How To Execute People In the 21st Century

HughPickens.com writes Matt Ford writes in The Atlantic that thanks to a European Union embargo on the export of key drugs, and the refusal of major pharmaceutical companies to sell them the nation's predominant method of execution is increasingly hard to perform. With lethal injection's future uncertain, some states are turning to previously discarded methods. The Utah legislature just approved a bill to reintroduce firing squads for executions, Alabama's House of Representatives voted to authorize the electric chair if new drugs couldn't be found, and after last years botched injection, Oklahoma legislators are mulling the gas chamber.

The driving force behind the creation and abandonment of execution methods is the constant search for a humane means of taking a human life. Arizona, for example, abandoned hangings after a noose accidentally decapitated a condemned woman in 1930. Execution is also prone to problems as witnesses routinely report that, when the switch is thrown, the condemned prisoner "cringes," "leaps," and "fights the straps with amazing strength." The hands turn red, then white, and the cords of the neck stand out like steel bands. The prisoner's limbs, fingers, toes, and face are severely contorted. The force of the electrical current is so powerful that the prisoner's eyeballs sometimes pop out and "rest on [his] cheeks." The physical effects of the deadly hydrogen cyanide in the gas chamber are coma, seizures and cardiac arrest but the time lag has previously proved a problem. According to Ford one reason lethal injection enjoyed such tremendous popularity was that it strongly resembled a medical procedure, thereby projecting our preconceived notions about modern medicine—its competence, its efficacy, and its reliability—onto the capital-punishment system. "As states revert to earlier methods of execution—techniques once abandoned as backward and flawed—they run the risk that the death penalty itself will be seen in the same terms."

Comments

HOWTO

[facetube]

Don't.

Re:HOWTO

[gweihir]

Really simple. And that nobody is willing to supply the Propofol should tell you that some nation is stuck in the deep and dark past on this issue (and apparently has some problems with manufacturing some medical drugs...). The world has moved on and realized that there are no acceptable excuses to execute anybody in a modern society, it is time to join it.

Re:HOWTO

[dmbasso]

If America wants to execute people, THEY WILL.

Psychopaths sympathize with that statement.

I'm sorry you're too simple minded to understand that some people are not worth letting live

I'm sorry you're too simple minded to realize how flawed your justice system is, and how many innocents had their lives taken by it.

Re:HOWTO

[Squiddie]

The problem is that too often the justice system makes mistakes. We know that innocent people have been executed, but let's say that was not the case. Let's look at your logic: they have killed, so they deserve to be killed. Eye for an eye, no? Then why not do it like Saudi Arabia? They recently blinded a man as punishment for an acid attack. Should the US then implement these kinds of punishments that they so often condemn? At the end of the day, the death penalty accomplished nothing and too often costs too much to society at large.

Re:HOWTO

[SuricouRaven]

Or just nitrogen. Same effect, easier to handle. Just make sure you have an ECG hooked up too, so you can make sure the condemned is well and truly dead before you expose them to oxygen again.

Re:HOWTO

[SuricouRaven]

Because it's too humane. The condemned doesn't just die peacefully, they die after a brief euphoria. For many people this offends their sense of justice: It feels like an evil person has gotten away because they didn't suffer sufficient pain to balance out their crime.

Re:HOWTO

[Rei]

The reason, not excuse, to execute someone is simple, they've executed someone else themselves. This isn't a difficult concept really.

As always, The Onion says it best.

Re:HOWTO

[gweihir]

The reason, not excuse, to execute someone is simple, they've executed someone else themselves. This isn't a difficult concept really.

Cavemen throughout history agree. Enlightened people can see that by murdering somebody in revenge, you do not bring somebody killed back to life, you just have one more murder and one more murderer.

Re:HOWTO

[neilo_1701D]

The reason, not excuse, to execute someone is simple, they've executed someone else themselves.

So the State, having decided that murder is illegal, resorts to murder as "punishment". That is hypocrisy of the highest order.

The problem with the death penalty is that you can't undo a mistake. Innocent people have been executed before; DNA evidence is getting people released from Death Row (see, for example, Anthony Apanovitch).

In cases where guilt is 100% proven beyond all shadow of a doubt, there is still the moral issue of the State, which represents the people, being party to murder when the State (ie. the people and the laws they have agreed to live by) forbids it.

Instead of people being terminated quickly, painlessly and with no suffering, now they are fully aware of the end of their life as it happens. This is clearly a much better solution.

The bolding is mine. Under what system of ethics do you follow where killing a person and ensuring their suffering right up until they die is viewed as a better solution?

What happens when a person commits a particularly horrendous crime? Suppose it takes around 20 minutes for lethal injections to work; how long would you have them suffer? The whole 20 minutes? Longer?

I'm sorry you're too simple minded to understand that some people are not worth letting live, but thats the reality of it..

In whose opinion? That may be your reality; it certainly isn't mine.

When someone murders another innocent being, plans it out, does the execution and shows no remorse at all (all of these things are the requirement for the death penalty in most places) ... and it happens to be your loved ones ... then get back to me on your high and mighty horse, until then ... stop pretending you're so enlightened. You aren't, you're just naive and selfish and ignorant of reality.

How many people go on to live better and more fulfilled lives knowing that this person is dead? Retribution is a very natural, normal emotional response. That doesn't mean it's the healthiest response.

Re:HOWTO

[gweihir]

And there your stance becomes obvious: You are not after justice, you are after revenge. In revenge, you do not mind killing a few innocents with the guilty, with justice, that is completely unacceptable.

Other interesting fact: The Soviet Union had that sort of legal model where punishing the guilty was considered far more important than not punishing the innocent. Beware what people you associate with here.

Re:HOWTO

[Barsteward]

i guess you are happy with ISIS chopping heads of people because of their interpretation of law. In their eyes, its justified.

Re: HOWTO

[sg_oneill]

I truly think we're in terrifying territory when "We can't afford to keep this perfectly healthy guy alive so lets kill him" is even part of the conversation.

Rehabilitate and release. If they can't be rehabilitated, move them into psychiatric care because they are clearly broken.

But don't kill. Its 2015. We're supposed to be *better* than that.

What?

[Greyfox]

Just get a New York City cop to choke them. That seems very effective. Problem solved. You're welcome!

I mean, you could just not execute people. You know, seeing as how so many innocent people have been sent to death by racist juries or prosecutors extracting confessions from them with unethical measures. And how it costs a lot more to execute someone than it does to keep them in prison for the rest of their life. But that's just crazy talk! We can't have a vengeance-based legal system with thinking like that!

Please stop. Just stop

[DanDD]

Please stop killing people in the name of justice. Just stop.

Humane Methods and Definitions

[eyepeepackets]

The guillotine was originally adopted by the French as an evolved and humane method for taking a human life and, considering what we've seen with alternative methods this past century, I have to agree: It's fast, relatively painless (quite possibly completely painless when one considers the shock reaction of the body,) somewhat messy, but has great symbolic and even theatrical value. Granted, the upper classes world-wide hate this device with a fearful passion, but that is actually part of its value.

There is no way.

[ckatko]

It has been proven (as if it needed to be) that we've executed an innocent person.

http://www.theatlantic.com/nat...

Any idea that you can "humanely" murder someone is a damned lie.

Moreover, remember the Central Park jogger case? Where they rounded up five minority scapegoats and said they brutally raped a pretty white girl? Everyone, including Donald Trump himself, was rallying to execute these kids. Now, it turns out they were all innocent. They spent 15 years of their lives in jail and they were LUCKY because they weren't executed. They had all of their primes taken away from them but they still get to live what's left.

The death penalty is for revenge, not justice. And the ones who pay the price when we're wrong isn't the prosecutors. Life in jail means innocent people have a chance. Death penalty removes that chance and replaces it with a false sense of faith in the system.

Or how about

[DiSKiLLeR]

Or how about we stop this barbaric practice? It's 2015. We're not living in the fucking middle ages anymore.

What the fuck is wrong with Americans, I swear.

Re:Please stop. Just stop

[Ichijo]

But justice in the USA is mainly about revenge. Legal types even have a fancy name for it: "retribution." Protecting society is a secondary purpose, but that doesn't require the death penalty. It only requires keeping people locked up until they are no longer a danger, but we can't even get that right.

If the main purpose of justice were rehabilitation, there would be no killing in the name of justice, and people wouldn't come out of prisons more dangerous to society than when they went in. And prisons would be much nicer places, more like hospitals or universities than like dungeons.

Unfortunately, we are not a very smart nation.

Re:Your justice system is flawed, too.

[aliquis]

Face it: Yes, it is wrong to kill any human being. Some people, however, have committed crimes so heinous that they no longer qualify as human beings, just because they happen to have a particular DNA sequence.

.. and some people decide that's because they don't believe in the same god, don't accept the same society rules, are homosexuals, ..

Re:Better Arguments Needed

[ScentCone]

I completely agree...but isn't this what you are also doing too?

I don't think there's a need to feel remorse for ridding society of someone about whom otherwise never give another thought, but who comes to our attention for being a satisfied murderer of innocent people. Supporting the removal of that person from existence isn't the same as wanting to kill anyone.

If you want to argue for the death penalty then you need to restrict it to cases where the evidence is overwhelming and you need to make it rapid.

Overwhelmingly clear guilt, yes. Rapid enough to not be dragging the victim's family back into appeal hearings for decades - which is insane. But too hasty does indeed increase the risk of errors in judgement.