have absolutely nothing to contribute to society. Drug-dealing gangbangers who murder four people are just being discriminated against by the legal system because of their race, right?
“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
This is almost as stupid as the FDA preventing terminal (cancer) patients with a month to live from trying experimental drugs because it could be dangerous or have adverse side effects.
Who bought the law that says we have to use some exotic chemical? Execute that person with whatever supply remains. Then repeal the ridiculous policy, hire any halfway-competent administrator and tell them "You have a $10 budget. Kill." A hundred years ago, people were able to get executions competently done, without exotic expensive tech.
And let's remember: it's basically the practical definition of technological progress, that it makes things cheaper and easier, giving you more for less. When you see yourself moving toward something that is harder and costs more, that's your signal that you need a reality check.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Because it would cost quite a lot of money to set up a production line and prove the quality to medical standards, for a market restricted to the US.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Going against the death penalty is Unamerican. Therefore, time to go to war with Germany again.
Or clip their spines with snips like Kermit Gosnell did; we don't even have to cut off their feet and keep them pickled in a jar. If it's good enough for millions of babies a year, it's good enough for a criminal.
May it cause everyone to rethink ending a baby's life out of some misguided sense of "social responsibility" and convenience.
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
presumably, the shooters have all fires rifles previously, and would surely notice the difference in recoil between a bullet and a blank round.
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Really? A large percentage of the drugs and medical devices COULD be used for torture or execution. That's a pretty flimsy stance there people. (Though as just a company, it has to follow the law or get severely screwed, at least in other countries.)
Have gnu, will travel.
Propofol is, by far, the most-used anesthetic induction agent; it has almost entirely replaced induction-by-mask, which is now largely confined to kids who don't take well to getting an IV while awake. For non-gas procedures, it's also the most common (only?) anesthetic used for continuous infusion.
A large hospital can easily go through literally gallons of the stuff a day.
Typical liberalism. They can't get their way on an issue so they inflict harm on thousands and millions of people.
A German company is thinking of banning a drug for helping the sick, on the basis of an extremely small percentage of it's total import being used in executions, and justifying it as a human rights issue?
Yes, denying drugs to the sick=human rights.
I think my head just exploded.
Patent and copyright laws have a provision in the internstional treaties that allow countries to declare a nation emergency or something similar then declare a certain set of copyrights or patents needed to alieviate that emrrgency. This allows them to ignore those specific patents or copyright without destroying the treaties and causing a breakdown in honoring them.
The situation you described used that specific clause. Canada did the same on some drugs right after 9/11 when the anthrax scares were running through the us government. The public health exception was first built into the berne conventions in the 1800's if i remember right. It is basically an affirmative defense more than a right or ability when used.
That's why they use kids, they don't know better.
How would that look, with the US being by far the biggest push for "strong IP laws"?
I think you mean asphyxiation.
"Nitrogen narcosis" is the "the anesthetic effect of certain gases at high pressure."
You could decide *not* to be a nation of barbarians that actually murders people under official auspices.
if you want to poison people so badly, why not make your own poison instead of buying medicine from people who don't want you to use their medicine as a poison.
There were a total of 32 people executed in the US in 2013. 44 people executed by LE in 2012. This is across the entire US, 50 States, 330,000,000+ people.
To assert that 32 LE's a year threatens the US anesthetic supply is ridiculous.
That is right. What can EU do then? Ban rope export?
You should equate expensive with humane in this context. Tons of money have been spent over the years to maintain the we are better than the killers being executed mantra.
Now i'm not against the death penalty but i am against intentionally inflicting pain and suffering outside what would be present in confining someone. I hold that same belief about animals charged in out keep too . My view has nothing to do with not being them or better or anything, it stems from my exeriences hunting and seeing the difference between a kill shot and wounding first hand. Anyways, i still hunt and fish, i just choose my shots better and practice enough to be proficient in landing kill shots. The government, no matter how their justify the position should be doing the same when taking a human life regardless of how terrible the person was.
Reason is the police are too manipulative in their interrogations for even the most honest not guilty person.
We see it on movies, the best option is:
In a desert island, dig N km. and build a prison, drop all the top rated criminals (killers, rapist, politics, Madoff-ponzi scamers, lord drugs) very deep where there is no wifi, phone, etc.
They forgot humanity, we can forget them too, just send them water and dog chow.
How about a fucking spoiler alert?
Some of us are waiting for the series to end so we can binge-watch!
Binge-watch Game of Thrones. Mmmmmmmmmm!
And there's some good hemp rope being made in Europe.
The death penalty is not about "deterrence" and never has been. It's about fitting punishment. Read a book.
Just to add to your excellent comment. What causes discomfort in holding your breath is the buildup of C02 not the lack of O2.
I'm sure that there will be a change in the law shortly after that happens...
Exactly. And although I dislike the idea of a total ban instead of just a partial ban ("you groups may still receive the anaesthetic since we know you won't kill people with it"), I still appreciate the irony of the US essentially having shit dictated to it for once.
"Federal regulations make propofol difficult to manufacture in the United States"
Ahh - well who would have imagined that.
The USA could always try not lowering themselves to the hideous and depraved moral standards of those they execute... and just not kill them.
1.Find another drug that can be used for the lethal injections (or the operations), if such a chemical exists.
2.Get a company not located in the EU to start making this particular drug as a source (for the lethal injections, for the operations or both). Would work good assuming the EU company doesn't have any patent on the drug in the US or the country where it would be made.
3.End capital punishment and lock people in jail for life instead
or 4.Find an alternative to lethal injection for killing people (as others in this thread have said)
I've never understood why people like you ever think there's guilt involved in removing someone from the gene pool that would kill children⦠you and your poem proclaim killing a killer is the same as killing an innocent child who has done nothing. Killing someone means removing from the future everything they might ever do and if you can't see why it's better to remove the possible future paths of a child killer than a child with a blank slate and unknown potential...
It's why you posted AC I imagine, because deep inside you realize what a monster you are.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In most military executions there would be 6 shooters. Five would be the execution squad (one firing a blank). The sixth would fire from close range if the victim didn't die immediately.
In three US states the condemened can still choose death by firing squad. It last happened in 1998.
It's the peoples law. If the people want a law to exist, they should be willing to deal with it's consequences. If the people want a certain punishment, they should be willing to be the person to administer it, on behalf of all the others. This is how a "free country" is supposed to work.
The USA chose to divide these tasks and responsibilities, so there could be people that specialise in only a small part of this whole process and power wouldn't be too concentrated within a few people. Having a jury to determine guilt is a legacy of a system that was supposed to prevent corruption, just like a lot of the other divisions of tasks are. One of the problems of juries is that people tend to be incredibly presumptuous, unskilled and emotional about the whole thing. Prosecutors are professionals that are skilled and trained in influencing jurors, while jurors get no training or experience to deal with that. The net result is that a lot of people get either very high legal bills to defend themselves, or get screwed by the jury system and get either convicted while innocent, or get a much higher penalty than they would have gotten with proper defence.
The current legal system in the USA obviously has some serious flaws in it that could be improved by some major changes. Those changes won't make the system perfect, but the amount of people ending up in jail and having the rest of their lives ruined for something they didn't do, or that's hardly worth prosecuting will be a lot less. The cost to the society is just too damn high if you have so much people in prison or out of a job. The prison industry (because that is what it is, it's a commercial industry) will hurt if you change the system, but you may actually get the economy going again if you get these people working on infrastructure like bridges and roads, instead of playing crook and guard all day long.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
in the military most firing squads are made up of people who are qualified rifle marksmen, one would suppose. Presumably soldier #6 was insurance and very rarely needed to shoot.
But only if they have a Sub Zero!
Besides I think the US could use some bread and circuses about now.
They do. But they are also able to convince themselves they don't.
It's different when you are a vegetarian my choice rather than having to be one due to bad hunting skills :)
Drop them naked on the tundra during the spring and let the files have them. Use a drone and televise it. Sell advertizing.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
apparently it's not really patents that are in the way. it's that you don't know how to make it combined with that you don't know how to make so that you would follow regulations in the usa.
double funny is that we from eu sell weapons to usa, used for killing every day(or at least weekly). but anyways, we are against the death penalty. you want to buy our exotic shit? well shit we might have some policies attached to them.
usa has plenty of export restrictions themselves - and you made the choice to use the exotic drug for executions(very expensively, too).
if there's something that portrays the american legal system is that it's slow and expensive on purpose. it's a business. and people have so little faith in the outcomes that death penalties cost more than life in prison even then... due to the legal costs, due to having so little faith in the system that has been proven to not work multiple times.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
America survives by arms deals, corporate prisons and secret courts. Reserving chemicals for killing their own citizens has become more important than keeping them alive.
I guess those poor decisions have "come home to roost" after all.
It depends on the weapon used. I'm a former U.S. Marine and I can tell you that I couldn't tell the difference between a bullet and a blank round in an m16a2.
Then again, I wasn't infantry so my experience was limited. Perhaps an 0311 would like to speak up?
On a side note, this is probably because recoil is greatly reduced by the spring in the buttstock.
Don't they know that boycotts don't work?
Somebody please tell them, so we can go back to killing our convicts with propofol instead of just impunity.
Whoops. Meant to say "... couldn't tell the difference in the recoil between a bullet and a blank round ..."
Easy - if the krauts won't export propafol, ignore their patent, and start making it locally
So you're willing to kill if you're 12-8% chance of being wrong exists and no way to undo a death done in error.
Well done, you psycho.
Uhm, unless the load is different, you won't notice a difference. Recoil has nothing to do with the projectile being fired and everything to do with the exhaust gases escaping the end of the barrel.
The bullet will only change the timing of the process ever so slightly, so imperceptible that you'd have no way to tell without a high speed camera.
Have you ever fired a 'blank'? You know they aren't actually devoid of a projectile right? They are just capped with a paper was that disintegrates fairly quickly after exiting the barrel.
Or maybe because you have used blank rounds with a blank adapter which functions as a recoil amplifier?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Taking justice into your own hands makes you a vigilante.
A vigilante killing someone is murder.
So if you "flaunted regulations" ie broke the law - the military or legal code regulating the execution - you would be a murderer.
Would you hope that someone in the firing squad selected for your execution decide to "flaunt regulations"? What if they all got together and divided it up - one guy does a gut shot, others go for the knees and elbows. Then we can all watch that fucker suffer and die slowly!
ironic captcha: jailers
While it's bad if a guilty man goes free, it's far worse if an innocent man is killed.
This is a platitude -- and I wholly agree with this platitude. But what's really needed is unbiased, quantitative estimates of how often each of these negative outcomes occur. Without that, we can't even begin to make informed decisions about whether the cost of one outweighs the cost of the other.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
that there is a 20% chance that she never shot the prisoner
Interesting choice of pronoun. I'd guess that throughout history, there's a 99.8% chance that a given firing squad member is not female.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
the rather unfortunate idea that life is a privilege that is subject to revocation by the state
Do you find it unfortunate that human life is subject to revocation by pregnant mothers who choose to visit abortionists?
Write a simple change to patent law that if a medically needed drug is unavailable, that we're allowed to produce it domestically without obtaining a patent license. Then states go ahead with the executions (non-medical), with the existing supply. The EU ban the export of the drug to the US. And when we need the drug for medical use, we suspend the German patents on it and produce it. The patents are suspend for the drug due to the medical use requirement. Yet state prisons can purchase the drug domestically as we can't (easily) regulate trade between states without new laws. (which we won't create)
Common law allows various exceptions for circumstances that make sense and are significant to safety or health. It would rub an international court the wrong way for our various treaties, but that can be solved through various diplomatic compromises.
I mean if we're going to spy on the Germans, pissing them off on patents seems like a smaller sin.
Apparently the specific chemical is defined in the death penalty laws. You can't legally use a substitute.
The only solution is to change the law, but unless you have a solid block majority of every chamber, plus an unbeatable lead in the polls, chances are no politician wants to touch that.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
normally i don't talk about death but
i don't understand the point of administering pain killers to kill people. just give them some Asprin or Ibuprofen. my spelling sucks. just sit the criminal into electric chair and turn it on. am i missing something?
Kenneth Allen McDuff
I forgot about that blank-firing adapter. Thanks.
Well sense we know the fucking formula, why in hell don't we simply invalidate the EU patent in the US and make it ourselves. Then it's not imported and there is no shortage. Hell that's what Taiwan did in regards to the Tamiflu (avian flu epidemic) when the Patent Holder refused to license it. They invalidated the patent for the public health and made it themselves. Got sued in world court and the court agreed with Taiwan. Public health trumped the damn patent law.
Because killing people, even likely criminals, is not a public health issue, and hence does not trigger the exemption clauses in national patent law and international intellectual property treaties.
Stephan
Or start withholding the latest cancer drugs from Germany.
The US is a strange case, though. You have an enormous prison population as a proportion of your general population. Money becomes an issue when such a large percentage of the population is incarcerated, but when you have a more reasonable justice system (and a social security net which removes a large percentage of the impetus for crime...
The US' enormous prison population is largely a result of the details of the way the social security net was implemented. (Here we call it the "social safety net", and the subset in question "welfare programs", because "Social Security" is reserved for a particular government-operated retirement benefit.)
The primary culprit is LBJ's "Great Society" push, which created and/or increased welfare programs, especially those related to child support. Starting in that period they included rules that ended the benefits if an adult male was living in the house with, or married to, a mother raising children. (It was presumed that the male in question was, or was acting as, husband/lover and father, and should be providing the support for the family.) The rules also reduced benefits if the mother got a job. The reduction was dollar-for-dollar (or worse), with no allowance for costs of working (such as transport, uniforms, or babysitting).
Though blacks were only about half the welfare receiving population, they were a far smaller portion of the general population - especially as the benefits were selectively extended to them in the wake of the Civil Rights movement and the related riots. So the effects of these programs was greater on the black population than the rest of the citizenry.
The results of these rules were, for the poor blacks, the destruction of the (formerly notoriously strong) black family - removing any productive male role model from the household of any welfare recipient- and the conversion of welfare programs from a temporary emergency measure to a way of life. Children of long-term welfare families tended to see living off welfare as how resources are obtained and have no experience with alternatives - resulting in their going on welfare (and recruiting others) for generation after generation. Welfare mothers tend to have more children than those in families supporting themselves. Others are recruited to this lifestyle, and once in it find themselves trapped. Thus the fraction of single-mother families with no male role model rises. At this point about 72% of US (non-Hispanic) blacks are born to unmarried mothers, versus 30% for (non-Hispanic) whites and about half that for asians.
One of the problems with single-mother families is that single mother is usually unable to socialize an adolescent male child. (The differences in violent crime rates between ethnic groups in the US completely disappear if you adjust for the illegitimacy rate.)
So the social safety net seems to be the entire cause of the rise in violent crime. Like government in general, these social programs seem to be a disease masquerading as its own cure.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Yep.The sixth was there in case it went horribly wrong.
and did he have mercy for his victims???? hang him, use a firing squad, use a guillotine or just stone him. let the victims family chose the means of death. Hopefully it would be a long and painful death. That would be true punishment and it would be a better deterrent
Then EU would ban the sale of the highly important drug to the Evil Empire. Meanwhile the Evil Empire (USA) would start production of this valuable drug, and the U.S. drugs companies would start making the profit. I can not believe that it is cheaper to transport this shit all the way from Europe than it would be to produce it locally. Or has the Evil empire degenerated soo much that they just do not have the capeabilities to produce this fine pharmacutical. My guess is that Germany would cave. After all in today's world it is all about the money. There is a vanishing difference between big pharma, and pushers on the street.
I'm just curious because I really don't know.
I've always liked the quantum cat box method of execution, myself. This is something I've encountered in various SF novels. The idea is a variation on Schrodinger's Cat, where the condemned criminal is placed in a sealed box in which the release of poison gas or some other lethal mechanism is to be triggered by an extremely likely to the point of near-certainty quantum event, such as the radioactive decay of an unstable atom. Theoretically, as long as no one looks in the box, the condemned person within cannot be said to be truly dead, no matter how much time has elapsed. Like the proverbial cat, the criminal is both dead and alive at once, in a superposition of states, until the box is opened, which it won't ever be. So everyone involved can pat themselves on the back and know that they haven't technically killed anyone. That's the theory, anyway. I don't know enough physics to say for sure that the concept will ever be both effective and practical, but it sure is a neat way around the problem of nobody wanting to know for sure that they're the executioner. There is no executioner, because the actual state of the body inside the box is indeterminate.
blanks have recoil too.
There are also a significant portion of lifers who just don't care/
...that you are SIGNIFICANTLY pulling that statistic from your ass.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Thins kid of regulation are to be challenged with the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. I fear that European bureaucrats are more fond of free market than human rights.
It's not so much that the right is taken away, as that by taking the life of another (who did not first try to kill you) you have effectively argued, through your actions, that the right does not exist.
If it's a successful argument then where is the crime? There is no right to be trampled - ergo, it is not a crime.
Killing someone just became akin to secretly taking an item from someone else's shopping basket and putting it back on the shelve.
Your claim to a right is forfeit only when you violate the same right yourself.
By that logic, as long as a democratic society takes lives of its criminals and/or prisoners - everyone in the society forfeits their own right to live.
Cause it is their democratic representatives that are doing the killing. You know... like hired killers.
Now... a king on the other hand may do as he pleases. It's good to be a king.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Why can't the Free Market solve this problem and start producing drugs right here in the US?
Europeans have executed and murdered tens of millions over the past several centuries. Now suddenly, the balk at Americans trying to execute our most sociopathic killers. I don't see them yapping about executions in the Middle East or Asia.
Oh my! How dare other countries threaten our values and beliefs that we can have state and federally sanctioned killings! Who do these other people think they are from the...EU...wherever that is, imparting their beliefs on us? We are the United States of America and we say how it is not the other way around. If they actually carry this through we may have to compromise...we may have to revisit our own values. Dear God we may have to sit and think for a minute about the fact that we live in a pluralist society and that things cant always be black and white and exactly the way we want it....and dear God they may not let us just simply ignore their wishes this time..........nah.
American penalizes other nations this way for human rights violations without a second thought. It is hypocritical for we Americans to believe that we should be immune to our own law. It is also an interesting side effect of the separation of state and federal power as not all 50 states have capital punishment laws, but stand to suffer because of the 32 that do.
... and why are we listening to them? Find some other way to execute people who are supposed to be executed, and stop using the anaesthetic supply as a phony excuse to delay the inevitable. If the law calls a crime a capital crime, then that's what it is. If the death penalty is appropriate, and it often is, then execute the person! Throw them into a volcano; toss them off a cliff; force feed them mercury - just kill 'em, and cut the crap! Do we have to have a debate over capital punishment every time someone gets sentenced to death. If you cold bloodely kill someone, the community decides if you should be put to death. That's that.
A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. ~ Mark Twain
www.ruby-lang.org will automate walking because of the late binding of inheritance but children will never know because the adults violate inheritance by the way they live.
First Pearl Harbor, now this!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Either that or the drug thing is to push public opinion towards being in favor of beheadings once again.
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.
Seems to work ok on Michael Jackson
That's dead wrong!!!!!!!!!!
fp ftw
Dead wrong for a country to take a moral stance that affects others overseas? Do you mean like the US government having as a condition of funding aid agencies in Africa, that they not educate about the use of condoms in Africa?
Not all conservatives are stupid,
but it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
- Hume
The US Justice system is not sufficiently accurate to support the death penalty. Evidence? Too many appeals succeed.
To kill another human being in a well planned, methodical, ceremonial manner, without pity or remorse is totally barbaric and unworthy of a great nation. The rest of the world woke up to this decades ago. Why is the USA being so slow on the uptake.
That's not really accurate. For one thing, you'd have to shoot a lot to be able to reliably tell the difference between a live round and a blank. Secondly, every rifle recoils differently. It comes down to physics...every action has an equal and opposite reaction. When the propellant burns and the bullet is propelled forward, the rifle is also propelled backwards creating recoil. The amount of recoil is determined by how much resistance there is to movement, so a heavier rifle is harder to move than a lighter rifle and will therefore exhibit less recoil. That is to say that even if someone had a rifle and shot it frequently enough to be able to tell the difference between a live round and a blank, if they fired a single shot with a different rifle they would likely have no idea if it was a live round or not because the recoil profile would be totally different.
If Nintendo found itself losing a hardware war (and it's hard to see how the Wii U will sustain it) then it could just pull a Sega and exit the hardware completely. Look how Sonic has appeared in numerous (mostly crappy) games over the last 10 years. I'm sure Nintendo could do something similar.
What we should do is execute people by running them over with expensive German luxury cars. Enough with the cheap grace - let's find out if Germany is willing to pay a non-inconsequential price for its principles.
Country, we have no moral high ground for anything anywhere.
i think it is a cork stuffed in the end of barrel that pops out and is leashed to the gun by a string. i'm not sure anyone would know the difference regardless of their "expertise"
It is ridiculous to make deserving patients suffer simply because something readily and legally available elsewhere 'might' be used to execute someone here. Just pass a law that if there are useful drugs legally and safely manufactured elsewhere but which are withheld from us by other nation state laws against distributing it to us then US firms are at liberty to reverse engineer manufacture and distribute it themselves.