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Controversial Execution In Ohio Uses New Lethal Drug Combination
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "CNN reports that Ohio inmate Dennis McGuire appeared to gasp and convulse for roughly 10 minutes before he finally died during his execution by lethal injection using a new combination of drugs. The new drugs were used because European-based manufacturers banned U.S. prisons from using their drugs in executions — among them, Danish-based Lundbeck, which manufactures pentobarbital. The state used a combination of the drugs midazolam, a sedative, and the painkiller hydromorphone, the state corrections department told CNN. In an opinion piece written for CNN earlier this week, a law professor noted that McGuire's attorneys argued he would 'suffocate to death in agony and terror.' 'The state disagrees. But the truth is that no one knows exactly how McGuire will die, how long it will take or what he will experience in the process,' wrote Elisabeth A. Semel, clinic professor of law and director of the Death Penalty Clinic at U.C. Berkeley School of Law. According to a pool report from journalists who witnessed the execution, the whole process took more than 15 minutes, during which McGuire made 'several loud snorting or snoring sounds.' Allen Bohnert, a public defender who lead McGuire's appeal to stop his execution in federal court on the grounds that the drugs would cause undue agony and terror, called the execution process a 'failed experiment' and said his office will look into what happened. 'The people of the state of Ohio should be appalled by what took place here today in their name.'"
I don't know what is then.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Let's ask Joy Stewart what she thinks about the undue agony and terror. Oh, she and her unborn child are both unavailable for comment.
High dose, slowly dowsing away, eternal bliss...
How about we save executions for only people who break laws and participated in enforcing or making laws.
So ignoring for a minute all the ethical questions etc, just thinking about the process. I do not have medical training, but I have always wondered why they can't just use the drugs used for general anesthetic in general surgeries? Put someone under with those, then you can stop their heart painlessly when they're unconscious. Certainly there is a large supply of those drugs around.
Hasn't this been a solved problem for a hundred years or so?
Good riddance to bad rubbish. If he was the slightest bit uncomfortable as it went down, hopefully that won't keep the moonbats up all night with their hearts bleeding for him...
Was a major mistake. Punishments work best when they are unusual.
Cruel . . . . I dunno. Slippery slope.
But, hey, we could just bring back the guillotine!
'several loud snorting or snoring sounds' doesn't really sound like "cruel and unusual," sorry.
Compared to what he did, I'm not terribly sorry for him. A few minutes of "snorting or snoring" (during most of which he was probably not fully conscious) doesn't seem like a big deal.
I guess I should be appalled, but.. the dude slaughtered a pregnant girl; I don't care how he died exactly at all. In fact, I'm going to consider this a successful QA test and move on.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Amusing search
If we want the death penalty to be a deterrent against crime, potential criminals should have to face a death that's scary, and not expect a painless injection that lets them quietly pass away.
Though I question the value of any death penalty as a deterrent since it's so rarely applied and the criminal either thinks he's going to get away with it or isn't worried about the consequences no matter what the consequences are -- 5 years in prison and then death might be even more attractive to some than a lifetime in prison.
How hard can it be to do this? Start with standard general anesthesia. One the person is out, then administer cyanide or whatever.
Or use the same thing we use for animals.
Or look at how they do assisted suicide. There are plenty of solutions there.
Just use a high powered rifle and turn his skull into pink mist. It's not cruel, death is instantaneous, and it only costs a dollar. Less if you use surplus ammo.
$0.34/round for quality stuff.
Generally instant and humane death is achievable with the first shot when your target isn't moving but if not, it's easy enough to use a 2nd or even 3rd round.
9 grams of lead, administered into the brain stem
Put a blood pressure monitor around his neck.
Cheap and effective.
Honest question, why haven't we moved to an appropriate inert gas (like nitrogen) yet? What are the downsides?
We have complete understanding of how to knock someone so far out that you can cut into them for hours in an operating room, even to the point of removing their heart for a transplant. Why the heck to people have to go from fully conscious to dead in a single shot? Knock them out completely painlessly, and then kill them while they can feel nothing. I've never understood lethal injections at all!
Oh, those poor darlings! To have to pay for their horrendous, brutal crimes through a momentary discomfort!
Personally, I have no sympathy whatsoever for murderers and killers. If anyone wants to avoid such "anguish" then the remedy is extremely simple: DO NOT KILL, DO NOT COMMIT MURDER.
Was that a notification?
that he when murdered his victim, he made sure it was as humane as possible right? Oh wait, no? Then he deserved what he got. And no I'm not counting the fetus, 'cause a fetus isn't a person.
I don't get this. I hate capital punishment and would like to see it end. However, if we're going to do this and want to be as humane as possible (seems rather contradictory to me) why not give them something that many people voluntarily do because it's given to be so pleasurable? First, give them the regular does of heroin, then gradually move it up to OD. I've heard that heavy doses of the stuff cause you to "nod off". Then the OD just stops your breathing. What a way to go.
Really though, just stop CP. It's not befitting a modern country. It's irrevocable, and it puts too much power in the hands of the state.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I thought testing drugs on humans -- without their informed consent and successful prior testing -- was banned long ago.
It doesn't matter that the person is a prisoner; in fact the standards are higher for them, because they are much less able to refuse consent. It also doesn't matter that they will die soon; terminally ill patients also must give informed consent.
What kind of sick society experiments on helpless prisoners?
The US should ban ALL imports from Danish companies, and add a huge tariff to any goods ending up there. Dictating what your customers do with the products they buy from you seems well, unenforceable and ignorant.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
That puzzles me too. I'm told that in general anesthesia, they have to monitor your signs very closely, because there's quite a narrow band between not enough anesthetic and too much...seems that a little twist on the valve would accomplish the objective.
Given that, I have to doubt the motivation.
So you've just admitted to being a torture fetishist. Congratulations. What does it feel like to be a psychopath?
Since innocent people end up on death-row and are frequently exonnerated by DNA or new evidence, then how can it be logical to maintain a death penalty? If you're going to say "well, maybe .1% of the time an innocent person is put to death but it's for the greater good", then how about you line up to be the next .1%?
I think it was a notification of opinion dismissal only - clearly not a notification of opinion importance and/or acknowledgement.
1331461 is only semiprime *sigh* Alas - I am just short of 1337.
European-based manufacturers are responsible for this mans torture when they banned U.S. prisons from using their drugs in executions.
5-4-3-2-1.
Barely made it to 3.
I guess it depends on whether the European companies consider that the same as "using the drugs to kill", and forbid exports.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
If I am not mistaken that is generally what has been done for a long time. Most of those drugs though are imported from other countries, typically in the EU. The EU just recently passed a law forbidding export of those drugs if they will be used for the purpose of killing people. Which is the whole reason that they tried this new drug mix in Ohio.
What amazes me is why they don't just use a massive heroin overdose or something like that. I'm pretty sure we can find plenty of that stuff locally whether or not other countries decide not to import it.
why dont they go back to shooting range or beheading? honestly, a shot in the head. it's been shown that a bullet tears through the brain far faster than any signal of pain from the neurons. I know about these things.
“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
You are not allowed to kill, but it okay for us to kill you.
I won't get into the fiscal debate as to whether it is cheaper to lock away someone for life or to execute with multiple appeals and proceedings. It shouldn't matter. If it is wrong to take a life, then it is wrong to take it in any circumstance. End of story. Then when you factor in the fact that we are constantly finding innocent people convicted (if not for death penalty offenses). Often due to poor representation, over zealous prosecutors, or shoddy politically or financially motivated police and forensic work, it would seem to me that the ethical cost of killing one innocent person would outweigh all of it. Even if our judicial system was perfect, humans make errors.
However, as with so much else in our society, our desire for vicarious retribution, our poor ability to truly judge relative risk, and the fear peddled by those in power to keep you caged keep winning.
Silence is a state of mime.
I agree, THIS was cruel and unusual. There are many more common sense ways to get this done.
Use the drugs we use in surgery to put the guy out then in order of how I'd want to go...
Morphine OD
Heroine OD
Cyanide
Guillotine
Firing Squad
Electric Chair
Heck, with the first two we don't have to sedate first... We just sedate them to death.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
Yes, we value criminal lives far more then innocents, just like Muslim countries
No doctor or nurse is going to administer the drugs to execute someone. They need a plug-n-play option that is simple enough for any Corrections Official can operate.
As others have mentioned, some of the methods Dr. Kevorkian developed would probably be acceptable, however the necessary components might be facing the same shortfalls in supply or controls as our current regime.
Why not borrow some techniques from history as in, strap the subject down, administer an anestetic, tilt them down by the head and slit both carotid arteries, allow to drain and sentence is duely carried out.
Let's see...
1. Give convict anesthetic (you know, something that renders you unconscious)
2. Wait and listen to him snore
3. Proclaim that's he's in extreme pain (despite his being unconscious)
Personally, I'm against the death penalty as intellectually dishonest. But this whole debate here is a pile of manure.
Exactly this. I'm only a second year med student and even I could tell you that trying to kill someone with the mixture of drugs in the summary would be a really ugly process. I'm pretty sure we can't use propofol for the same reason we can't use the pentobarbital mentioned in the summary, but honestly a regular dose of propofol to knock someone unconscious plus a pneumatic piston like we use to humanely kill food animals would be the obvious option. Sure it makes a bigger mess, but it's WAY more humane for the person being executed, the one who were trying to protect from unnecessary cruelty and suffering. Propofol plus guillotine works well too. As it turns out medical science knows a lot more about reliably making people unconscious with drugs than about reliably killing them with drugs. Given that, if the killing is to happen, it should be done with something we know works reliably and quickly.
later adjusted to 25 after the observers called bullshit...
*personally* I'm against the death penalty, but if you're going to do it, just make yourself a Guillotine. "Lethal injection" is quite distasteful as it dresses up a killing as some pseudo-medical procedure. Scewing this up quite so magnificently is just jaw-dropping - although I suspect you don't send your brightest off to work in the penal system.
What really shocks me though is the response of a significant number of people here, that the suffering he endured was justified as it was 'deserved'. I've tried in vain to think of how to get my point across, but can't think of any common ground to even start my pitch that the deliberate infliction of suffering upon another is simply wrong.
I'm a great big atheist - but generally feel I've got a lot in common with those of faith, at least in my views if not the underlying reason. My biblical knowledge is rusty to say the least, but I'm reasonably sure when Jesus killed sinners, he at least did it mercifully.
Not as cheap as they used to be though. Still, cheap enough. Go back to that method, why not..
Dennis Mcguire raped and murdered Joy Stewart, 22, in 1989. He was convicted of kidnap, rape and murder in 1994.
I found myself mulling over a discussion in our class in History and Moral Philosophy. Mr. Dubois was talking about the disorders that preceded the breakup of the North American republic, back in the XXth century. According to him, there was a time just before they went down the drain when such crimes as Dillinger's were as common as dogfights. The Terror had not been just in North America -- Russia and the British Isles had it, too, as well as other places. But it reached its peak in North America shortly before things went to pieces.
"Law-abiding people," Dubois had told us, "hardly dared go into a public park at night. To do so was to risk attack by wolf packs of children, armed with chains, knives, homemade guns, bludgeons . . . to be hurt at least, robbed most certainly, injured for life probably -- or even killed. This went on for years, right up to the war between the Russo-Anglo-American Alliance and the Chinese Hegemony. Murder, drug addiction, larceny, assault, and vandalism were commonplace. Nor were parks the only places -- these things happened also on the streets in daylight, on school grounds, even inside school buildings. But parks were so notoriously unsafe that honest people stayed clear of them after dark."
I had tried to imagine such things happening in our schools. I simply couldn't. Nor in our parks. A park was a place for fun, not for getting hurt. As for getting killed in one -- "Mr. Dubois, didn't they have police? Or courts?"
"They had many more police than we have. And more courts. All overworked."
"I guess I don't get it." If a boy in our city had done anything half that bad . . . well, he and his father would have been flogged side by side. But such things just didn't happen.
Mr. Dubois then demanded of me, "Define a `juvenile delinquent.' "
"Uh, one of those kids -- the ones who used to beat up people."
"Wrong."
"Huh? But the book said -- "
"My apologies. Your textbook does so state. But calling a tail a leg does not make the name fit `Juvenile delinquent' is a contradiction in terms, one which gives a clue to their problem and their failure to solve it. Have you ever raised a puppy?"
"Yes, sir."
"Did you housebreak him?"
"Err . . . yes, sir. Eventually." It was my slowness in this that caused my mother to rule that dogs must stay out of the house.
"Ah, yes. When your puppy made mistakes, were you angry?"
"What? Why, he didn't know any better; he was just a puppy.
"What did you do?"
"Why, I scolded him and rubbed his nose in it and paddled him."
"Surely he could not understand your words?"
"No, but he could tell I was sore at him!"
"But you just said that you were not angry."
Mr. Dubois had an infuriating way of getting a person mixed up. "No, but I had to make him think I was. He had to learn, didn't he?"
"Conceded. But, having made it clear to him that you disapproved, how could you be so cruel as to spank him as well? You said the poor beastie didn't know that he was doing wrong. Yet you indicted pain. Justify yourself! Or are you a sadist?"
I didn't then know what a sadist was -- but I knew pups. "Mr. Dubois, you have to! You scold him so that he knows he's in trouble, you rub his nose in it so that he will know what trouble you mean, you paddle him so that he darn well won't do it again -- and you have to do it right away! It doesn't do a bit of good to punish him later; you'll just confuse him. Even so, he won't learn from one lesson, so you watch and catch him again and paddle him still harder. Pretty soon he learns. But it's a waste of breath just to scold him." Then I added, "I guess you've never raised pups."
"Many. I'm raising a dachshund now -- by your methods. Let's get back to those juvenile criminals. The most vicious averaged somewhat younger than you here in this class . . . and they often started their lawless careers
Only in the sense that you're responsible if someone says "hey you, give me a spiked club so I can bash kittens to death," and you refuse --- so they rip kittens apart with their bare hands, instead. Most philosophical systems would impute guilt to the kitten-ripper, not the person who refused to abet them. But, I guess your "blame anyone but me" principle takes precedence.
...Like another wrong!
Go for it, America, show us how it's done. You lead the world.
Stick Men
Convict gets a rush of euphoria, and shuffles off the mortal coil.
Side benefit is that it stigmatizes heroin.
Another side benefit is that all of the judicial mistakes get at least one good rush before they are wrongfully executed.
Think it doesn't happen?
It must have happened at least once -- and that is too many.
Make it public, so society can see and experience what happens to the worst of the worst.
Madoff types should be up first along with those that physically assaulted the defenseless.
The prisons could be cleaned out by reforming the drug laws and putting down the most violent.
FUCK YOU!!!
Can't they just mix cyanide in his water & serve him during one of the many occasions that they would do, and let any moment after his final sentencing be his last? Why would that be such a bad thing?
Are those anesthesics manufactured in USA? If they are manufactured in the EU, it's not a good idea to start using them for executions unless you want to stop surgeries too...
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
That's how you took that? Really?
I'm against the death penalty. I also don't give a rat's ass what Europeans think about my country.
is what he did to get himself the death penalty.
Fuck him.
When its your family he has tortured, maimed and murdered, you'll have a different opinion.
He's lucky they used sedatives in my opinion. Crucifixion is a proper execution, long slow and suffering.
This isn't some petty thief. People get the death penalty for being found guilty of 'evil' crimes. Not just bad, flat out fucking evil.
Yes, innocent people have been executed, the only perfect system is the universe itself. All the ones we've invented are flawed and do the best we can do. Mistakes will be made, deal with it and stop living in a fantasy world where you can just make everyone get along and be happy together.
We need to go back to the firing squads. Just have the guns on a timer so no one person feels they killed anyone.
The people of the state of Ohio should be appalled by what took place here today in their name.
But not because they killed a guy.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I, for one, do not believe the state has a right to take any life, regardless. Besides, if our society wasn't hell-bent on spending billions of dollars to incarcerate non-violent offenders, there would be plenty of cash in the coffers to put every sociopath away for several lifetimes, with money left over.
That's really all I have to say about this.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I agree with you. In my opinion the most humane form of execution is to stop the brain in a short time, which in the past was a guillotine and today would be a fast-moving smashing of his head, perhaps with a shotgun blast or a fast-moving hydraulic press. We could certainly splatter brains faster than the brain would realize what was happening. If pain is what we are trying to avoid, then that would be zero pain.
Done. Next question.
(I'm not opposed to the death penalty but I think America should use it less. Murder isn't enough. I think mass-murder is where the death penalty should begin to be considered.)
Read the comment to which you replied and your response. The "we" in your comment was understood to refer to the "torture fetishist psychos" in the parent comment. If English is not your native tongue then you may not have caught the grammatical ambiguity.
Don't you want them to test it on someone before using it on the population at large?
Captcha: digests
You're not far off the mark. For short OR procedures, fentanyl is preferred because the onset is faster and the duration is shorter, but hydromorphone can be used. Midazolam is used in conjunction for it's sedative and amnetic properties. This is also still a common combination when patients are mechanically vented. Patients lose complete orientation to what's happening to them before they lose consciousness. The observers' perception that he "suffered" is very unlikely to be the case.
... we should just go back to hanging. rope is much cheaper than all these drugs.
Yes, but the standard is "cruel and unusual" not "cruel or unusual". If a death method is cruel but common, that's fine. If the method is not cruel, but novel, that's also fine. The whole point is to stop executioners from thinking up new ways to torture people to death.
We have an entire population of drug addicts that have been able to peacefully and apparently blissfully put themselves down for over a century. The account of the death of Socrates seems to indicate that he went quietly although with somewhat more displeasure than most OD'ers. You could hit the streets of any decent sized town and get more expert opinion on lethal injection than seems to be available to the state governments. They have been killing people on the operating table for about the same length of time; I'm sure the attending people would be able to describe how they put their charges under for good. This whole business is looking a bit silly.
I once saw a TV documentary, I think it was "The Body In Question", Jonathan Miller was definitely the guy demonstrating. He put some sort of breathing equipment on his face, so that he kept breathing the same air over and over, except there was something to absorb the carbon dioxide. So he never felt bad. He tried doing arithmetic and stuff, and gradually lost the ability, finally, just before he passed out, helpers came and took it off and started giving him extra oxygen.
That looked like the cleanest, most painless, method of execution I could imagine, and I don't know why it's never been tried.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
And we should also blame the rape victims!
USA are a civilized place, isn't it?
That depends, is it a reasonable demand? Do we agree with it? If so, then yes we do that.
In this case, I'm on the side of crucifixion. Fuck that guy. We couldn't even think of things bad enough to do to that guy.
That's correct. We don't execute criminals to save money. We execute criminal because it's WORTH IT.
Damn USAian barbarians just love their death penalty. Backward ould fools..
It's actually Hebrew that Slashdot won't reproduce, and the translation is normally held to be "Thou shalt not kill" on the basis that is what the KJV translates it as. Other more modern translations use "kill" rather than "murder". Nice selective translation, though.
I must have missed that parable.
If we can me completely certain that there never will be an error in a capitol crime sentencing, I would advocate immediately dropping the killer in a wood chipper head first. However, being as there is always going to be some error in the legal system the question we should be asking is, "How many innocent people are we willing to murder in the name of revenge/justice?"
Because, until you get to that 100%, and never make an error, that is what you are doing. You are murdering people because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, are the wrong skin color, or cannot afford a good lawyer. At least if you screw up a life in prison sentence, you can let the person out in a decade or two when the truth comes to light.
There is a great bullshit test I came up with to give to someone who advocates capitol punishment. Ask them if our court system is 100% perfect in convicting the guilty. Then ask them if that means that means that we are murdering at least a few of the wrong people with capitol punishment. Then ask them if they would still feel that capitol punishment was fair and just if they were one of those people that was selected to die. Then ask them if they still support capitol punishment. If they say still yes, they are lying.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Sounds like Cheyne-Stokes breathing to me. (URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheyne%E2%80%93Stokes_respiration) There is no suffering involved in this. Just the human system shutting down (snort...gasp).
Lost in space at an early age. Survived the vacuum. Now rebuilding castle in air.
Justice is essentially an emotional exercise so is it a fallacy to appeal to emotion when seeking justice?
Here in Denmark, Lundbeck has been under fire for their drug being used to kill people. They've tried to defend themselves in various ways, e.g. by casting it as misuse as their drug. But in the end in Denmark the American executions are viewed upon in the same light as the stories you hear of amputations and stoning people to death in the middle east. So the reaction has been as if a company sold convenient stones to be used for said stonings.
It is sad to see that the outcome is more suffering.
If you think a little harder you'll realize that's wrong. Many laws are specific to people in specific jobs.
Ohio was killing a man. Sometimes death will cause some slight discomfort. By no means should the state try to make a death painful, but a sedated, pumped full of pain-killers inmate having to gasp for his last breaths is hardly the height of human cruelty.
You know this article has been posted on multiple news sites, and it continues to amaze me that it gets the amount of negative reaction that it does.
Breaking down this instance, and throwing out wrongful prosecution & 'they got the wrong guy' (in the case they had DNA evidence as well as admission), this is a person that raped a woman, then slit her throat and left her in the street. She was also pregnant at the time. I have zero sympathy for him. I would rather we shot him up with a sedative & od'd him on painkillers than the other options which are essentially (2):
Let him sit in prison sponging off taxpayers for the rest of his natural life
or
Let him out because `can't you all understand that he just had a lapse in judgement and made a mistake? surely he needs another chance!`
honestly, to all the people crying about the barbarism of this situation, suppose the woman was someone that you knew, spouse, sister, mother etc. How would you feel about the situation then? How would you react to someone killing your wife and unborn child? What would you want to happen to that person?
Maybe we should offer all of the vocal proponents of this situation an option:
Adopt a death row inmate.
You can take a guy on death row home, we'll put a tag bracelet on his foot. You can care for him out of your own pocket, with no reimbursed expenses (no dependant tax write off either) and be responsible for him. If he leaves your house, you pay a fine, if he manages to damage anyone else's property, you're responsible. Any futher crime he commits, you're the liable party.
How about that, keeps the anti-death penalty people happy, keeps scumbags from sponging tax money...
01:36AM up 426 days, 2:46, 1 user, load average: 0.14, 0.11, 0.05
First, he didn't suffer. He was out. So this is much ado about nothing, or about the discomfort of those witnessing it.
Second, if they want painless the guillotine (modified, to bisect the brain and not sever the head) or a high pressure hydraulic hammer smashing the head within 20 milliseconds would do the job. No pain possible.
Hal: Okay, boys, okay. Now, what in the hell happened?
Paul: An execution. A successful one.
Hal: How in the name of Christ can you call that a success?
Paul: Eduard Delacroix is dead. [looks at Percy] Isn't he?
He stabbed some folks to death. I don't feel bad for him. I hope he genuinely became a better person in prison over the years so that he had something to lose.
It is a waste that we couldn't use him for medical experiments.
Maybe because living in constant fear of imminent death (not just potential execution at a set date, but literally ANY MINUTE NOW!) counts as cruel and psychological torture?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
The original DNA test could not rule him out; however, it eliminated all of the other suspects, including the husband.
The DNA was retested in 2002 using 'modern' DNA forensic techniques. Match.
I use these drugs in a hospital setting every day.
Versed a benzo class drug will cause:
1. sedation
2. Interfere with short term memory.
3. Depress respiration
The dilaudid used will:
1. Control pain
2. Depress the respiratory drive.
This man went to sleep and never woke up. Nothing unusuall or cruel.
The gasps for air are involuntary!!
He never new, nor felt any pain.
I don't think the admonishment should have been "one commandment you should abide by", rather it should have been "a moral you yourself obviously abide by".
You could attack the commenter's stance just by pointing out the hypocrisy of demanding murder in return for murder. Either murder's wrong, or it's not.
I think the situation is muddy enough, thanks, without the interjections of the religious.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
That overstates my reaction. Given the crime was rape and murder of a pregnant woman I would have to describe my sympathy for the perpetator as somewhat less than strong. Concerned perhaps about the ineptness of the execution procedure perhaps, but most definitely appalled at the crime.
Because the E.U. is going to intentionally prevent people from getting proper medical care just to make an ethical point about *a different country's* capital punishment? That seems particularly unconscionable to me.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
The parent post says "Congratulations, America". They are addressing America.
That's basically what they did. They ODed him on barbiturates on opiates.
He raped and murdered a pregnant woman.
I wonder how long her death took, and whether it would be considered "cruel"?
I am personally not in favor of a the Death Penalty, but I can understand why it exists and the arguments for having it.
I would say that if your going to have Capital punishment, then the means of execution should be mechanical, and performed in such a way as to minimize suffering. To that end, I agree with the idea of a dropping a sufficiently large mass on the skull of the condemned man, sufficient enough to crush a skull like a grape.
Lethal injection primarily exists to make executions more palatable by making them less gruesome. I disagree with this. Even if justified, ending a human life should not be an easy thing for those who must decide that it must happen.
END COMMUNICATION
Just get rid of crime. Then we don't have to worry about this $hit.
I'm in an odd position of believing in the death penalty, but willing to see it go.
I believe that if we took the death penalty seriously as a society, and actually used it, it would stop being an empty threat. As it stands, there are so few executions in most of the states that we are getting very, very little deterrence out of it. Criminals know that it doesn't happen often. If they are convicted, they don't believe they'll be given the death penalty. Their chances are statistically 0.
Further, I don't believe vengeance is a sufficient motive for the death penalty, or indeed any state punishment. If it doesn't prevent further crime in some way, the state has no business there. Incarceration physically prevents further crime... while giving prisoners a reason not to come back*... and theoretically rehabilitating them**. Possible escape and the ordering of crimes from within prison are the only other two reasons I can see for a death penalty, but these seem rather weak. High risk criminals should be in maximum security already.
*(Prison should be unpleasant. It shouldn't be as awful and dangerous as it typically is, but it shouldn't be pleasant.) **(We should offer rehabilitation, not that we do.)
The Paradox:
It is commonly said that it costs more to execute a man than to keep him incarcerated for the rest of his natural life. I don't know if this is true or not, but it does highlight unfairness in the system.
Imagine two murderers in a death penalty state. The first is convicted with special circumstances, and is sentenced to die. The prosecutor can prove the guilt of the second prisoner, but can't quite prove special circumstances. He is convicted for life. The first is given appeal after appeal. The second can ask for an appeal, but may be denied.
Note that the state has taken the lives of both of these people. The second one is just killed slower. Either, we give death penalty cases too many appeals, or we don't give life sentence cases enough. Something is out of balance here.
(Addendum: Why don't we let death row prisoners choose? There are some interesting theories out there about humane execution. So long as the method chosen results in death, is acceptably inexpensive, can be accomplished from within the prison, and is not dangerous to others, it would be the most ethical way to kill someone. Not that it is ethical, that is still open for debate... but it would be the most ethical.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
How come no one cares about the way the victims died in the hands of the murderers in the first place ?
Or are you telling us that when those assholes murdering their victims they treat them with " respect " and " tenderness ", and the whole thing is within your realm of " reason " ?
Sorry, I give up.
I can never understand how bleeding heart libtards think.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Who came up with the 'cruel and unusual punishment' bullshit? Why, it was our unelected 'masters', the Jews...
Bring back old Sparky, and give these monsters what they deserve.
Or - let them all FREE, separate the country into two parts, let all the murderers FREE in that part of the country, where all the people who are against the death penalty can go and live.
What's that you say? You don't want that? But you're against the death penalty, and you believe criminals, especially BLACK ones, are 'victims', don't you...
No, it seems like an effective way to apply pressure. If you're going to use our drugs to murder people, we won't sell them to you, even if you also use them for good purposes. All you need to do is to agree not to murder people.
So basically, it's blackmail. Or, if you like a slightly less inflammatory term, coercion. And these are probably the same people who complain about the U.S. sticking their noses where they don't belong.
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Ingested cyanide isn't a reliable single-dose poison. It tends to induce vomiting below the fatal-dose threshold. There have been many failed assasinations over the centuries due to this.
but what is to be expected from a country whose society is developing backwards?
Google it. Seems like the obvious solution if you really want to execute people cheaply and reliably. Not saying I'm in favor of executing anyone, tho people like Paul Bernardo I wouldn't lose sleep over.
Nice try, but no. In the same way you don't give matches to a pyromaniac or whisky to an alcoholic, you don't give lethal drugs to a psychopath. You've shown you can't be trusted with them, now it's your problem. Once you grow up, maybe we can talk. Until then, you made your bed, now lie in it.
Yeah, that was the whole point of why they had to change the drugs:
The new drugs were used because European-based manufacturers banned U.S. prisons from using their drugs in executions — among them, Danish-based Lundbeck, which manufactures pentobarbital (pentobarbital being the "general anesthetic in general surgeries").
An old post on that exact topic was even referenced in TFA, but to provide it again
http://science.slashdot.org/story/13/10/25/1223203/us-executions-threaten-supply-of-anaesthetic-used-for-surgical-procedures
Honestly, I don't see why they just don't go back to the good ol' guillotine. Certainly much quicker and more humane than 10 minutes of gasping. And if it's not "perfectly humane"? Well, neither was the rape and murder of a 22 year old woman.
Thousands of people are put under every day for surgery. Why not use the same tried and proven method of doing that to put the condemned out like a light? Then when he's totally out of it, cut his head off. We still know how to make guillotines, don't we? And when the French were using those to kill people, the ones being killed were wide awake.
An added benefit is that it might just get the attention of some politicians.
Not at all. Blackmail is where you threaten to reveal something that the victim doesn't want to be known. The USA is quite open about the fact that it executes people.
This is more like shunning. You're doing something I don't like, so I won't deal with you.
Every story I read about this execution seems to have a different amount of time quoted. I've seen 10, 15, 20, and finally 25 minutes quoted from the New York Daily News. Do I hear 30 minutes?
It's hard to get all rattled up about this without some verifiable facts.
I don't see why there is a technical problem with capital punishment. Twice I had open heart surgery, Twice I was put under anesthesia. Neither time did I feel any pain or discomfort. While I was under they could has turned me off without me being aware.
I am against capital punishment. Like nuclear power it requires a level of perfection that we do not have. Still, if you must do it, it seems we have the means to do it humanely.
From these two distinct rights, the one of punishing the crime for restraint, and preventing the like offence, which right of punishing is in every body; the other of taking reparation, which belongs only to the injured party, comes it to pass that the magistrate, who by being magistrate hath the common right of punishing put into his hands, can often, where the public good demands not the execution of the law, remit the punishment of criminal offences by his own authority, but yet cannot remit the satisfaction due to any private man for the damage he has received. That, he who has suffered the damage has a right to demand in his own name, and he alone can remit: the damnified person has this power of appropriating to himself the goods or service of the offender, by right of self-preservation, as every man has a power to punish the crime, to prevent its being committed again, by the right he has of preserving all mankind, and doing all reasonable things he can in order to that end: and thus it is, that every man, in the state of nature, has a power to kill a murderer, both to deter others from doing the like injury, which no reparation can compensate, by the example of the punishment that attends it from every body, and also to secure men from the attempts of a criminal, who having renounced reason, the common rule and measure God hath given to mankind, hath, by the unjust violence and slaughter he hath committed upon one, declared war against all mankind, and therefore may be destroyed as a lion or a tyger, one of those wild savage beasts, with whom men can have no society nor security: and upon this is grounded that great law of nature, Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. And Cain was so fully convinced, that everyone had a right to destroy such a criminal, that after the murder of his brother, he cries out, Every one that findeth me, shall slay me; so plain was it writ in the hearts of all mankind.
Locke - Second Treatise of Government, Ch. II, sec. 11
It's truly amazing the lengths people will go to for the chance to legally kill someone. In Texas, the dept of correction has resorted to forging prescriptions and fraud in order to keep killing. In Ohio, apparently they're hiring incompetents to (fail to) find a quick and lethal drug combination. They can't possibly believe they have the support of society at large given that their choices are limited due to corporations refusing to sell to them (WOW, you have to be REALLY vile for that to happen!).
They can't get real doctors to help because they'd get kicked out of the profession by their peers, so the best they can do is someone who was already disgraced (AKA mob doctors). Surely that should send a message.
Executions should be conducted by the Governor of the state with a pistol. They're the ones making the call, they should pull the trigger.
Funny how that would probably end executions overnight, isn't it?
why dont we just null their Intellectual Property rights then. Surely the us can continue the old drug regime and just flip off europe.
Why is no one manufacturing pentobarbital in the United States?
If I had to guess I'd say the death penalty is used more often as a bargaining chip to get confessions out of folks. Now whether that counts as getting a confession under duress or not is a good question, but generally speaking, the US use of the death penalty doesn't seem to prevent the crime itself. It might satisfy our lust for revenge, but it is clearly wrong to let the state be in the business of killing its citizens.
or we could use that tool we use to slaughter cows. It is "claimed" to be painless.
on how far out he was. Twilight can leave a person fully aware but unable to move at times.
Generic drugs are often manufactured in countries where labor is much cheaper. Because they sell for much less than still patented drugs. With the (thankfully) low volume use for executions, it wouldn't be worth it to make here.
It would end them in some states, but others might see a dramatic rise. There are a few states still in the Union where a governor might score political points for being willing to shoot murders in the head.
So basically, it's blackmail. Or, if you like a slightly less inflammatory term, coercion.
Actually, it's closer to extortion. As a general rule of thumb, if the threat takes the form "do/pay X or we will reveal/tell Y", it's blackmail; if it's more along the lines of "do/pay X or we will do/not do Y" it's extortion.
In this instance, it's merely politics.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
There was a TV show a while back where they looked at different solutions, and the best one had been developped for euthanising animals. They'd basically use a gas that is confortably breathable but does not supply oxygen requirements leading to anoxia. Which resulted in a sensation of being high followed by painless death.
Seemed much more convenient and functional. I've wondered ever since if it was real or not and if so, why this wasn't the method of choice.
From Wikipedia on pentobarbital:
"Typical applications for pentobarbital are sedative, hypnotic for short term, preanesthetic and control of convulsions in emergencies.[6]
It is also used as a veterinary anesthetic agent.[7]"
The drug they were not allowed to use IS an anesthetic. What you suggest has already been in use for some time.
Also note the bit about convulsions. Perhaps, it is (was) used in executions specifically to prevent the gasps and convulsions witnessed in Ohio. Is an execution using this drug actually more peaceful or does it just LOOK more peaceful?
Exactly this. I'm only a second year med student and even I could tell you that trying to kill someone with the mixture of drugs in the summary would be a really ugly process. ..., but it's WAY more humane for the person being executed, the one who were trying to protect from unnecessary cruelty and suffering. ... if the killing is to happen, it should be done with something we know works reliably and quickly.
Hmmm, I wonder how quickly and humanely Joy Stewart died?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Because when you do that, the "patient" often twitches spasmodically during death. This doesn't bother them of course, since they're completely unconcious, but it might disturb the audience, and we would want people who were actually excited for the chance to see someone die to fell unhappy about their bloodlust, would we?
the one who were trying to protect from unnecessary cruelty and suffering.
Us. The ones we're trying to protect from unnecessary cruelty and suffering is us. That's why people oppose the death penalty, it hurts us; and why advocates keep switching to more "humane" methods as one-by-one the previous ones fail to live up to their promise, and to society's standards.
We used to draw and quarter. "Quarter" is a literal thing, ie, tear into four parts. With horses. And in public, to cheering crowds. Then nooses, to "humanely" strangle them. Then nooses and trap-doors to "humanely" break their necks. Then non-public executions, because we're civilised, see. Then most of us banned it completely, but the US continued trying to find "humane" methods. Cyanide, electrocution, drug cocktails...
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
On the other hand, glad I'm not living in the American middle state called USA. Concrats on killing your own citizens while government are snooping, destroying the Internet and patents!
On the positive side:
We'll still be here after you finished shooting each other, and have a chance to make a positive difference worldwide.
So, please keep up the good work!
She was tortured and killed. Those are bad things. Torturing and killing are bad.
Which is why civilised people don't torture and kill.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
How did it fail? He died, didn't he? And, I'm assuming, that was the intended outcome? If I could be bothered, I'd find out why he was sentenced to death, but I'm really not that interested. I'd assume that it was a murder (sorry, Mericans: "homicide") in which case I'm sure the comfort of his victim during the death process wasn't a top priority for him. Easy answer: shoot the fucker. Way quicker, and cheaper. (Personally, I'd go for a gutshot - a slower and more painful death, I believe?) Isn't the death sentence supposed to be a punishment? Why the fuck SHOULD it be as painless as possible???
Potassium injection or nitrogen inhalation are not messy, and they work reliably and quickly. Nitrogen inhalation is used for suicide even without anesthesia.
That depends, is it a reasonable demand? Do we agree with it? If so, then yes we do that.
In this case, I'm on the side of crucifixion. Fuck that guy. We couldn't even think of things bad enough to do to that guy.
Go live in Saudi Arabia then. I hear they chop heads off in public. A sick, twisted psycho like you would love it there.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Singapore
textbook-perfect execution by US Army in 1945
start watching at 1:00
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iEY6WoGm6A
I've always been confused about why we use drugs to begin with. Nitrogen asphyxiation works painlessly, there is no suffocation, the person just falls asleep and a few minutes later is brain dead. The room doesn't even need to be pressurized, just well sealed. Lead the person in, sit them down and secure them, then leave and turn on the nitrogen. Few minutes later, during which he is free to say his last words, he falls asleep and dies a few minutes later.
What if OS companies ran the capital punishment system?
[insert obvious geek jokes here]
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
How many people's lives do you wish to use up in tax payments, keeping alive a mass murderer?
Your argument is based on the false assumption that it is cheap to kill someone and expensive to throw them in a cement box for 80 years. It is in fact, many times more expensive to put someone to death than it is to lock them up, because the stakes are so much higher. Also, I really like how you subtly colored your question by calling the convict a mass murder, suggesting that there is no question that the convict isn't actually innocent.
This isn't Soviet Russian, comrade. We don't haul the accused behind the coal shed, and shoot them in the back of the head with a Luger to save time and expense. (You like how I subtily mixed my metaphors, by describing a soviet style political execution with a pistol from Nazi Germany? I made the reader think of two types of immoral criminal governments and associated them with capitol punishment. I like this game....its more fun that using pure logic to debate!)
Every decision in life is based on incomplete information. That doesn't mean we should be frozen into inaction until all data is certain.
It sure as hell does when you are considering end someone's life. This isn't a trivial decision like, 'It's icy out today, I wonder if I should drive to the store to get some milk?".
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I've witnessed an execution in the State of Ohio. At the Lucasville facility, there is a gallery of seats where the victims and inmates families and journalists sit/stand. There is a large window into the execution room that all the seats face. They pull the curtains after administering the drug and don't pull them back until the inmate is pronounced dead. Either they changed the procedure or these journalists are only reporting what those inside the room saw...
Karma: Bad
If we can me completely certain that there never will be an error in a capitol crime sentencing, I would advocate immediately dropping the killer in a wood chipper head first. However, being as there is always going to be some error in the legal system the question we should be asking is, "How many innocent people are we willing to murder in the name of revenge/justice?"
I'm sympathetic to this line of reasoning; however, by logical extension you must also be against any sort of punishment for criminals at all. For while death is a permanent, irrevocable punishment, so is any form of wrongful incarceration. You can't undo the loss of a portion of a life wrongly spent in prison (and no, monetary compensation isn't equivalent).
Ultimately, the answer is yes, some small level of error must be acceptable in the criminal justice system, or we must otherwise let all the accused go free. I am willing to accept this in the death penalty as well.
And if you're asking me whether I, as an innocent person, would prefer an overdose of opiod narcotics and tranquilizers (i.e. what this admitted criminal received) vs a lifetime spent incarcerated, then yes I would. Just like I would be willing to risk death by terrorist rather than have this country sacrifice all our ideals (as we unfortunately did instead, during the past 12 years).
FYI: the term is "capital punishment", unless you are using a synecdoche to refer to penalizing Congress (and who doesn't dream of that?)
You are correct, the time lost in incarceration is irrevocable. but unlike death, incarceration can be ended when and error is discovered. Your reasoning is sort of an all or nothing fallacy. "If the accused is losing some of their life that cannot be recovered, isn't it just as bad as losing all of their life?". If you really were in favor of ending murder, wouldn't the logical course of action be to exterminate the whole human race? Sure, billions would die, but if we exist long enough, the number of people murdered will vastly exceed this horrendous death toll. Of course this is a silly suggestion, and I think that it illustrates that there is middle ground. Losing a decade of life due to an error might be acceptable, while complete loss of life might not.
You seem to bravely step forward into the role of the victim, but I suspect that if you were being really dragged down the hall to the gas chamber, that you would not be nearly as composed or as staunch in your belief. Who is actually willing to die forty years too soon because a deputy sheriff didn't seal an evidence bag properly? I have a number of things I would die for, but that sure ain't one of them.
I also find it very ironic that you think that life incarceration is much worse of a punishment than the death penalty. By that logic, wouldn't that support my argument against the death penalty, since incarceration is a 'worse' penalty, and therefore a better deterrent?
'capital punishment': clever, but nobody likes a spelling Nazi.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I wonder if he suffered as much as the pregnant Joy Stewart did when he raped and murdered her? How about her family, loved-ones?
And no I don't really understand why we need to humanely kill humans who have done animalistic things.
-Styopa
Give anesthesia, remove the major organs for transplant. Person dies and helps others, painless.
Society is fully responsibility for the individuals, just as the individual is fully responsible for their own actions. You create a sick society, you accept the consequences. You call for or assist in capital murder, you accept that you are inadequate just as the accused.
What were they expecting? Those who die of opiate overdoses die because opiates are CNS depressants and cause respiratory depression. There is a slim chance the prisoner experienced anything consciously - the snorting /snoring sounds were caused by respiratory depression. As someone who has experienced opiate overdose personally, my friends noted the same symptoms and I was completely unconscious until I awoke on my friends porch and caught my friend's hand as he tried to slap me into consciousness. This sounds like a humane execution method to me. For the record, I am staunchly anti-capital punishment. I just thought other readers might care to know what a person in such a state consciously experiences and that is nothing. Having said that, I would recommend the use of an opiate with a longer half-life as hydromorphone is metabolized rather quickly. Also, the addition of midazolam, a benzodiazepene, would increase the CNS depressant effects in addition to reducing anxiety, ensuring a painless, unconscious passing from life to lifelessness.
Scored interesting? It's pretty regular for idiots to wonder about things that are clearly answered in the summary, so I'm not understanding what's going on here.
Who are you referring to with "you"? The U.S. government? My whole point is that the U.S. *can't* lie in its bed because of E.U. cantankerousness.
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Injected into the veins, everclear will be every bit as lethal as these drug cocktails. And, the deceased gets one last buzz on their way out.
i have no sympathy for Dennis McGuire. Let him suffer. Should've used a firing squad for this monster. What he did to Joy Stewart was horrible. RIP Joy.
So if I rape and kill someone, I might have to spend 10-15 minutes suffocating from a drug overdose?
It's sad that people on here are outraged, yet I didn't see a similar outrage post at the rape and murder - quite a horrific experience I'm sure - of a young pregnant woman.
Sad for his family who chose to watch, but he got his just sentence if you ask me.
Well, this is almost accurate. As it so happens, I've intravenously injected this particular combination on multiple occasions. Midazolam and hydromorphone was perhaps the worst possible benzo/opiate combination possible to choose. When given all at once in large amounts intravenously, they both produce a very strong rush (midazolam in high doses being one the the very few benzos that do this, and hydromorphone being one of the most intense rushes among the opiates). I can promise you first hand that anyone receiving an intravenous overdose of these drugs will be in extreme discomfort for a minute or two before they lose consciousness; since I strongly suspect that's what they did, rather than how the OR uses these drugs, which is entirely different and used in conjunction with propofol or a barbituate- without which it would be nearly impossible to administer lethal amounts without discomfort- and it's clear from TFA (timeframe, 24 minutes total) that they didn't even try.
My understanding is that when exposed to an atmosphere of pure nitrogen, people just pass out and die without feeling suffocated.
It should have lasted longer.
super-rich liberals to hurl their money at the cases...
Your word betray your loyalties sir. Shouldn't you be off angrily watching Bill O' Riley? Or perhaps masturbating to Ann Coulter taking about shooting 'gay liberal Jewish media types'?
Lets ignore the very warped worldview you seem to have, and just look at the 'super-liberal' comment: Where do you think that the vast majority of the money the defense spends comes from? Do you think that there are wealthy, left leaning millionaires swooping in to donate vast sums of money to accused murderers in order to get them acquitted? If only they would butt out, the prosecution could have this killer convicted by noon, and the bailiff could shoot them behind the courthouse before lunch. Your vast ignorance of, well, everything is strangely enthralling....
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
This guy died of basically a heroin and benzo overdose. What you are seeing is what most junkies go through as their breathing stops and they die. As much as it may bother someone to hear about it, rest assured this guy probably didn't even care. From my reading this would have been far less painful than what it replaced, even if the visuals are not acceptable to observers.
A lot of factual mistakes in that snippet. We do actually know that a man is, indeed, born with a "moral instinct" of sorts - ethologists have devised and implemented the corresponding experiments ages ago, and found that concepts such as altruism, fairness and justice are, to a large extent, hardwired. And, of course, the idea that the crimes are at some sort of a peak relative to the quiet periods of the past where punishments were harsher is always popular, but is not supported by any evidence - we are at historically low levels of crime, especially violent crime, and they keep going down.
It's actually Hebrew that Slashdot won't reproduce, and the translation is normally held to be "Thou shalt not kill" on the basis that is what the KJV translates it as. Other more modern translations use "kill" rather than "murder". Nice selective translation, though.
No, the translation is not "normally" held to be "... kill." Especially not because of the KJV. The modern English translations, including the most popular ones, translate the word as "murder". See, for example, the New International Version, the New American Standard, the Amplified Bible, even the New King James Version. Also, an old, but literal translation, the aptly-named Young's Literal Translation, translates it as "Thou dost not murder." Take a look at the other translations on that site and note how the vast majority translate the word as "murder." Pretty much the only modern, widely-used, translation that uses "kill" is the New Jerusalem Bible.
And FYI, the "Hebrew that Slashdot won't reproduce" can be romanized as "rasah", a term that while hard to pin down the exact meaning of, scholars generally agree means more than simply "kill". This site has some discussion of it.
It's also notable that the Bible explicitly mentions the death penalty as acceptable: "Anyone who kills a person is to be put to death as a murderer only on the testimony of witnesses. But no one is to be put to death on the testimony of only one witness." -- Numbers 35:30. So perhaps that will refresh the memory of the AC a few posts up who "[didn't] recall any exceptions for "Oh but if the other guy killed someone else that's O.K, you know?"
And as long as there are people like you, we will never be. Of course humanity also implies some level of basic intelligence and empathy hence not sure if people like you are truly human.. but then I ask too much.
I'm not against all of the additional costs, mind you, in this day and age we ought to be damn sure we're executing the right person.
well spoken. In fact you touched on another reason to do away with the death penalty: Suppose you convict and execute the wrong guy. You have just committed a double error in that an innocent is dead, and the real criminal will likely never be found and caught. Has there ever been a case where the wrong person has been executed, and then the real criminal is caught and successfully prosecuted? IANAL, but I don't think I have ever heard of such a thing....
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
you rub his nose in it so that he will know what trouble you mean, you paddle him so that he darn well won't do it again
Just for the record, this is not a recommended method of house-training puppies.
If the puppy starts to urinate inside, you immediately pick him up (this should make him stop) and take him outside to a spot in the yard where you want him to urinate, then put him down. Ideally he will finish. If so, you praise him, pat him, and let him back inside if he wants. If not, you pour a little water on the ground and let him sniff it. After a few times, he will associate urinating with going outside, specifically to that spot. Then he will start to want to go outside, in order to urinate.
[This reverse-association method also works for teaching them to sit/etc. You can say the word you want associated with the action after the puppy spontaneously does it, (ie, the puppy sits down, you quickly say, "Sit! Good boy!") and he will soon associate the word with the action, even when you start saying the word first.]
If you don't notice immediately, you do nothing . (Well, clean it up, thanks.) The puppy isn't able to associate the delayed punishment with the "crime". (At best, you associate fear/punishment with urinating. Ie, if you smack or scold him, he pisses.) That's probably what took the protagonist so long - " "Did you housebreak him?" "Err . . . yes, sir. Eventually." It was my slowness in this that caused my mother to rule that dogs must stay out of the house."
Simply picking up the puppy when he pisses (or craps) is sufficient negative reinforcement. When followed with the positive reinforcement at the appropriate piss-site, you get an extremely quick association developed. Much much faster than the old smack-him-and-rub-his-nose-in-it, and with fewer unintended behavioural side-effects.
There's probably a deeper lesson here about juvenile delinquents too. But honestly, you're starting so far behind, let's just stick to puppies for now.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
The reason why is because then we wouldn't be able to use them for medical use.
As for why that is, it goes back to the EU, which has strict export laws in place regarding drugs. More or less, any country that uses a drug for executions will have that drug barred from being exported to it. If the US was to use a common anesthetic in a lethal injection, the EU would bar the US from ever receiving that drug from them again, which means we basically wouldn't be able to use it in common medical practice. As a result, we end up with oddball concoctions like what they tried in this case.
There was actually an execution a few months back that had an emergency stay issued at the 11th hour, due to the fact that they were about to use a drug that's in widespread medical use in the US. Had they done so, we would have had to have kissed that drug goodbye.
Carbon monoxide. You never experience the panic of suffocation, which is brought about by the build-up of carbon dioxide in the bloodstream. You start to feel kind of loopy, experience a state of euphoria, then go to sleep and never wake up.
We don't use this method because supporters of the death penalty want the condemned to suffer.
Well, that's what I gleaned from this BBC documentary on the death penalty, "How to Kill a Human Being."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BY3Trq5qOk
Check this out on youtube. Six parts, but very well done with a good answer.
http://youtu.be/R18yDjc2lKE
If we're to execute people for violent crime, why not a violent (but quick) death? A bullet, a rope (no short drops), even a guillotine. There's no need for an execution to be so clinical.
Dennis McGuire is dead. what's the problem? who cares if he gasps or convulse for 15 minutes? Dennis probably didn't care about Joy's feelings, her pain or suffering. i'd hang him.
an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth
The standard surgical anesthetic that could be a logical replacement as an execution drug has been off patent for years, so there is no reason why we can't make our own supply. As an alternative, I'm sure we could extract our own supply of fire ant venom. Hey, it's natural.
I believe that if we took the death penalty seriously as a society, and actually used it, it would stop being an empty threat
Let's say that for the sake of the argument the only ones deserving the death penalty are those who kill other people.
And let's discard those who have done so by accident. We just want the people who have done that on purpose.
Who kills another person on purpose? As a civilian, not employed by the government, in peace time, in self defense, not trying to prevent someone else to commit murder...
Who are the premeditated murderers?
You got two groups. Mentally deranged people and criminals.
Now... Mentally deranged people are mentally ill. THAT is the reason they commit murders.
Giving them the death penalty is basically killing people for being sick.
Also, do you really believe that the insane person will take heed of the threat of death penalty?
Either being with a long history of mental illness or just cracking and loosing it for a moment under the influence of stress, drugs or whatnot.
Some of them even believe that they are doing god's work and that there are really good things waiting for them if they martyr themselves.
So, we're left with the other group - criminals.
The kind of people who's "job description" involves "every day you may be shot and killed by police, your friends, your competition, family members and many other people not listed above".
So, you're threatening the people who are already living each day expecting to be killed - with killing them unless they are killed first by almost everything and everyone in their life.
Where's the deterrence factor then? Who is being deterred?
As for prisons being unpleasant... there is no need nor value from that.
I'd much rather have the criminals be reformed and taught to control their impulses while being taught how to get out of the life of crime than being trained to be "harder".
As for giving the prisoner the choice, you can't have that on account that the death penalty is punishment.
You can't have the prisoner making the choice cause that would be like letting him/her commit suicide.
And suicide, in the mentally deranged world where the death penalty is the remnant from the time when it was viewed as sending someone to be judged by a "higher power" than earthly laws (which is why they get priests and whatnot) - is both a sin AND the prisoner escaping prescribed punishment.
In the world that forgoes on the "sending them to god to be judged" bit, it's simply escaping the prescribed punishment.
I.e. Red tape. It has to be done by the book.
Not just to kill the prisoner but to make sure that he/she is really dead or some may try to game the system.
And that's without going into the whole "cruel and unusual" thing.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
McGuire was convicted in 1994 of the rape and murder of 22-year-old Joy Stewart, who was seven months pregnant.
You know what, there is a very easy way to avoid being executed in the US, for a start, and it is just a f*cking suggestion: DON'T RAPE AND MURDER A 22YO PREGNANT WOMAN.
"Which is why civilised people don't torture and kill."
1. Tell it to the US military and every US voter, congressman etc.. (Abu Graib, Guantanamo etc..)
2. It is a very civilised thing to torture and kill the rapist and murderer of a 22yo pregnant woman, it would be INSANE not to.
From the standpoint of avoiding this c*nt from suffering and all that other liberal BS, would he suffer less if he was just shot through the head?
Also would it be better to do it immediately after his conviction to avoid prolonging his anguish?
If we do it often, it is no longer "unusual" - meaning it might be cruel OR unusal, but not crual AND unusual. On the other hand, if the punishment is unusual but not cruel, it also should be just fine (assuming the court understands English, which is admittedly a big leap these days). Out founders were not morons; they were smarter and more literate than most in government (elected or in robes) today. Our founders had no problems with hanging a man for murder (by the old "hang him and watch him strangle" rather than the newer less-painful "hang him with a quick neack-breaking jerk" method). They also were fine with a few unusual punishments (which by tradition were still in use in the 1960s where the occasional judge might let a young man "volunteer" for the Marines which might teach him to reform himself rather than jail that might ruin his life). Our founders did not, however, do cruel AND unusual (not known to dress people as clowns before hanging them...)
What disgusts me is NOT the idea that a murderer might suffer (there's NO constitutional right to a painless/comfortable execution) but the idea that we as a society have given so much power to lawyers that they can drag-out the process for decades, allowing the criminal to gain sympathy (so much so that people worry about how painful his death might be) AND allowing the victim to be forgotten so that sadly, nobody cares about how much the ACTUAL victim suffered; By treating the criminal worse than the victim and always remembering which was which we used to make a societal statement about the value of the lives of innocent people, but now we are becoming as morally bankrupt as Europe. We also now worry that a wrongly-convicted person might suffer during the execution - silly really, given that the more-important matter is that an innocent person might die at all, AND more-importantly, many innocent people are killed every year by people who have been released from prison (something none of the death penalty opponents ever want to discuss)
This stuff is all sort of silly, the most painless way to die is o2 AND* co2 displacement in the body.
If you want to be merciful pump pure nitrogen into their cell/bed/mask and while it will take 4-20 minutes to officially die beyond any hope of resuscitation , the mind will have gone unconscious. There have been others who did this to themselves and accidents and nothing is remembered/felt on those who wokeup.
If you don't want to be merciful, crucify(literally) them.(Which i think most that are on death row deserve ).
The old human idea of justice all over the world was "you mess with me or mine, and me and my whole tribe will come and MESS YOU UP" (overwhelming and unlimited damage as punishment for any offense.
The Old Testament "eye for and eye" standard of justice was a humane revolution: PROPORTIONAL PUNISHMENT.
Nowadays, ignorant idiots quote "an eye for an eye" (which sounds horrific compared to today's airconditioned and television-equipped prisons) as a barbaric idea from the past. Let me suggest that in a world where decent people refuse to punish criminals proportionally, we have millions of innocent people wrongly victimized by a criminal underlcass (and, no, I've said nothing race-related, for those "progressive" readers who think everything is about race). In fact, most of the innocent vicitms of crime enabled by a go-soft approach are minorities who deserve far better from society.
Put another way: a slap for an eye, and the world is split between innocent blind people and violent criminals with great stereo vision
Jesus explicitly stated that [1] he was not here to undo the Old Testament laws, which FYI included the death penalty [2] that he was, God or some part of God (said he was the son of God, and also said anybody who had seen the son had seen his father) [3] that he was dying to pay the price for the sins of man. It was God who condemned the entire human race to death for its sins (that's quite a death penalty), and absent such a death penalty there was no reason for Jesus to hang on a cross (no need to pay a price that is not being charged). The "buddy" Jesus from the George Carlin movie is not Biblical. The hippie-in-a-robe-with-car-tire-sandals Jesus, who loves everyone and everything is great for a 1970's broadway musical but is also non-Biblical.
Am I saying Jesus would support the death penalty? I do not know and I do not presume to speak for him... but I do take issue with people who insist he would oppose it (based on some airheaded presumption rather than serious consideration of scripture). Jesus told people not to judge other people's souls and he did indeed intervene to stop a mob of sinful men from executing a prostitute for her sins.... but he did NOT revoke the law, he simply pointed out that none of the assembled men was qualified to carry out the penalty (which he did not say was too severe) and he told the woman to "Go forth, and sin no more" (a clear indication that the sin she'd comitted was still a sin). It's always amusing to see people who've not a read a Bible, people who support taking Bibles out of public places, and people who reject the teachings of Jesus on all other aspects of life, suddenly pretending to embrace Jesus and using what little they know of Jesus to justify protecting evil criminals from being pubished. When we as a society execute a murderer, we explicitly do NOT judge his soul (we provide a Rabbi, a priest, etc as desired by the condemned, and historically have asked God to have mercy on his soul) what we DO is: both punish him for his violation of the most important and basic human law, and eliminate the possibility he will ever re-offend (no other human penalty provides this iron-clad guarantee). The punishment is for a CRIME and not a SIN.
It's a political drive to make ALL forms of execution seem cruel, in order to ban them.
Dead murderers have no lawyers and we have lots of lawyers in need of paychecks. Every time somebody has a "legal" way to execute criminals, the lawyers raise some new objection to the new method .... and so some new method must be found. IF this man (who admitted his guilt in murdering an innocent pregnant woman) suffered at all during his execution, that suffering was created by the lawyers who interfered in the previous methods and caused this new set of drugs to be used. A little Ironic, aint it?
He's a murderer and deserves to die.
We'll done America, at least you have the courage to remove these sadistic fucks from your midst.
Off topic, but could you ask the guy who got shot for texting in a movie theater about his views on that well-regulated-militia-can-bear-arms thing you got going on.
This is actually the issue. They need to be allowed and effective for general anesthetic of humans. Otherwise they could just use lethal injection drugs for animals. But the US does to not make any of those anymore, they are all imported and the manufacturers said they would stop selling to the US if their product keeps getting misused for executions. That would mean no surgeries anymore in the US.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
No, it is ethics. There is no blackmail if you refuse to sell your product to the morally corrupt.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
What amazes me is why they don't just use a massive heroin overdose or something like that. I'm pretty sure we can find plenty of that stuff locally whether or not other countries decide not to import it.
Not FDA approved for human application. Basically the lethal injection is putting them to sleep as if for surgery, but then do not apply life-support. For some reason the legal and medical niceties have to be observed right before that, like FDA approved drugs intended for putting people to sleep. As this is fundamentally a barbarian and primitive act, I do not really get this squeamishness. Probably those doing and ordering the executions somehow convince themselves that they are not murderers in the moral sense and this an effect of the pretext they use to lie to themselves.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Indeed. Revenge just puts you on the same level. It is fascinating how many people do not get that and believe circumstances can make it right. Most humans are still animals at heart.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I don't have the time to read every post, so sorry if someone has pointed it out already:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQTHqg_8_UA
Note the reaction of the american dude when he learns that not only nitrogen is painless but you even get a bit high before the end...have you seen so much spite and hatred......the problem is people confusing retribution with justice...
Numbers is Old Testament. Jesus changed things around a bit. Damn Liberals!
I guess they couldn't find enough volunteers to test out a LETHAL INJECTION drug...
Seriously?? Insightful??
Anecdote time.
I for one got attacked, ringed, and beaten by three guys while walking home at night. It gave me PTSD. Seriously, every time I walked past someone who looked remotely similar to my attackers, I wanted to have a gun, pull it out, and shoot them in the face. At all OTHER times, I desperately wanted to be sure I'd never have a gun, for I could see I'd kill an innocent person. This got worse and worse, until in prayer I got back that I had to give up all thought of defending myself or even my family with violence. When I offered that up, the PTSD evaporated.
Fast forward to six years later, in Lithuania. My wife looked out her window and screamed. I came running, and she pointed to a guy down in the parking lot who was kicking a woman to death. She was unconscious; He'd pull back his leg for a good, full-swing kick, let loose, and her head would go up about a foot, and the ragdoll would flop to the ground again. Well, the Bible says you shall not let an innocent person be put to death, so I had to go running out there. I was terrified, because this guy was nuts with violence, and I couldn't use violence. I especially didn't want my wife, who was watching, to see me fall in that thing.
So I went out, and tried to reason with him, and he started explaining why she really needed a good beating to death, and I responded that you still can't do that... so she started coming to. He turned around, saw it, and went to say, come on, let's go. I thought, "he's going to take her away somewhere private and finish the job", so I interposed my hands between him and her. He turned on me with a viciouse harvester to my temple, knocked me back. I made the sign of the cross with my arms, and a it absorbed a roundhouse kick that threw me back about eight feet. At this point, I thought that the cross with the arms was too martial or anti-vampire-like, so I changed it to a hand-wave sign of the cross blessing, and said God bless you. He shook himself, looked around, and saw that the girl's sister was leading her away. He followed them at 100 feet; I followed him at 100'; and after a bit I realized a police van was following ME at 100'. we went a quarter of a mile, and the sister turned to the guy, told him to run away, get outta there, pointed to the police van. He left.Then they pulled up next to me, said that they had seen everything, and would pick him up later. They knew who he was and where he lived.
In a way, it was all very comical.
But it also points out two things: yes Christians really are supposed to take Jesus seriously, and no, He doesn't leave them defenseless. Just, his defenses are other than you would expect, and where war is the result of the ultimate of clumsiness, Jesus' defenses for His people are anything but clumsy.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Personally I would rather get whacked by the state than even spend 10 years in prison. You know, just do it!
You're right. There are even better ways that are potentially much less expensive as well.
Simply feed the room they're in with pure nitrogen, replacing the O2 (so that they suffocate) and CO2 (so they don't feel any discomfort). People will simply fall unconscious and die in short order.
That is exactly what they were doing. The problem they're having is that the companies manufacturing these general anesthetics don't like having their drugs used for executions, or, in the case of European manufacturers, are prohibited from selling their drugs for use in executions by the EU.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
I wonder whether this "poor" bastard thought about his victim when he performed the execution. Did he put his victim through mental and physical torture before executing her. Next time we want to feel sorry about the methods used to end his life, lets give his victim or victims some thoughts and bring that as an example to these evil psychopaths that the road to hell is not lined with candy.
A bucket of liquid nitrogen in an enclosed space would be extremely effective - both cheap and painless.
The issue is that the USA criminal system revolves around retribution, not justice, plus it has provably convicted the wrong person on so many occasions that it has to be cited as unreliable.
You have the highest incareration rate (both percentages and absolute numbers) in the world. Something is fundamentally broken in the american system.
I think you are still suffering from PTSD and would benefit enormously from seeking help.
and our response should be fine, no more intel for you, no more money for you etc.
Frankly I want to go back to a time where we are non interventionist. Let other countries worry about themselves. If you dont want to sell me a product I want/need, Then I will no longer provide you with the intel that you want/need
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Executing a prisoner is not difficult. We have 4 commonly used drugs to cause unconsciousness: thiopental, propofol, etomidate, and ketamine. Any of those will do. Of the 4, ketamine also produces intense analgesia. So, a reasonable drug combination would be midazolam, fentanyl, and ketamine, followed by potassium chloride. A single drug that might also be adequate for execution is bupivacaine IV. It causes analgesia and, when given in large enough doses (2.5 mg/kg or more), causes seizures, unconsciouness, and ventricular fibrillation, leading quickly to death. Of course, most executions add a paralytic agent, mainly so that the spectators aren't disturbed by the agonal movements of the dying prisoner. Unfortunately, the American Society of Anesthesiologists prohibits it's members from participating in executions, even though anesthesiologists would be the persons most likely to be able to administer a pain-free execution. The ASA and ABA will in fact revoke a physicians board certification for participating in an execution.
Just give em heroin. I once had an over dose, turned blue, stopped breathing, nearly died and dont remember any of it.
...Valliium, tank of helium, and an "Exit Bag" ....problem solved.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
So, why is it so frowned upon to have utter contempt for the animals that commit heinous crimes such as murder? My sympathy lies with the victims, those that are left behind/still alive and those that have died. I have -no- sympathy for the vast majority of murderers, and the only ones I have any sympathy for are the ones that kill someone because they were brutally tortured by their victim, or if said murderer killed a pedophile. You accuse people of being sociopaths for approving of the death penalty, and/or corporal punishment, yet it's -you- people that either want these guys to have the chance to commit similar acts in the future, or become drains on the system by giving them life imprisonment. It's sickening that you would show mercy to someone who deliberately killed someone else for no particular reason, or a reason that's flimsy at best. Let's see if you believe the same thing if someone near and dead to you is taken, tortured, then killed.
With all the drug ODs in the USA....... How about giving him an over dose of some meds. And why does the prisoner have to be on display like an animal.... Leave him in his cell, watching his favorite TV show or movie!.
I could care less that these people may or may not be suffering. Ask their victims ( oh wait you can't) if they should feel pity for these assholes. They got where they are because of inhumane and horrific reasons, let them leave this plain of existence at a fraction of what they surprised their victims with.
Karma is a bitch.
Frankly I want to go back to a time where we are non interventionist. Let other countries worry about themselves. If you dont want to sell me a product I want/need, Then I will no longer provide you with the intel that you want/need
Frankly, everybody wants the US to become non interventionist again.
this sig is useless
And because of your "right" to call them morally corrupt, maybe people will get executed in more pain, or innocent people with medical conditions may suffer or die.
But I hope you feel all morally justified and whatnot. Good for you.
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Just use lead..... at high velocity..... like from a firing squad.
Problem solved.
I don't care if he felt a few minutes of excruciating pain at the end of his life. He sodomized and slit the throat of a woman who was eight months pregnant. Why didn't they slit his throat as part of the execution process while letting some big dark dude f--k him in the ass so he could scream like a woman?
Your argument is deeply flawed. The ones responsible for the pain and suffering are those inflicting the pain and suffering.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I am a rancher I have lots of critters and stock dogs.
If one of the dogs begins to kill the baby critters, I definitely put extra time and work in to rehabilitating the thing because I have a lot of money in it by then.
This may include a period of confinement and only allowed out when I am with it to attempt rehabilitation. I have a lot of money and hopes for the baby critters.
If that cant be accomplished, I try to give it to Iran or some place but no one will take a killer, hmm where is gitmo.
Something has gotta give.
1) The current execution process has apparently been found relatively painless, and medical patients in need of anesthesia were getting treated as usual.
2) The E.U. decides to stop selling the drugs.
3) Now they're testing an execution cocktail that may *not* be painless, and we're using our reserves of anesthesia for medical patients.
I stand by my previous statements. If the U.S. wants to execute people, I don't see why it's the business of other countries to force them to change their policy when said coercion will affect normal anesthesia procedures of people completely unrelated to capital punishment. A more reasonable response, in my mind, that would solve *everyone's* problems, would be for the E.U. to just raise the prices on the drugs. Hell, they can raise them a bit more every month for all I care. That way, it offers and incentive to find some other solution as well.
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I honestly cannot give a shit about a rapist murderer who suffers for ten minutes. I'm pretty sure his victim suffered about a thousand times worse.
I notice that nowhere in your post do you make reference to the fact you're advocating killing.
Once you get done with "cleaning up" the murders, are you going to move on to "cleaning up" the gays, blacks and Jews too?
Someone has to be willing to do what others won't in order to protect everyone.
I have always wondered why they can't just use the drugs used for general anesthetic in general surgeries? Put someone under with those, then you can stop their heart painlessly when they're unconscious. Certainly there is a large supply of those drugs around.
European drugs, and Europe doesn't export them to countries who use those drugs for death penalties. And the US death penalty market just isn't big enough for a separate production line.
and you just feel compelled to take a swipe
Sorry, feel a bit bad for that.
feel less alone. Thank you.
Ridicule is quite powerful, just make sure you're not staring down the wrong end of it before it's about to go off.
Please enlighten me. Was Jesus against the killing of sinners, or did he just not get the chance to kill any himself?
I find the bible confusing, and hope you can help me.
I had a quick re-read through the New Testament and couldn't find any mentions of where he'd wanted to kill anybody - but know I must have missed something, as I've been told by his followers that it's OK.
Not sure why this is so hard. Ether can easily kill you. Used to be used to anesthesia years ago. My father and Mother both had it done to them. You would wake up with one big head ache. Keep the cloth with ether over their mouth and they'll be gone soon.
There are dozens of old anesthesia methods that could be used. Again, this is not hard. Not novel.
gosgog:
Cyanide pills were provided to spies etc in WW2 as a means to escape Gestapo or Axis torture. ADOLPH HITLER & WIFE & other nasty NAZIS took Cyanide so why do we have to do anything different. Its not outrageously expensive, its over reasonably fast.
Are we enraged killers? Do we think killing someone repairs something else?
If we kill out out anger or if we kill according to the irrational calculus that one death offsets another, then we share a common indulgence or a common delusion with angry and vengeful murderers.
The death penalty is nothing more than a political appeasement and an opportunistic exercise of our worst impulses.
Ah, but does killing a murderer prevent future deaths? Is the death penalty just a prophylactic extermination, a cost-effective way to save lives? If so, let's put it somewhere on that list of cost-effective ways to save lives by killing a few people -- the one that starts with Attorneys for Tobacco Companies.
Yea, lets not be killing people slowly. What is this the Green Mile? This man destroyed another man's entire shot at a family, murdered a woman, and destroyed a chance at life for a possible baby. Prison won't fix this guy, nor do society any good to pay for his stay in prison. He obviously doesn't care about taking another person's life. It's perfectly fair to kill him I'd say, and practical in a sense. But slowly killing someone is like torture, nobody needs a show and a death, that would simply corrupt the moral compass of society.
(Forewarning, posting while tired. I'm likely overlooking something, and may not be as coherent as I'd like.)
I believe that if we took the death penalty seriously as a society, and actually used it, it would stop being an empty threat
Let's say that for the sake of the argument the only ones deserving the death penalty are those who kill other people.
Oversimplified, but I see no need to debate the point.
And let's discard those who have done so by accident. We just want the people who have done that on purpose.
Who kills another person on purpose? As a civilian, not employed by the government, in peace time, in self defense, not trying to prevent someone else to commit murder... Who are the premeditated murderers?
You got two groups. Mentally deranged people and criminals.
Those are excessively large and diverse groups. Considering how "criminal" tends to be defined, it may be a tautology to split them this way, but I'll accept it for the time being.
Now... Mentally deranged people are mentally ill. THAT is the reason they commit murders. Giving them the death penalty is basically killing people for being sick.
For those who kill only because they are mentally deranged. The distinction is a hard one to make, and I don't think it can be made in most cases. Let's say the severely mentally ill don't qualify, and move on.
Also, do you really believe that the insane person will take heed of the threat of death penalty?
Insanity isn't boolean. It isn't all or nothing. It is a continuum (in the very least). It depends on the degree of insanity. Some of them will, yes. Even if mental illness is off the table, the knowledge that death penalty is practiced on murderers will deter some of the insane. Remember, they've got a screw loose. Most of them don't want to admit that they're crazy, and the insanity defense won't always occur to them during pre-meditation. To premeditate the insanity defense, you would need to admit to yourself that you're cuckoo.
Either being with a long history of mental illness or just cracking and loosing it for a moment under the influence of stress, drugs or whatnot.
Drugs are not a good excuse. I'd need more information before I'm willing to decide if they are an excuse at all.
Snapping under stress? "Jim made me stressful, but I killed him. Now that he's gone, I'm all better. Honest!" Right... Now, there are cases of longstanding, undiagnosed mental illness. Add an unreasonable stressor, and things sometimes go from potentially dangerous, to deadly. These are two very different things. We need to be really careful about anybody we permit to take the insanity defense. It should be quite hard to get out of the psych ward after killing someone.
But again, remember, crazy isn't an absolute. We need to make an honest assessment of potential for premeditation and potential for self-restraint. Only when one of those is at an exceptionally low level (extreme clinical) should we just accept that they couldn't help themselves.
Some of them even believe that they are doing god's work and that there are really good things waiting for them if they martyr themselves.
That group is exceptionally scary. They will either attempt suicide, or they will be especially motivated to try to seem cured, to get back outside and kill again.
So, we're left with the other group - criminals.
A wide and varied group.
The kind of people who's "job description" involves "every day you may be shot and killed by police, your friends, your competition, family members and many other people not listed above".
For some of them, it's a job. For most of them, it's a hobby, or a lifestyle. Most criminals aren't "career" criminals
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
That IS what's going on, in the case of TFA. Traditional execution drugs like pentobarbital and sodium thiopental are both manufactured in the EU. They are both used in general medical practice in hospitals. The companies that make the drugs have said that if their drugs are used in executions, they will have to stop importing the drug to the US full stop (under EU law). Which would be A Bad Thing.
If you want to execute someone, you now have to use only drugs that are made in the US or another country that carries out executions- no-one else will consent to import them.
Every tool-maker has a responsibility to monitor what is being done with the tools. And to withhold them if the use is incompatible with their ethics. Otherwise, selling weapons to, say, Iran would be perfectly acceptable.
I stand by my statement: Your argument is deeply flawed. It does not even fulfill basic rationality standards.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Setting aside the issue of whether this particular resource has value, we place value in self-contradictory systems because the only systems which do not meet that qualification are too trivial to be of any use. Recall Godel, whose theorems deal with symbolic logic, and who showed that that any mathematical systems beyond the simplest arithmetic (i.e. not Peano arithmetic) were undecidable.
The analogy to morality is only that, an analogy, but Godel would still apply if you were able to express your chosen morality in symbolic logic. You get completeness or consistency but not both. A wholly consistent morality might be "Don't be evil," or better, "Don't wear socks and sandals together." With any even moderately complicated set of moral standards, it is trivial to construct a contradiction. Since the author considers himself rather more amoral than not, said construction is left as an exercise to the reader.
Indeed. Revenge just puts you on the same level. It is fascinating how many people do not get that and believe circumstances can make it right. Most humans are still animals at heart.
I wonder how you'd feel if your daughter was in Joy Stewart's place? How would you feel if you fought to release him and then he goes off and murders a few more women.... Social animals have always excised the rabid and anti-community oriented among themselves. It's survival of society and unless and until a clockwork orange style reprogramming happens and you think that's better, there isn't much else you can do.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Export. The U.S. wants to import the drugs, but the E.U. won't export them to the U.S.
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And I think that just because you disagree with my viewpoint does not give you the excuse to say it "does not even fulfill basic rationality standards." This is the same exact argument that Libertarians make--"stay the fuck out of my business," so obviously a significant number of people find that it "fulfills basic rationality standards."
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The same people who comment on this thread, and on this topic in general, against the death penalty, seem to be the same people who take great pains to support "a right to choose" to kill children in the womb. And that fight to save animals at all costs. If you're going to argue against killing convicted criminals, why can't you argue against killing unborn children? What pain meds to the unborn receive before they get chopped up and vacuumed out. At least be consistent in your outrage at the taking of human life.
Glad that democrat criminal suffered considering what they did!!!! This country needs more executions and less litigation from bleeding heart democrats (who seem to love their criminals) trying to 'save' these violent offenders!! We are tired of the current democrat administrations (monarchy?) love of all things and criminals islamic!!! The United states was created by Christian men. We need to move back to a Christ centered United States! If I Were the Devil - (BEST VERSION) by PAUL HARVEY audio recording. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3Az0okaHig
That is not the reason, but your argument is so obviously bogus and contrived, that I can confidently state that you do not understand basic rationality.
Also, the discussion about rationality is not a democratic vote. Most people do not understand rationality, and you are obviously one of them. The difference is that many people know they are limited there, you do not. Look up the Dunning-Kruger effect sometime. You are on the far left side of the graph.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Don't be a pedant. "Import to" or "import into" is a valid linguistic phrase:
http://www.daff.gov.au/biosecurity/import
http://www.cbp.gov/linkhandler/cgov/newsroom/publications/trade/iius.ctt/iius.pdf
http://www.bund.de/EN/Economy-And-Trade/Importing-to-Germany/Importing-to-Germany_node.html
Although I will admit that I would have used "export" if I had been thinking about it properly.
Citing examples of a phrase being used in public isn't what I'd call proof; however, it appears these sites are actually commerce-related, so there's that. If I had a nickel every time somebody used "everyday" as an adverb on a billboard...
http://grammarist.com/usage/everyday-every-day/
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Citing a German website for English language rules seems a bit suspect, though.
"Importing into" seems redundant, while "importing to" says that the act of importing is occurring toward the direct object, which seems by definition false, as the importer is the subject. It sounds to me like saying, "I drove the car forward backward."
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Wow, that doesn't sound arrogant at all. Good day, sir.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
So in the event of an innocent person being put to death I would at the least hope that there [sic] last few minutes of life are not spent in agonizing pain.
Why is it that we hope that? Is it a misapplication of empathy? After all, dead is dead. It's not like this guy is now thinking to himself "Wow, that was a really painful way to die! It still hurts! The memory itself is accompanied by pain!"
After one dies, there is no further opportunity to reflect on or otherwise experience past pain. Once this criminal's brain function ceased, so too did any subjective experience of pain. So, what did it matter?
People often say they hope for a quick and painless death, suggesting that a slow and agonizing death is undesirable. People are generally appalled when they hear me say that I'd like to burn to death, preferably with the aid of drugs that help me retain full awareness for as long as possible. If you think about it, though, there is no better time to experience extraordinary, unimaginable pain than immediately prior to death. The pain is guaranteed to be totally gone when you die. No lingering soreness, no resulting chronic condition to worry about, no PTSD. Also, why not? I mean, after you're dead, you won't have any preference anyway. You'll be too dead to think "Wow, that really was more unpleasant and less interesting than I had expected, and perhaps it really would have been better to die in my sleep". In a sense, it won't matter at all how you died, at least not to you. Finally, I offer up the suggestion to think of death as an opportunity to do something that you can't otherwise do. There are countless experiences and activities that people rarely engage in due to the fact that they result in death. Not just feeling your flesh melt from your body, in which people may not see much novelty, but a wide spectrum of other things as well. One might skydive naked, or openly assassinate a monarch, or become a martyr. Of course, one will not have the opportunity to relish the uniqueness of these experiences any longer than one can regret having died, since in either case subjective experience hinges upon the continued life of the observer. In this way, death is a terrible thing to waste.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
So if China was using Ford cars to run people over in the streets, you'd expect Ford to keep selling them, as other people use Fords too?? Your logic is bizarre. The US is practising a behaviour not seen, and indeed illegal, in the EU. The EU doesn't want to encourage this behaviour, so it stop selling the drugs to the US. What happens after that is the US's problem - they decide to kill (possibly innocent) people, so the blood is on their hands.
Which part is illegal in the E.U.? Capital punishment? The U.S. is not in the E.U., the reverse of which we are so fond of (accurately) pointing out here on Slashdot.
I would have much less objection to the whole affair if it didn't mean they were withholding the standard anesthetic from completely unrelated and non-complicit people. If North Korea was actually giving their food subsidies to the people,* would you stop the food subsidies if they also fed their soldiers with them? That's basically punishing the people who have no say in their government for the actions of said government. Skinning the face to hurt the nose, to abuse another analogy ;)
* I hear that this is not really the case, so it's admittedly not a perfect analogy.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Insanity isn't boolean.
Grasping of reality IS though.
Insane people don't have it. By definition. We're not talking defense here - we're talking there being nothing wrong about killing.
As for the rest of your reply... That's a finest example of cherry picking I've seen yet.
Really... Forget the core arguments, go for the sentences. And individual words.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
And thus, you are missing the point entirely. Also, you _are_ wrong, as you were basically requesting this statement, and hence it is not arrogant.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Insanity isn't boolean.
Grasping of reality IS though.
No, it's not. Thankfully I haven't had anybody in my family go through Alzheimer yet, or slip gradually into severe dementia. There are many people out there who would find that statement offensive.
Insane people don't have it. By definition.
Hmm, looking up the medical definition of "insane":
a legal term for mental illness of such degree that the individual is not responsible for his or her acts. Dorland's Medical Dictionary for Health Consumers. © 2007
1. Persistent mental disorder or derangement. Not in scientific use.
2. Unsoundness of mind sufficient in the judgment of a civil court to render a person unfit to maintain a contractual or other legal relationship or to warrant commitment to a mental health facility.
3. In most criminal jurisdictions, a degree of mental malfunctioning considered to be sufficient to relieve the accused of legal responsibility for the act committed. The American Heritage® Medical Dictionary Copyright © 2007
So... It's not a medical term, but a legal one. We seem to have found another tautology.
We're not talking defense here - we're talking there being nothing wrong about killing.
We're talking about whether the practice of capital punishment can dissuade someone who does not have a sound grasp of reality from killing. It won't dissuade all of them; it won't dissuade all sane people either. But will it dissuade some of them? I contend that it can.
As for the rest of your reply... That's a finest example of cherry picking I've seen yet. Really... Forget the core arguments, go for the sentences. And individual words.
I picked your argument apart piece by piece. I may have missed things (it's likely, in fact), but I didn't skip anything intentionally. And I didn't skip the core arguments by going for individual ideas. That's not how arguments work. You had premises; you connected them; you tried to show how this lead to conclusions. Fine. I showed which premises I thought were faulty, and why others didn't lead to the conclusions you thought they did. I didn't just stand up and declare you wrong, but I showed you why. Piece by piece.
What did I cherry pick?
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.