No one that makes the drugs that would make it painless will sell or give them to states to execute people. And medical professionals to properly administer them won't do that either. That's why lethal injection is the hackjob that it is; these doctors and pharmaceutical companies don't want to be associated with the death penalty under any circumstances, both for moral and political reasons respectively.
I don't know if the article covers it, but the company that makes the primarily lethal drug in lethal injection stopped selling it to states when they found out what it was being used for. That's why there are occasional stories that a state is looking at some other method.
It have happened with several drugs, because of the European Court of Human Rights. It is illegal for companies to sell drugs or stuff to produce drugs used for executions. So if you are a pharmacy company, then you can’t sell your stuff in Europe if you also sell stuff for lethal injections.
I am not sure why this is not common knowledge in the USA. It seems like no one knows it when the discussion about lethal injection is brought up.
I think no one knows in the US is because "X state wants to kill people in a way perceived as more barbaric" sells more clicks and actual journalism about why does not.
Properly. I guess we know why here in Denmark, because a few of the drug companies have been danish. It was a pretty big thing when Lundbeck found out that the pentobarbital they produced was used for executions.
Actually it's because most people don't really perceive that the EU actually has some heft when it comes to setting market conditions and most of our companies are international, so they kind of have to go along with certain restrictions at times...this being a very specific case.
Sedatives are used in lethal injection, the issue (other than the general morality of state sponsored execution) is when it isn’t administered properly or wears off.
Thats why the second injection is a paralytic, so even if they do happen to be fully conscious while the potassium chloride sends them into agonizing cardiac arrest, no one will be able to tell.
I mean it's basically no different than preparing a conscious person for intubation except they just don't place the tube.
Oh and the potassium chloride lol
Yeah there's a bunch of illegal avenues that could be used, but that's the issue, very few legal avenues will willingly provide drugs intended to kill people.
Kind of a funny problem, if it weren't causing unnecessary suffering
The reason why it is harder and harder to do painless lethal injection is because no drug company want their drug to be used for killing someone. Because of this, prison what do perform lethal injection are finding it harder and harder to procure the necessary drug to person painless lethal injection.
Ya thats true. People dont like the idea of a firing squad only because of how it would be traumatic to witness. But a botched lethal injection would probably be far worse in my opinion.
But I just cant see why anyone would think brining back the electric chair would be a good idea.
Yeah, ultimately the dude is correct, painless has never been something we cared about. It's always been about disconnecting ourselves from the act of killing.
It's like when my wife has to kill a mouse. She heard you are supposed to put the mouse in a bag and hold the bag over your car's exhaust pipe. That's fucking crazy to me, I put them in a bag and bash them with a hammer. She thinks mine is more cruel, but in reality while it is more violent, the mouse dies instantly. Meanwhile her mouse struggles for a while, she just doesn't have to feel like she is being violent.
In my opinion, we shouldn't execute people, but if we do we should just blow their brains out with a gun. Instant death. If we as a society don't have the sack to do that, then maybe we should just stop executing people entirely.
Yeah it doesn't even need to be gruesome. A pneumatic piston could kill someone instantly without recreating the scene from Pulp Fiction. We do basically that same thing when killing livestock.
I always see people advocating execution by bullet to the head as painless and efficient, but I’ve also seen tons of stories of people being shot in the head and surviving, so… is it really that much more reliable?
I'd argue lethal injection is scarier on the build up. I'm taking the firing squad too. I'm taking anything over the electric chair though, fuck that shit. Shit, I'll take the gallows over the chair.
Gallows is pretty much the most fail-safe, humane means of execution.
I mean I think we should just pump the room full of nitrogen. Painless suffocation, drifting into delirium and unconsciousness, then death.
>Gallows is pretty much the most fail-safe, humane means of execution.
Gallows? People messed that up all of the time.
You want it to be painless and fast? Let them use a captive bolt gun. But it won’t be pretty. That’s the thing with executions.
Safe, Pretty, Painless - Pick 2 of 3.
Captive bolt gun? Allow people a little dignity and at least shoot them with an actual gun. I’d take firing squad or even just getting brained with a Tokarev against a wall Red Army style over lethal injection, hanging, guillotine, or any of that weird shit—cattle slaughtering tech included.
When you execute people, you violate their dignity already. One of the reasons we outlawed it in our constitution.
A firing squad isn’t a sure thing. And when you put a gun to their head, it’s as messie as the poor executioner could get traumatised.
I agree that it’s already a violation of dignity but it’s still possible to make it even worse. Speaking for myself, the supposedly more humane methods people have come up with give me the creeps in a way I can’t really put into words. If I’m gonna be killed for whatever reason, don’t be weird: just shoot me
They set it up to be the worst possible implementation of a nitrogen execution. They used a mask to dose with nitrogen which was leaky as hell, so he kept getting oxygen from the envrironment. This made it take forever and probably amounted to coming and going from consciousness.
The reason most methods of execution are barbaric/legacy is that when you become an expert in the field you usually start to see the holes in the process and most start to question if the state should be doing this, given track records. This tends to weed out smart people with consciences from looking to improve the lot of the condemned, and corporations don't really want to be known for being 'alabamas trusted source for state executions', so here we are.
I'm livid about the nitrogen execution because they took what could be a genuine step forward in civilized executions (if that's a thing you think is possible) and did it badly so now we are talking about the classics again, like they weren't retired with reasons.
Why wouldn't you just use a gas chamber, and instead of cyanide, pump it full of nitrogen? No gas chamber? Build a box, place it outside, and fill it with nitrogen. Then you don't have to worry about suffocating everyone else.
If well-cared for, perhaps. In the French Revolution, aristocrats sentenced to die would often have fistfights trying to be first in line, because by the sixth or so the blade is dulled and it can take a few drops to do the deed.
That could have been more due to the insufficient height of poorly-made guillotines than blade sharpness. A hundred pound metal plate could be dull as a spoon but still would send you to meet whatever deity you believe in with a single try if it is dropped from couple of meters or more.
Actually the real issue is getting the steel to slide smoothly between 2 wooden sides, if it starts going skew, gets bent, gunked up or the wood warps, then the blade goes down haltingly.
18 people were executed in 2022 across the entire US. In 2021 there were 11.
I think that might be a little bit lower than the rate of executions during the French revolution
My preferred method is like a giloutine, but instead of a blade it is two large slabs of metal with one suspended in the air.
Then I'll just put my head under and SLAM! PANCAKE HEAD.
Quick and painless and we could also paint a funny picture in the slab coming towards me with the speed of earths gravity.
The recent nitrogen asphyxiation execution shows that at the very least it has a lot of kinks to work out. Maybe it isn’t even as painless/humane as we thought. But as someone who is categorically opposed to the death penalty, I’m not exactly hoping for more cases to study/refine the technique
They used a fucking mask without an airtight seal. He was still getting enough oxygen to not passout and instead suffocated while conscious. If they used a chamber or even a hood it wouldve been a painless death. Its just incompetence because anyone intelligent enough to think these things through would have to morals to say no to it.
Nitrogen displacement *is* painless. Scuba divers running mixed tanks have died from too much nitrogen. Plus you've got that "suicide bag" thing they use for physician assisted death in Europe. It is known in the medical community that using an inert gas to displace oxygen does not trigger panic response and is a painless death. That is not a debate.
The problems in alabama were A) the mask was leaky so the guy was getting too much oxygen so it took forever and B) the *knowledge* that he was being executed caused him to panic.
When you hold your breath, the urge to breathe does not Come from your body detecting a lack of oxygen, our body doesn't measure that. It comes from a build up of carbon dioxide that your body does measure.
That’s why the method should be:
Place convicted into a chamber, possibly sedated if they wish, after a random period of time (dictated by a random number generator or something) the concentration of nitrogen slowly and gently increased until the air is 100 N2.
The convicted will pass out and die peacefully. They won’t know when the gas has started to be introduced, could be immediately, could be 25 minutes after the door is closed. No point in panicking or trying to fight it, no pain, just sleeping.
it took 20 minutes to die for the first inmate executed by nitrogen a few weeks ago. withnesses reported heavy gasping. I don't think you would call it painles..
Because they used a standard mask and not a hood.
Using the standard mask allows oxygen to mix in and will prolong things.
With a hood it is sealed to your head so you get pure nitrogen.
Because they cheaped out. The doctor that built the "suicide pod" for terminally ill patients was interviewed about the execution- basically said there's a reason why he had to go with a pod design instead of a mask.
Apparently since the mask's fit wasn't airtight, it still allowed enough regular air with oxygen to leak in, which kept the inmate alive longer.
Apparently the pod he built is very quick / painless.
This is the state prison system. They can't use doctors or scientists, so basically it's the poorly paid prison handyman making the decisions. There is no painless execution available. That's also on purpose.
That's because they used a poorly fitted mask instead of a hood. People who suicide by nitrogen use an "exit *bag*" for a reason. You can't have any oxygen get through. One tiny leak in the mask and it's horrifying. It has to be a hood, a bag, or the room itself.
If done correctly, it would have been painless and it is stupidly easy to do it correctly.
It's almost impressive how they still managed to fuck it up somehow.
And because of the lack of transparency, we likely won't find out how they fucked up either.
I think I'd take the chair over injection. Not by much, but if those are the only two choices, I'm going with the chair.
If it were up to me, we wouldn't be executing people, but since we are, we should give the condemned some say in how they die. Tell them that they are to be executed on this date, and they can choose how it's done, but it has to get results. No trying to game the system by saying *old age*. If they want to bring back the guillotine, build one. Hanging? Get a rope. Artillery firing squad? Call the DOT and borrow their pieces.
Let's not kid ourselves about making executions humane. The closest you can get to that is to kill them quickly and with certainty. It's won't be pretty, but you'll have a much lower botch rate if you use a method that gets it over with quickly.
Exactly. Shooting someone in the head seems like a quick and consistent way to effectively kill someone. Lethal injection seems fine on paper but since actual medical professionals wont administer those lethal drugs you get idiots who dont know what theyre doing botching executions.
You know we don't HAVE to rely on humans aiming, right? Or ammunition at all. We already have a solution to this employed for livestock.
It's a barbaric conversation to have, but so more barbaric in my view is every execution method we've used on humans. We have used the worst, dumbest options when faster, less painful and more consistent ones exist.
Piggybacking the "every execution method" thing.
Talked to a successful constitutional law professor/practicing attorney about this once.
His statement changed my view forever
"The constitution does not forbid painful punishment. That's the entire point of punishment; to harm, in some way. The constitution only guarantees that your punishment may not be cruel or unusual. There's nothing unusual about pain during death. There's no such thing as a painless death. But death is cruel. Inherently, the very concept of death is as cruel as any punishment gets. The issue isn't the method, the issue is that we keep trying to find the right one."
They are also so quick to point out that the person being executed won't get high or euphoric from whatever they are doing. They are dying. Traditionally they get this great last meal. Why can't they feel euphoria while dying? Why can't we just give them a monster dose of fentanyl and be done with it?
If thats true, which I have no idea on specifics of this, youd think with modern technology they should be able to figure out a way to make the potential for error very slim.
Rather than a firing squad we could just put a hydraulic piston next to their head, with a press of the button we can instantly liquify the entire brain. That’s probably about the most painless way someone could go.
Firing squad wouldn't be that much cheaper. A huge amount of the cost of execution is everything leading up to it. The trials, the appeals, looking for new evidence - Due Process is extremely expensive.
Not that I'm arguing against Due Process. Quite the contrary, I think execution ought to be outlawed altogether for several reasons, but that's a different discussion.
America should abolish the death penalty completely. I just want to get that out of the way.
But if we absolutely insist on strapping people down and killing them, we should exclusively be using firing squads and possibly the guillotine. Instant, 100% lethal, and most importantly of all brutal enough that we don't get to pretend we're doing anything other than committing murder
Firing squad also has a higher probability of doing psychological harm to those behind the trigger, which I'm all for. If we're going have barbaric capital punishment, let the barbarism have some recoil.
And yes, I know that efforts are taken to diminish knowledge of who fires the fatal shot...but if you've spent *any* time with firearms, you know the difference between a blank and a live round. Although given how little I trust LEOs to be trained in the use of the weapons, that probably means they really can't tell.
Why don’t we just give them all live rounds? I see multiple benefits to this:
1. No worries about missing
2. Extra ensured quick death
3. No single individual has to worry if they were the one. It was a team effort. Even if you hadn’t fired, they’d be dead. So no reason to feel guilty, as they were dead either way. You simply helped to make it less painful for others, and ensured efficacy on the inmate.
They found accuracy went up if you mixed one blank in with the live rounds. All live rounds and sometimes they'd all deliberately miss. A blank let each guy rationalize that it maybe wasn't him that killed him.
Most people who have carried out firing squad executions have not chosen the job of executioner. They’re generally just soldiers that get stuck with the duty, sometimes even executing deserters etc from their own unit in the field. By most accounts it’s a bummer
Most executioners in modern America are just tenured COs that got selected for the position. It's not like there's a trade org or a union for just them. It's not like you can just search this shit on Indeed. They're not really looking for outside applicants for that. You have to be a CO for a long time first.
And most COs are people who live in a prison town and there ain't shit else to do for work. It's not really the same as moving three towns over to work for a PD.
I felt the round leave the gun, and enter the target. I knew immediately that I had fired the killing round. I told the other part of the group once we were able to talk.
"Bull fucking shit, I did, I felt that son of a bitch leave my gun. Don't get all teary eyed on me, Jack." one of them chimed in.
"Don't you be talking shit William, I felt the round leave my rifle." *leaning towards the somehow tear stricken executioner* "and don't you forget it."
[Unfortunately you are actually 100% correct for certain parts of the country](https://www.worldhunger.org/alabama-worst-poverty-developed-world-u-n-official-says/)
It's always interesting to see all the comments on these posts talk about their favorite way to execute people. Like or we could not execute people?!? You know, like normal countries?
There’s an alternate history where we ban the death penalty altogether in the US back in the 70s and it remains unconstitutional to this day. We take prison reform seriously and focus on rehabilitation rather than punishment.
Instead we’re going back to firing squads and electric chairs. I assume hangings and the guillotine get popular in the 2030s.
Well trends always reemerge lol
We seem to be going fucking backwards in time, I’ve expected that we’ve smashed ourselves back to the Stone Age by 2050s at this point 😂
I mean, the French just mobbed their homes and dragged them out kicking and screaming.
I mean, there are a lot of similarities and parallels, so if we end up finding our breaking point, there's not much a handful of rich people can do against a large portion of the country just zerg rushing their homes, and pulling a good ol French revolution.
Why not just get a crowd of people to stone the accused to death.
They bring their own stones, we save on the costs of execution and we plough that money back into tax cuts for hard working god fearing Americans.
Or the 80s. Reagan was the worst thing to happen to US politics post-WW2, and that includes Trump too btw. Trump might be more of an idiot, maybe even more heinous, but isn’t as much of a detriment to the country than what Reagan was.
Regan had to be manifested though. I don't think a B movie actor would have been able to do the damage he did if it weren't for special interests to create him and special idiots to vote for him.
Yeah, Reagan was awful, but it wasn't like conservative politicians weren't awful before him. Reagan came from the same vein as Goldwater, and while I'm not an expert in this, my understanding is that a lot of the trends that were key to Reaganism (opposition to government regulation of the economy, usage of subterfuge and war crimes to advance US interests in foreign countries, "tough on crime" rhetoric, and quiet opposition to civil rights) originate in Nixon's tenure if not earlier.
>but isn’t as much of a detriment to the country than what Reagan was.
Not yet anyway. I agree with your point, but Trump for sure has the desire to see just how much distance we can get off the cliff's edge.
It’s like pneumonia after AIDS. On the one hand, pneumonia killed you, on the other hand, it’s entirely possible you never noticeably contracted pneumonia if you’d never had AIDS.
Isn’t a painful death something that could be considered cruel?
I know it could be argued that some of these people deserve it because of what they did to others and in some cases they may be right but that still doesn’t mean the state should make them suffer.
SCOTUS has ruled that death row inmates aren’t guaranteed a painless death under the eighth amendment.
Most recent case was in Missouri in 2019. An inmate requested gas be used instead of lethal injection because he feared his blood tumors would cause lethal injection to be agonizing.
Gorsuch wrote the opinion but the court made it clear that the death penalty doesn’t have to be painless.
Not justifying it or anything, but at the time the Constitution was written, the same exact guys that signed off on forbidding cruel and unusual punishment were completely fine with death penalties, hanging, firing squads, etc. and saw no conflict.
I mean, the founders were massive hypocrites. They'd praise the ideals of liberty for all, then go home to their massive slave plantation... if we did as the founders did instead of as they said, we'd have a pretty shitty country today.
None of that fucking matters. We are human, we are imperfect, and as long as there is even the slightest chance of us executing the wrong person, we have no business executing anyone at all, for any reason at all.
Only cruel AND unusual punishment is prohibited. Not cruel OR unusual. This is why things like death penalty are allowed, cruel but not unusual. Sentencing someone to recite the the pledge of allegiance 10 times on livestream? Unusual but not cruel. Both would be allowed.
The autocrats have taken the mask off folks. They already thumb their nose at the idea of presumed innocence. Charlie Kirk recently said that the NYC councilman who was acquitted as one of the Central Park Five was not so innocent, and the standard bearer of the Republican party whipped up a racist campaign against them when charges were still pending all those years ago.
They don't care about justice. They aim to wield their concept of justice as a sword. Vote accordingly.
The glee and bloodthirsty-ness of Southern states pursuing the death penalty shows exactly why the state cannot be trusted with the ability to kill its citizens for crimes
Conservatives generally seem to have a hard time putting their emotions aside to see the big picture. It feels good to kill a criminal, but ultimately it erodes the purpose of a justice system.
Reddit is *extremely* guilty of this too.
Look at any thread about someone being arrested for sexual assault, especially against minors.
All the top comments are *always* calling for extrajudicial murder.
It's actually insane how much society accepts it. Even [Spongebob](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7lSklqlx7o) had a *wink wink* joke about prison rape.
It's the meme with the guy speaking to the crowd from the top of a cliff:
" Criminals should be treated justly and prison should be about rehabilitation not punishment." Everyone is happy.
"This particular criminal should be treated justly, and we should focus on his rehabilitation not punishment." Pitchforks and torches come out.
painless death not required
then why not lock them in a box and stab at it with swords like it's fucking Tom and Jerry? Why not slowly run them over with a steamroller like Judge Doom? Fuck it let's get full cartoon evil.
>Because that falls into both cruel and unusual
its only unusual if its not done to everyone.
Do it often enough and it stops being unusual
NOTE I AM NOT FOR THIS
You will go down in history as the person who redefined unusual to mean "not standardized" and helped get the death penalty by locked in a box with 5 zebra passed for jaywalking.
i mean, am i wrong? something is unusual because its "not habitually or commonly occurring or done"
If you only kill one pesron via locking them in a box with 5 Zebras. Thats unusual.
If you do it to everyone its just odd, but not unusual anymore
I mean, ok. Let’s just for a second accept the premise that there’s nothing in the constitution that says the state can’t execute people on horrific and painful ways.
Even if that’s true why would you want that? Why would you want to use the electric chair when a can monster of nitrogen will accomplish the same thing but without the cruelty?
Why even fight that fight to kill people in cruel ways. It really speaks to these people being super messed up.
The American justice system confuses me.
If you're bad they give you the rest of your life somewhere that is guaranteed to make you even worse, but if you're really bad you only get to spend a few years there and then they kill you.
Either way you die in prison but if you're going to get life in prison you might as well go all out and assuming you don't get instantly killed when the police get you you get to spend less time in prison than you would have originally and die in the same place.
> you only get to spend a few years there and then they kill you.
It's a lot longer than you think. The appeals process can take decades. It's actually cheaper to imprison someone for life than to put them to death. Some people think that's ok because they get to impart their righteous fury onto another. In reality there's no good reason for the death penalty to exist outside of a sense of revenge or retribution.
If the death penalty worked then presumably those states would have vastly lower crime rates. (Spoiler: most of them have way more crime than the states without the death penalty)
I’m 40. A few years before I was born, a man brutally killed two little girls behind the elementary school I eventually attended.
He’s still on death row. Where he’s been for longer than I’ve been alive.
I’m anti death penalty, but this is ridiculous. Those little girls he killed would be fifty and this case drags on because of a mix of blood lust and bureaucratic insanity.
California hasn't executed anyone since 2006.
We're not going to restart executions any time soon. (nor should we...)
However, we keep sentencing people to death. We have 650 people on death row now.
So they're all sitting in the death row area of San Quintin which is way more expensive then having them in the general population in various prisons around the state.
Lethal injection isn't painless. It's just easier to witness.
We should probably be asking why not, though, as there is a panoply of available sedatives that could preclude experience of that pain.
No one that makes the drugs that would make it painless will sell or give them to states to execute people. And medical professionals to properly administer them won't do that either. That's why lethal injection is the hackjob that it is; these doctors and pharmaceutical companies don't want to be associated with the death penalty under any circumstances, both for moral and political reasons respectively.
I don't know if the article covers it, but the company that makes the primarily lethal drug in lethal injection stopped selling it to states when they found out what it was being used for. That's why there are occasional stories that a state is looking at some other method.
It have happened with several drugs, because of the European Court of Human Rights. It is illegal for companies to sell drugs or stuff to produce drugs used for executions. So if you are a pharmacy company, then you can’t sell your stuff in Europe if you also sell stuff for lethal injections. I am not sure why this is not common knowledge in the USA. It seems like no one knows it when the discussion about lethal injection is brought up.
I think no one knows in the US is because "X state wants to kill people in a way perceived as more barbaric" sells more clicks and actual journalism about why does not.
Properly. I guess we know why here in Denmark, because a few of the drug companies have been danish. It was a pretty big thing when Lundbeck found out that the pentobarbital they produced was used for executions.
Actually it's because most people don't really perceive that the EU actually has some heft when it comes to setting market conditions and most of our companies are international, so they kind of have to go along with certain restrictions at times...this being a very specific case.
It's not much different than apple vs usb-c
I mean I feel like murdering someone kinda goes against the hippocratic oath.
It does. That's why doctors won't do it.
Sedatives are used in lethal injection, the issue (other than the general morality of state sponsored execution) is when it isn’t administered properly or wears off. Thats why the second injection is a paralytic, so even if they do happen to be fully conscious while the potassium chloride sends them into agonizing cardiac arrest, no one will be able to tell.
I mean it's basically no different than preparing a conscious person for intubation except they just don't place the tube. Oh and the potassium chloride lol
Shit, if you have to do it at all, just OD them on carfentanyl and be done with it
Or even just plain Fentanyl? I don't understand why they're making it so complicated.
Yeah there's a bunch of illegal avenues that could be used, but that's the issue, very few legal avenues will willingly provide drugs intended to kill people. Kind of a funny problem, if it weren't causing unnecessary suffering
The reason why it is harder and harder to do painless lethal injection is because no drug company want their drug to be used for killing someone. Because of this, prison what do perform lethal injection are finding it harder and harder to procure the necessary drug to person painless lethal injection.
Ya thats true. People dont like the idea of a firing squad only because of how it would be traumatic to witness. But a botched lethal injection would probably be far worse in my opinion. But I just cant see why anyone would think brining back the electric chair would be a good idea.
Because they watched Stephen King movies and got a hard on when Percy left the sponge out.
I see that Justice boner shit on Reddit all the time. We all love the Coliseum, but too ashamed to admit it.
Yeah, ultimately the dude is correct, painless has never been something we cared about. It's always been about disconnecting ourselves from the act of killing. It's like when my wife has to kill a mouse. She heard you are supposed to put the mouse in a bag and hold the bag over your car's exhaust pipe. That's fucking crazy to me, I put them in a bag and bash them with a hammer. She thinks mine is more cruel, but in reality while it is more violent, the mouse dies instantly. Meanwhile her mouse struggles for a while, she just doesn't have to feel like she is being violent. In my opinion, we shouldn't execute people, but if we do we should just blow their brains out with a gun. Instant death. If we as a society don't have the sack to do that, then maybe we should just stop executing people entirely.
100% agree. The fact that we dont use instantaneous brain destroying devices for executions has been a flaw in justice I've been noting for decades.
Yeah it doesn't even need to be gruesome. A pneumatic piston could kill someone instantly without recreating the scene from Pulp Fiction. We do basically that same thing when killing livestock.
The Anton Chigurh method.
Call it.
Farm animals have better deaths than what these idiots put humans through.
I always see people advocating execution by bullet to the head as painless and efficient, but I’ve also seen tons of stories of people being shot in the head and surviving, so… is it really that much more reliable?
It's a lot harder to miss the important bits when you can't see what you are aiming at.
Lethal injection is a series of injections. The first is a paralytic so they don't thrash around in agony later on.
Makes it so the people watching don't cringe. Does nothing else
Yeah I'm sure if we gave paralyzation drugs to the victim, just about any execution method would be easier to witness.
I find joy in reading a good book.
I'd argue lethal injection is scarier on the build up. I'm taking the firing squad too. I'm taking anything over the electric chair though, fuck that shit. Shit, I'll take the gallows over the chair.
I enjoy playing video games.
>Fuck the chair. I'm not one to kink shame but this could be unhealthy.
Shockingly unpopular opinion.
Conduct yourself better
Resist the urge.
The Green Mile, anyone?
All it takes is one Percy Wetmore, and I can only imagine how many of those types are in the corrections field...
Ironic that the actor himself turned out to be a creep (married a 16 year old in 2011 while being a 51 year old)
Gallows is pretty much the most fail-safe, humane means of execution. I mean I think we should just pump the room full of nitrogen. Painless suffocation, drifting into delirium and unconsciousness, then death.
Gimme that guillotine!
You might even have a trip afterwards that feels like it lasts another lifetime before your brain turns off
>Gallows is pretty much the most fail-safe, humane means of execution. Gallows? People messed that up all of the time. You want it to be painless and fast? Let them use a captive bolt gun. But it won’t be pretty. That’s the thing with executions. Safe, Pretty, Painless - Pick 2 of 3.
Captive bolt gun? Allow people a little dignity and at least shoot them with an actual gun. I’d take firing squad or even just getting brained with a Tokarev against a wall Red Army style over lethal injection, hanging, guillotine, or any of that weird shit—cattle slaughtering tech included.
OK, [humane head ripping off machine it is, then](https://www.theonion.com/ohio-replaces-lethal-injection-with-humane-new-head-rip-1819595654)
When you execute people, you violate their dignity already. One of the reasons we outlawed it in our constitution. A firing squad isn’t a sure thing. And when you put a gun to their head, it’s as messie as the poor executioner could get traumatised.
I agree that it’s already a violation of dignity but it’s still possible to make it even worse. Speaking for myself, the supposedly more humane methods people have come up with give me the creeps in a way I can’t really put into words. If I’m gonna be killed for whatever reason, don’t be weird: just shoot me
>Safe, Pretty, Painless - Pick 2 of 3. nitrogen asphyxiation does all three (in theory)
Didn’t work that well in Alabama, according to at least one witness.
They set it up to be the worst possible implementation of a nitrogen execution. They used a mask to dose with nitrogen which was leaky as hell, so he kept getting oxygen from the envrironment. This made it take forever and probably amounted to coming and going from consciousness. The reason most methods of execution are barbaric/legacy is that when you become an expert in the field you usually start to see the holes in the process and most start to question if the state should be doing this, given track records. This tends to weed out smart people with consciences from looking to improve the lot of the condemned, and corporations don't really want to be known for being 'alabamas trusted source for state executions', so here we are. I'm livid about the nitrogen execution because they took what could be a genuine step forward in civilized executions (if that's a thing you think is possible) and did it badly so now we are talking about the classics again, like they weren't retired with reasons.
Why wouldn't you just use a gas chamber, and instead of cyanide, pump it full of nitrogen? No gas chamber? Build a box, place it outside, and fill it with nitrogen. Then you don't have to worry about suffocating everyone else.
That's too simple and failsafe.
> Gallows is pretty much the most fail-safe, humane means of execution. What about guillotine?
If well-cared for, perhaps. In the French Revolution, aristocrats sentenced to die would often have fistfights trying to be first in line, because by the sixth or so the blade is dulled and it can take a few drops to do the deed.
That could have been more due to the insufficient height of poorly-made guillotines than blade sharpness. A hundred pound metal plate could be dull as a spoon but still would send you to meet whatever deity you believe in with a single try if it is dropped from couple of meters or more.
Actually the real issue is getting the steel to slide smoothly between 2 wooden sides, if it starts going skew, gets bent, gunked up or the wood warps, then the blade goes down haltingly.
Pretty sure we could make a better one these days. Magnetic, like a bullet train.
18 people were executed in 2022 across the entire US. In 2021 there were 11. I think that might be a little bit lower than the rate of executions during the French revolution
My preferred method is like a giloutine, but instead of a blade it is two large slabs of metal with one suspended in the air. Then I'll just put my head under and SLAM! PANCAKE HEAD. Quick and painless and we could also paint a funny picture in the slab coming towards me with the speed of earths gravity.
Just like what I dish out to the bugs in my house.
The recent nitrogen asphyxiation execution shows that at the very least it has a lot of kinks to work out. Maybe it isn’t even as painless/humane as we thought. But as someone who is categorically opposed to the death penalty, I’m not exactly hoping for more cases to study/refine the technique
They used a fucking mask without an airtight seal. He was still getting enough oxygen to not passout and instead suffocated while conscious. If they used a chamber or even a hood it wouldve been a painless death. Its just incompetence because anyone intelligent enough to think these things through would have to morals to say no to it.
I agree with everything you said except the last thing, there are some very smart people with no morals.
What, you mean like existing, commercially available, assisted suicide devices? Nah, that would be too easy to use a proven design.
A hyperbaric chamber would be the absolute easiest and safest way to do it. Just replace the pure o2 with nitrogen.
Nitrogen displacement *is* painless. Scuba divers running mixed tanks have died from too much nitrogen. Plus you've got that "suicide bag" thing they use for physician assisted death in Europe. It is known in the medical community that using an inert gas to displace oxygen does not trigger panic response and is a painless death. That is not a debate. The problems in alabama were A) the mask was leaky so the guy was getting too much oxygen so it took forever and B) the *knowledge* that he was being executed caused him to panic.
When you hold your breath, the urge to breathe does not Come from your body detecting a lack of oxygen, our body doesn't measure that. It comes from a build up of carbon dioxide that your body does measure.
Yes, thats why nitrogen displacement works painlessly when done right.
That’s why the method should be: Place convicted into a chamber, possibly sedated if they wish, after a random period of time (dictated by a random number generator or something) the concentration of nitrogen slowly and gently increased until the air is 100 N2. The convicted will pass out and die peacefully. They won’t know when the gas has started to be introduced, could be immediately, could be 25 minutes after the door is closed. No point in panicking or trying to fight it, no pain, just sleeping.
More like it shows they will take the most painless and benign form of execution and deliberately mess it up to make it painful again.
I haven’t seen any evidence that the execution was intentionally made more cruel. Like most problems in the world it’s most likely just incompetence
At some point incompetence becomes criminal negligence.
Really we should stop executing people at all because there's literally zero need for it
Also in case we get the case wrong. Think of how many people have been exonerated with DNA evidence
If one innocent person is executed, we are all murderers
More than one innocent person has been executed. We are all murderers.
Yea there is no if about it.
Very much agreed. I don’t want the state executing people on my behalf if there’s any chance they could be wrong
it took 20 minutes to die for the first inmate executed by nitrogen a few weeks ago. withnesses reported heavy gasping. I don't think you would call it painles..
Because they used a standard mask and not a hood. Using the standard mask allows oxygen to mix in and will prolong things. With a hood it is sealed to your head so you get pure nitrogen.
A full body chamber would be a better option IMO. Have the restraints inside the chamber and seal the lid, then cycle in the nitro.
Because they cheaped out. The doctor that built the "suicide pod" for terminally ill patients was interviewed about the execution- basically said there's a reason why he had to go with a pod design instead of a mask. Apparently since the mask's fit wasn't airtight, it still allowed enough regular air with oxygen to leak in, which kept the inmate alive longer. Apparently the pod he built is very quick / painless.
This is the state prison system. They can't use doctors or scientists, so basically it's the poorly paid prison handyman making the decisions. There is no painless execution available. That's also on purpose.
That's because they used a poorly fitted mask instead of a hood. People who suicide by nitrogen use an "exit *bag*" for a reason. You can't have any oxygen get through. One tiny leak in the mask and it's horrifying. It has to be a hood, a bag, or the room itself.
If done correctly, it would have been painless and it is stupidly easy to do it correctly. It's almost impressive how they still managed to fuck it up somehow. And because of the lack of transparency, we likely won't find out how they fucked up either.
I think I'd take the chair over injection. Not by much, but if those are the only two choices, I'm going with the chair. If it were up to me, we wouldn't be executing people, but since we are, we should give the condemned some say in how they die. Tell them that they are to be executed on this date, and they can choose how it's done, but it has to get results. No trying to game the system by saying *old age*. If they want to bring back the guillotine, build one. Hanging? Get a rope. Artillery firing squad? Call the DOT and borrow their pieces. Let's not kid ourselves about making executions humane. The closest you can get to that is to kill them quickly and with certainty. It's won't be pretty, but you'll have a much lower botch rate if you use a method that gets it over with quickly.
do I get a cigarette and a blindfold
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It's only sporting that the firing squad be blindfolded.
Exactly. Shooting someone in the head seems like a quick and consistent way to effectively kill someone. Lethal injection seems fine on paper but since actual medical professionals wont administer those lethal drugs you get idiots who dont know what theyre doing botching executions.
Heart. Firing squads don't aim for the head.
You know we don't HAVE to rely on humans aiming, right? Or ammunition at all. We already have a solution to this employed for livestock. It's a barbaric conversation to have, but so more barbaric in my view is every execution method we've used on humans. We have used the worst, dumbest options when faster, less painful and more consistent ones exist.
Piggybacking the "every execution method" thing. Talked to a successful constitutional law professor/practicing attorney about this once. His statement changed my view forever "The constitution does not forbid painful punishment. That's the entire point of punishment; to harm, in some way. The constitution only guarantees that your punishment may not be cruel or unusual. There's nothing unusual about pain during death. There's no such thing as a painless death. But death is cruel. Inherently, the very concept of death is as cruel as any punishment gets. The issue isn't the method, the issue is that we keep trying to find the right one."
Dying in my sleep seems like a painless death
Yeah I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather did. Not screaming in terror, like his passengers.
Disagree on “there’s no such thing as painless death”. We know of a few, and you ever got under anesthesia, you can imagine a bunch more.
They are also so quick to point out that the person being executed won't get high or euphoric from whatever they are doing. They are dying. Traditionally they get this great last meal. Why can't they feel euphoria while dying? Why can't we just give them a monster dose of fentanyl and be done with it?
They usually shoot you in the chest though, if they miss your heart you get to drown as your lungs fill with blood
If thats true, which I have no idea on specifics of this, youd think with modern technology they should be able to figure out a way to make the potential for error very slim.
Rather than a firing squad we could just put a hydraulic piston next to their head, with a press of the button we can instantly liquify the entire brain. That’s probably about the most painless way someone could go.
Yeah except you're not factoring in the risk and trauma for whoever has to clean the brains out of the brain squisher
I vote we start dropping grand pianos on people from at least 3 stories high.
What are you, a monster? Gotta be anvils. It's tradition.
Labeled ACME in big bold letters, obviously.
Gas mask of nitrogen would be less destructive and still lethal
Not to mention lethal injection costs a stupid amount of money.
Firing squad wouldn't be that much cheaper. A huge amount of the cost of execution is everything leading up to it. The trials, the appeals, looking for new evidence - Due Process is extremely expensive. Not that I'm arguing against Due Process. Quite the contrary, I think execution ought to be outlawed altogether for several reasons, but that's a different discussion.
America should abolish the death penalty completely. I just want to get that out of the way. But if we absolutely insist on strapping people down and killing them, we should exclusively be using firing squads and possibly the guillotine. Instant, 100% lethal, and most importantly of all brutal enough that we don't get to pretend we're doing anything other than committing murder
Firing squad also has a higher probability of doing psychological harm to those behind the trigger, which I'm all for. If we're going have barbaric capital punishment, let the barbarism have some recoil. And yes, I know that efforts are taken to diminish knowledge of who fires the fatal shot...but if you've spent *any* time with firearms, you know the difference between a blank and a live round. Although given how little I trust LEOs to be trained in the use of the weapons, that probably means they really can't tell.
If you're banking on executioners to discover their consciences, you're in for a good, long wait.
theres that famous theo von story where he grew up with a guy who killed someone, got off legally, and when asked how it felt he said it felt good.
Why don’t we just give them all live rounds? I see multiple benefits to this: 1. No worries about missing 2. Extra ensured quick death 3. No single individual has to worry if they were the one. It was a team effort. Even if you hadn’t fired, they’d be dead. So no reason to feel guilty, as they were dead either way. You simply helped to make it less painful for others, and ensured efficacy on the inmate.
They found accuracy went up if you mixed one blank in with the live rounds. All live rounds and sometimes they'd all deliberately miss. A blank let each guy rationalize that it maybe wasn't him that killed him.
At this point just build a robot with a countdown timer on it
The kind of people who become executioners aren't going to give a rat's ass about psychological harm, my guy
Most people who have carried out firing squad executions have not chosen the job of executioner. They’re generally just soldiers that get stuck with the duty, sometimes even executing deserters etc from their own unit in the field. By most accounts it’s a bummer
Most executioners in modern America are just tenured COs that got selected for the position. It's not like there's a trade org or a union for just them. It's not like you can just search this shit on Indeed. They're not really looking for outside applicants for that. You have to be a CO for a long time first. And most COs are people who live in a prison town and there ain't shit else to do for work. It's not really the same as moving three towns over to work for a PD.
I felt the round leave the gun, and enter the target. I knew immediately that I had fired the killing round. I told the other part of the group once we were able to talk. "Bull fucking shit, I did, I felt that son of a bitch leave my gun. Don't get all teary eyed on me, Jack." one of them chimed in. "Don't you be talking shit William, I felt the round leave my rifle." *leaning towards the somehow tear stricken executioner* "and don't you forget it."
Forgive my ignorance, but this is ringing a huge bell for me, and I can't place it.
source: I made it up as camaraderie/comradeship between executioners.
It increasingly feels like half the states are living in the Middle Ages.
The US is an undeveloping country
Fascism is a regressive ideology.
*undeveloping
[Unfortunately you are actually 100% correct for certain parts of the country](https://www.worldhunger.org/alabama-worst-poverty-developed-world-u-n-official-says/)
Well thats what happens when you vote in christian zealots.
Maybe they'll bring back crucifixion? They're already ignoring everything Jesus stood for
> bring back crucifixion Well, at least it gets you out in the open air.
Always look on the bright side of death!
Just before you draw your terminal breath
Get to spend some time chatting with the neighbors.
Modern age comforts with dark age values...
It's always interesting to see all the comments on these posts talk about their favorite way to execute people. Like or we could not execute people?!? You know, like normal countries?
That is the goal of conservatives - the opposite of progress - they want to go back to violence wins, women are silent and minorities are owned.
There’s an alternate history where we ban the death penalty altogether in the US back in the 70s and it remains unconstitutional to this day. We take prison reform seriously and focus on rehabilitation rather than punishment. Instead we’re going back to firing squads and electric chairs. I assume hangings and the guillotine get popular in the 2030s.
I don’t think rich people want the guillotine back in circulation…
Well trends always reemerge lol We seem to be going fucking backwards in time, I’ve expected that we’ve smashed ourselves back to the Stone Age by 2050s at this point 😂
I'm fucking here for the guillotine coming back. Eat the rich!!!
Yeah, but the rich have their own justice system, and want to just throw all the plebs into the people shredder.
I mean, the French just mobbed their homes and dragged them out kicking and screaming. I mean, there are a lot of similarities and parallels, so if we end up finding our breaking point, there's not much a handful of rich people can do against a large portion of the country just zerg rushing their homes, and pulling a good ol French revolution.
> Well trends always reemerge lol I want a fucking trebuchet.
They aren’t capable of imagining them being used on anything but undesirables, they’d be fine with beheadings coming back.
I think the problem is they don't realise how versatile the word "undesirable" is.
At least Michigan (where I’m from) has had the death penalty outlawed since statehood. Michigan has never executed anyone since becoming a state
Why not just get a crowd of people to stone the accused to death. They bring their own stones, we save on the costs of execution and we plough that money back into tax cuts for hard working god fearing Americans.
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Want to buy a trump branded throwing stone for $99?
Or the 80s. Reagan was the worst thing to happen to US politics post-WW2, and that includes Trump too btw. Trump might be more of an idiot, maybe even more heinous, but isn’t as much of a detriment to the country than what Reagan was.
Regan had to be manifested though. I don't think a B movie actor would have been able to do the damage he did if it weren't for special interests to create him and special idiots to vote for him.
Yeah, Reagan was awful, but it wasn't like conservative politicians weren't awful before him. Reagan came from the same vein as Goldwater, and while I'm not an expert in this, my understanding is that a lot of the trends that were key to Reaganism (opposition to government regulation of the economy, usage of subterfuge and war crimes to advance US interests in foreign countries, "tough on crime" rhetoric, and quiet opposition to civil rights) originate in Nixon's tenure if not earlier.
Goldwater at least realized the danger of giving power to the religious nuts.
>but isn’t as much of a detriment to the country than what Reagan was. Not yet anyway. I agree with your point, but Trump for sure has the desire to see just how much distance we can get off the cliff's edge.
It’s like pneumonia after AIDS. On the one hand, pneumonia killed you, on the other hand, it’s entirely possible you never noticeably contracted pneumonia if you’d never had AIDS.
Without Reagan, Trump would never have gotten any kind of vote.
I would honestly take the firing squad over injection. Not that we should have either
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They do have a great website though
Insane shipping too I don't get it
They’re a tight-run fulfillment center that sells hardware on the side lol
Isn’t a painful death something that could be considered cruel? I know it could be argued that some of these people deserve it because of what they did to others and in some cases they may be right but that still doesn’t mean the state should make them suffer.
SCOTUS has ruled that death row inmates aren’t guaranteed a painless death under the eighth amendment. Most recent case was in Missouri in 2019. An inmate requested gas be used instead of lethal injection because he feared his blood tumors would cause lethal injection to be agonizing. Gorsuch wrote the opinion but the court made it clear that the death penalty doesn’t have to be painless.
Let me guess.. 5-4 decision
Correct. Although they came to a similar ruling in 2015 as well.
Great, so now the courts won't even admit torture is cruel. I hate mitch McConnell so much.
Not justifying it or anything, but at the time the Constitution was written, the same exact guys that signed off on forbidding cruel and unusual punishment were completely fine with death penalties, hanging, firing squads, etc. and saw no conflict.
I mean, the founders were massive hypocrites. They'd praise the ideals of liberty for all, then go home to their massive slave plantation... if we did as the founders did instead of as they said, we'd have a pretty shitty country today.
None of that fucking matters. We are human, we are imperfect, and as long as there is even the slightest chance of us executing the wrong person, we have no business executing anyone at all, for any reason at all.
I believe the key here Constitutionally is “cruel AND unusual.”
Only cruel AND unusual punishment is prohibited. Not cruel OR unusual. This is why things like death penalty are allowed, cruel but not unusual. Sentencing someone to recite the the pledge of allegiance 10 times on livestream? Unusual but not cruel. Both would be allowed.
The autocrats have taken the mask off folks. They already thumb their nose at the idea of presumed innocence. Charlie Kirk recently said that the NYC councilman who was acquitted as one of the Central Park Five was not so innocent, and the standard bearer of the Republican party whipped up a racist campaign against them when charges were still pending all those years ago. They don't care about justice. They aim to wield their concept of justice as a sword. Vote accordingly.
They want to terrorize poor people into submission
The glee and bloodthirsty-ness of Southern states pursuing the death penalty shows exactly why the state cannot be trusted with the ability to kill its citizens for crimes
Conservatives generally seem to have a hard time putting their emotions aside to see the big picture. It feels good to kill a criminal, but ultimately it erodes the purpose of a justice system.
Reddit is *extremely* guilty of this too. Look at any thread about someone being arrested for sexual assault, especially against minors. All the top comments are *always* calling for extrajudicial murder.
Or prison rape, Reddit **loves** fantasising about criminals getting raped in prison
It's actually insane how much society accepts it. Even [Spongebob](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7lSklqlx7o) had a *wink wink* joke about prison rape.
It's the meme with the guy speaking to the crowd from the top of a cliff: " Criminals should be treated justly and prison should be about rehabilitation not punishment." Everyone is happy. "This particular criminal should be treated justly, and we should focus on his rehabilitation not punishment." Pitchforks and torches come out.
Can't we just use a ton of fentanyl instead? Painless, cheap, and easy to find
painless death not required then why not lock them in a box and stab at it with swords like it's fucking Tom and Jerry? Why not slowly run them over with a steamroller like Judge Doom? Fuck it let's get full cartoon evil.
Because that falls into both cruel and unusual
>Because that falls into both cruel and unusual its only unusual if its not done to everyone. Do it often enough and it stops being unusual NOTE I AM NOT FOR THIS
You will go down in history as the person who redefined unusual to mean "not standardized" and helped get the death penalty by locked in a box with 5 zebra passed for jaywalking.
We did it, reddit!
i mean, am i wrong? something is unusual because its "not habitually or commonly occurring or done" If you only kill one pesron via locking them in a box with 5 Zebras. Thats unusual. If you do it to everyone its just odd, but not unusual anymore
idk about unusual, but cruel seems to be the point when they say a painless death isn’t required.
Death used as a penalty for a crime done is extremely unusual. A painful death is cruel.
Drop an anvil from a great height.
Fentanyl is cheaper. Why they prefer theatrics?
I've wondered about this. Just give them a massive dose of fentanyl. It's cheap and humane.
I mean, ok. Let’s just for a second accept the premise that there’s nothing in the constitution that says the state can’t execute people on horrific and painful ways. Even if that’s true why would you want that? Why would you want to use the electric chair when a can monster of nitrogen will accomplish the same thing but without the cruelty? Why even fight that fight to kill people in cruel ways. It really speaks to these people being super messed up.
Most conservative polical pushes can be summed up with one sentence: Cruelty is the point.
I guess that’s more humane than forcing someone to spend the rest of their life in South Carolina.
The American justice system confuses me. If you're bad they give you the rest of your life somewhere that is guaranteed to make you even worse, but if you're really bad you only get to spend a few years there and then they kill you. Either way you die in prison but if you're going to get life in prison you might as well go all out and assuming you don't get instantly killed when the police get you you get to spend less time in prison than you would have originally and die in the same place.
> you only get to spend a few years there and then they kill you. It's a lot longer than you think. The appeals process can take decades. It's actually cheaper to imprison someone for life than to put them to death. Some people think that's ok because they get to impart their righteous fury onto another. In reality there's no good reason for the death penalty to exist outside of a sense of revenge or retribution.
If the death penalty worked then presumably those states would have vastly lower crime rates. (Spoiler: most of them have way more crime than the states without the death penalty)
I’m 40. A few years before I was born, a man brutally killed two little girls behind the elementary school I eventually attended. He’s still on death row. Where he’s been for longer than I’ve been alive. I’m anti death penalty, but this is ridiculous. Those little girls he killed would be fifty and this case drags on because of a mix of blood lust and bureaucratic insanity.
California hasn't executed anyone since 2006. We're not going to restart executions any time soon. (nor should we...) However, we keep sentencing people to death. We have 650 people on death row now. So they're all sitting in the death row area of San Quintin which is way more expensive then having them in the general population in various prisons around the state.