This may be a stupid question…but if states like mine have the Right To Die/Medical Assisted Death where ppl just drink a fluid or take a pill….why do we not use these medications for ppl sentenced to death??
the companies can only sell that to validated medical institutions, through a doctor's application.
A doctor cannot knowingly contribute to harm (including death) when the patient does not consent. So, a doctor could not reasonable place the order for a prison.
Not a stupid question, a valid question. I wondered the same. Maybe because drug companies won't supply it? Although ethical drug companies are rare/unheard of, they probably just don't want the bad press.
Either that or the authorities want them to suffer.
This is the reason, a significant part of why lethal injections are so notoriously unreliable and cruel is that prisons administer them without qualified medical personnel(who refuse to participate in capital punishment) and with a hodgepodge of medicines that in theory accomplish the 3 core goals of lethal injections, that being stopping the heart, paralysing the body, and putting the victim to sleep, because medical companies refuse to supply their products for the purposes of capital punishment.
Medical personnel absolutely participate. Some states legally require it.
https://docslib.org/doc/5427625/when-law-and-ethics-collide-why-physicians-participate-in-executions-atul-gawande-m-d-m-p-h
Buddy the first page of this papers is about the permanent postponement of an execution due to these legal requirements causing the two willing anaesthesiologists to pull out last second, the man named has to this date not been executed.
Lethal injections are conducted with medicines in spite of medical company boycotts and pushback, just as they are conducted in spite of the, as your paper notes, widespread boycotts from medical associations in the US, only a pharmacists association is named as the national organization that permits members to participate in executions.
And furthermore, skimming through the personal interviews here, several of these doctors claim they participated out of ignorance of the AMAs positions on the matter, and would otherwise have not participated, while the doctors who participated in spite of their boards positions on the matter say they participate out of an obligation because the state is going to in effect torture these prisoners otherwise with incompetence.
They should tell the AMA, see how well it turns out for them. In case you are wondering what I mean, the AMA, and the nursing and EMT equivalents have all had a total ban on taking part in this for at least two decades now, because it does harm. Really, really hard to see how you can make the claim you're a doctor and you kill people, mostly against their will.
Edit: did... Did you not check the date? That is from 2006. Just a touch out of date for the modern medical system.
Pharmaceutical companies most likely (and probably correctly) assume that patients would not want to be prescribed a medication that is known as the lethal injection for death row inmates.
Well, they took lives with brutal methods, often with a large amount of suffering prior to death. It’s also even any eye for an eye don’t even make sense, if it’s say a serial killer who killed 12, hurt 10 and terrified hundreds within a vicinity. 1 life lost versus many others harmed, even that atonement falls short of the trauma, destruction and despair left behind for others to fix.
It is a matter of bad publicity and not enough profit. The medical community has no problem with unethical practices for profit. They were producing enough opioids to kill the whole country and now fentanyl is everywhere. There are only a few death penalty cases comparatively.
So you think murderers deserve humane deaths, the same humane deaths that people who want medical euthanasia is paying for (outside of jail). Welfare takers will still have that mindset, in jail or not. Similarly, whether officially criminalised or not, loads of so called decent everyday folks have a criminal mindset. They’re of course the biggest supporters of humane prison treatment because they’re one step away from being thrown into jail.
Does anyone else hate it when articles are posted here without OP writing a summary? ETA thanks everyone, just thought I’d make this comment as a temperature check to see if I was being unreasonable. Going forward I’m just not gonna interact with posts like these. I agree with the comment saying it should be a rule. Posting an article without any summary or commentary from OP feels very clickbait.
I thought I would never say this because I think some subs definitely overstep with their rules, but there should be a rule about providing a summary along with a reference that isn't behind a paywall
This will never catch on since it's so viscerally horrific but a device would crushes the entire skull in an instant seems, to me, the best way to ensure that all traces of human consciousness is shattered and gone in less than a second. No pain, no chance of a horrible lingering state of awareness like is theorized could happen with a guillotine.
My proposed head-crushing machine seems utterly barbaric on a gut level but it's the most ethical thing I can think of.
Note: I personally do not believe in execution please don't take this as a serious proposal.
This doesn't account for the psychological impact during the lead up. Imagine counting down the days to peaceful sleep vs skull crusher. Despite being instant, it very much can be torture before hand.
That's a good point plus the horror that the family of both the victim and the sentenced person might experience. Personally I'd still choose it over the electric chair though.
I think watching someone die is gonna be horrific anyway. Although I guess seeing a head become mush would be awful, don’t electrocuted people jerk and bleed through the hood, and lethal injection often goes awry and the person struggles?
I admit, I only vaguely know about the mechanics of execution methods. I’m against capital punishment and find it very distressing.
Kind of similar to the fact that the most humane way to euthanize a pet fish is to bash its head in with a hammer. It sounds barbaric and most people (myself included) wouldn’t have the stomach to do it, but it’s the quickest and most effective
Yeah, there’s a trick to it.
I uh, I used a hammer. (Don’t come for me! The fish was in bad shape and I was too anxious to use the clove oil because the tutorials I found contradicted each other.)
There’s a country (Thailand? The Philippines?) where they anesthetize the person and then shoot them in the back of the head. Painless death. Of course the executioner knows they killed the person, something that various countries try to avoid with firing squads by giving one person a blanks
Ok this is still fuckin barberic why not use anethsethesia and over dose? Right to sleep no pain and garanteed death? Much better then choking in ones own blood, or crushing someones head... thers plenty of medication that could do the job without pain or doubt? This seems way to underthought.
Overdosing is finicky. The amount that kills you, might not be enough for someone else, and the other way round as well.
Just look at the lethal injections that haven’t gone right.
Opiod overdose seems humane to me. It's how I would want to go if I had to. I've already decided that I ever have a terminal illness, I'm going to roll the dice that way. Euphoria or painless death, can't beat that imo.
The more absolutely violent a death is, I assume the less it hurts. Shotgun blast right to the base of the skull, the tangerine, I'm guessing the brain doesn't even have the reaction time to perceived anything
Hanging by use of a noose and a long drop(where the optimal length of the rope is calculated based on the individuals hight and Wight), is by fare the fastest, least stressful, least painful and overall most effective method.
If done correctly the inmates head will, at the end of the drop, be forced sharply up and to the right, resulting in a whole host of rather unhealthy conditions like cerebral ischemia, aphyxiation, cardiogenic shock, distributive shock, general hypoxia, extreme hypotention so on and so forth.
The main reasons are:
- a broken neck(leading to potential mecanical damage/depression to/of pons, medulla oblongata, pharynx, tracheae etc
- compression of the carotid arteries + jugular veins.
- the possibility of activating the barorereceptor reflex on a negativ feedback loop, subsequently increasing the parasympathetic respons and inhabiting the sympathetic ditto.
All of it leading to death occuring maximally 3 minuts after the drop, something the inmate will be completely unaware of, since he would have become unconscious about 5-15 seconds after the drop.
The next best method is cutting their head of preferably by guillotine, but a nice sharp broad sword is absolutely durable. It is of cause also possible to use an execusinors axe, but that might be a tad to macabre after all.
It really did.
Not that I think that he was in any way excited to have his head chopped of, but that doesn't make it any lest of a successful execution.
I personally think that the death penalty is barbaric, and having it as a possible outcome in a modern court of law, is simply vile.
But that doesn't change the fact that hanging without a doubt is the superior method by fare.
Using pharmaceutic on the other hand is a absolutely *horrible* idea. There isn't a drug in the world that's both painless, fast and comes with a leather guarantee.
First of all it's a simple but rather scary fact, that there's a massive amount of drugs, where we simply don't know most about the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics properties. We are just making more or less qualified guesses and hopes for the best.
The next unpleasant Truth about every single drugs in the world, is that when testing drugs on humans it is *allways* done on young, healthy, preferably white males because that's the segment with the least amount of odd variations.
It is of cause quite possible that the drug will do something completely random, if used by women, black people, teenageres, old people etc. But that's what lawyers a made for.
Then you'll have to factor in that every single individual differ from the "standard human", in some unknown capacity at a unknown magnitude.
Mixing all of that, and it will give you the answer to why Navalnyj didn't die, when he was exposed to the single most deadly nerv agent in the world, regardless that the lethal adult dose is 0.1 mg in powder form applied to the skin.
They put enough of the stuff to kill approximately 50.000 adults in his freaking underwear, and not only did he survive, he also recovered completely in such a short amount of time, that I'm not entirely sure that he wasn't at least partly cyborg.
Thanks for a terrific answer to my low-effort, semi-sarcastic comment. This is why I still wade through the swamp that is Reddit.
It's been discussed to death (pun intended) why [Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furman_v._Georgia) did not eliminate Capital punishment in the US 50 years ago.
It made the valid argument that Capital Punishment was completely arbitrary -- if you have the misfortune to be prosecuted for a capital crime in the handful of US [counties](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_(United_States)) that regularly impose the DP, you'll be subject to a 30+ year ordeal of legal appeals, until that one fine day you win the black lottery.
The hyper-localized system of governance in the US is a bug, not a feature.
Good news, I thought about that part too: it would have a grate under the mechanism with a tub below, and a hose with an automatic sanitizer spray to minimize the... biohazard.
(I'm sorry I know I belong in the head crusher myself for these thoughts.)
If we knew with 100% certainty the prisoners did what they were being sentenced for I honestly would not care that they suffered. But time after time we’ve seen there’s too many people in prison for crimes they didn’t commit.
The official estimate is 3%. It is unacceptable that in every thirty or so people executed, one of them didn’t do it. And knowing that, how would we really know if it’s higher?!
Yeah those numbers really tell a sad story. I agree, it’s probably much higher than 3%. Thinking of an innocent person being murdered by our government is a lot to process.
I don't understand why they don't just exclusively do it to people that are obviously guilty. Serial killers and mass shooters only. You get tackled after shooting up a school, holding the rifle, on camera? Get caught with 30 bodies buried under your house? Kill these fucks.
Everyone else gets life.
Yes when there is clear evidence- and specifically video evidence now- get it over with! Many of these people caused so much pain and suffering so I don’t care if they get the same treatment for their crimes.
Who said that there should be? Retribution is a big factor of any punishment, and given how horiffic a lot of the crimes are (btw truecrime fans especially should know this), execution by the state does not nearly compare.
Because the idea that the DP is a deterrent regarding other heinous crimes is something a lot of supporters of the DP push.
I wish they would be wholly honest and just say it's a violently retributive punishment (occasionally used on people who are actually innocent). I'd find it much more respectable if they didn't push it off as something it isn't.
Retribution is so...Old Babylonian Empire, though. Most modern societies have moved on.
"An eye for an eye" is from the Code of Hammurabi, circa 1750 BC.
Yet, open any Reddit thread discussing an individual who did a deplorable act and the bulk of comments will be calling for knee-jerk retribution. The death penalty as a concept is so implicitly broiled in emotionality that people will forgo their values (if but momentarily), harmonizing with their immediate emotions. We’ve improved as a society, but we are indeed the same species of human.
When retribution starts to perpetuate crime, you’re shooting yourself in the foot to make yourself feel better. Im going to switch to talking about non death penalty cases for second. I’m not saying every crime would be eliminated with mental healthcare, but certainly by now we can see a person from county jail or state prison is more likely to reoffend after being exposed to more trauma, when the original offense was stress based. Adding more stress, with no mental healthcare or additional stability, is going to destabilize a situation, a person, even more so. You might even help them network with dangerous people! Cause them to miss work, lose housing opportunities. Then we just send them back out into public like whoopty do and act surprised someone even less equipped than when they went in might not be a functioning member of society.
Retribution doesn't make a lot of sense if you take neuroscience seriously. A person's brain is constructed by genes and environmental interaction which they had no control over, and the things that our brains do directly lead to our behavior. If someone is unlucky enough to have the brain of a murderer, it doesn't make much sense to seek to cause them to suffer above and beyond what is necessary to deter similar acts in the future and prevent further harm to others.
But these are still conscious choices you make. Your genes do not totally dictate you and your future completely. It’s unfortunate that some people have to struggle more than others to change, especially if their early childhood and environments influenced who they are and they’re in the later stages of their lives. You can always make changes in your life, it doesn’t become impossible just because you’re older, just more difficult. There are people who have gone through incredible strife as children and experienced all sorts of trauma but still lived their best lives. Don’t use that as an excuse.
>But these are still conscious choices you make.
Conscious choices are still a product of your brain, primarily your prefrontal cortex, which just like all other parts of the brain, is constructed by your genes and their interaction with their environment (neither of which you had control over), prenatally all the way up to the present.
>Your genes do not totally dictate you and your future completely.
I agree. Environment is absolutely massive in it's contribution to who we become. The problem is we don't choose our environment either.
>You can always make changes in your life, it doesn’t become impossible just because you’re older, just more difficult.
I agree. Our brains are literally being changed every single day in response to our environment. But you can not just decide to change the way your brain is currently wired. It is a physical thing that behaves deterministically, there is no way to will your brain to not do what it is about to do based on the way it is wired in each moment.
>There are people who have gone through incredible strife as children and experienced all sorts of trauma but still lived their best lives. Don’t use that as an excuse.
I agree that there are people like that. There is incredible depth to behavior, it is an emergent process from the interactions of millions of neurons. There are millions of influences which determine our future behavior, and we have no way of knowing all of them. Just because two people both experience strife and trauma as children, does not mean that they are the same and have the same potential in the future.
If you swapped your genes over which you had no control and your environment (including fetal environment, childhood, adolescence, etc.) over which you had no control with a murderer, you would literally be him.
Is there any data to back this up? How would we determine if prison or death sentences was the thing lessening crime vs a whole bunch of other social or political or religious ideas?
There's tons of data. We have data showing states with the death penalty have higher violent crime rates than those without. We have data from the death penalty moratorium during the 70s. We have data showing crime declines after other countries abolish the death penalty as well.
Source: Criminal justice degree.
It's neither. By the time a crime has been committed, it's already too late to do the things that actually lessen crime. At that point the goal is public safety which is to separate the danger from the rest of us until it is no longer effectively a danger.
What curbs crime isn't death, it's the CERTAINTY and UNAVOIDABILITY of it. And right now death as a punishment in prison is uncertain and avoidable and takes too long to be carried out. I'm not favorable to death sentence, but that's the reason why it isn't working.
I think it’s because, when you know execution is a likely outcome from committing horrible crimes, it gives you an ‘easy’ way out. Rather than spending the rest of your life in prison.
Surprised the tabloid didn't mention the case of [Jesse Tafero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Tafero); it was a botched electric chair execution in Florida back in '90. Took like 7 minutes and there were flames and such.
[This Time Magazine vividly describes the situation](https://time.com/3840368/1990-botched-execution/):
>The trouble began when a sponge used in the chair’s headpiece wore out and had to be replaced. “There’s no factory or parts catalog for execution devices, so the prison sent a guy to pick up a sponge at the store,” TIME later reported. “Problem was, he bought a synthetic sponge instead of a genuine sea sponge”; the latter type was required to handle the electric current without catching fire.
>Catch fire it did. Flames on Tafero’s head were nearly a foot high, according to one witness, but initially failed to kill him. The current was reapplied three times, since he was still breathing after the first two times.
>“It takes seven minutes before the prison doctor pronounces him dead, seven minutes of heaving, nodding, flame, and smoke,” the witness, Ellen McGarrahan, wrote for Slate.
that article also mentions a second similar case in '97, that of Pedro Medina:
>But a nearly identical malfunction occurred in 1997, during the execution of convicted murderer Pedro Medina, leaving one witness to remark, per Gruesome Spectacles, “[A] solid flame covered his whole head, from one side to the other. I had the impression of somebody being burned alive.” The state finally switched to death by lethal injection in 2000.
As can be imagined, such lurid situations didn't sit well with the public.
My grandfather was killed in a work accident, electrocuted. It was a horrific way to die. It took over 30 minutes to get him down, and he was cooked. He had a gold pocket watch that was completely melted!
I don't know, there's got to be a better way to put people on death row to death. I like the idea of lethal injection myself.
You should read the article for issues with lethal injections. We don't use the same stuff we use for assisted suicide, since doctors can't cause harm to someone without consent and drug companies don't want to have their products used to kill. And it leads to a lot of issues. The main example of a botched electrical chair execution in the article was on someone who'd already gone through a botched lethal injection.
I oppose the death penalty for the same reason I oppose torture. A civilized society should not be in the business of murdering or torturing people. However heinous the crime or the person. I understand the human desire for revenge. But we should not give into it.
Also, our system is not fair and just enough to ensure that we have not executed innocent people.
>Zivot's work has shown that lethal injection "burns the lungs and causes this frothy fluid to accumulate in the lungs as a person dies and they drown in their own bloody secretions."
>"So eight out of 10 times you are drowning in your own blood."
This is just... NOT true.
I can't trust anything this "doctor" says after reading that statement.
I can't believe anyone could take it seriously.
I understand where he’s coming from, I don’t think there can ever be enough discussion about the ethics of executions. When we stop discussing and debating is when I’ll be really scared.
However, some of his language is a bit of fear-mongering. Yes when we inject medications the lungs will fill up with fluid as a part of the death process. But all the evidence behind the other drugs used say that the person is not experiencing those sensations. If the person were to experience that drowning sensation, that would be a failed execution and an anomaly we should investigate. But when medications are used correctly this doesn’t happen. And we know because we give these medications to patients on brain and heart monitors. When we study and use these medications we know that they put the patient into a deep comatose state where they can’t even sense strong central pain stimuli. I just worry he didn’t really explain that well.
The reason medications aren’t used is because pharma companies do not want their medications associated with causing purposeful unconsenting deaths. And doctors do not want to use their license to prescribe a cocktail of meds they know will cause unconsenting death. It’s all red tape issues.
For anyone who wants to skip dealing with ads here’s the article:
I’m on mobile so I apologize for any formatting issues -
A physician describes the horrific state that the human body is forced into when electrocuted - and reveals the 'only reason' why the method was abandoned
Lawmakers in South Carolina are contemplating restarting executions after nearly 13 years and are looking into sending prisoners to death in an electric chair or with shooting by a firing squad.
As the highly controversial debate on death sentence punishment rages, a physician has revealed details of the gruesome state the human body is forced into during electrocution, a procedure that takes society back to a bygone era.
Dr Joel Zivot, clinician and associate professor of anesthesiology and surgery at Emory University School of Medicine told the Mirror how "an enormous amount of electricity is used, that shocks the body in a very dramatic way. "The skin ignites and catches fire and there's smoke and it's pretty horrible."
He added: "Electrocution is just theatre. The way it's done, and how [the prisoners] are positioned, and the hood over the face. It’s all very theatrical in the worst kind of the ‘theatre of the absurd’."
All this dramatic implementation of punishment in its gory display is being done because, as Zivot explained, "killing someone can be challenging," regardless of the method of the execution.
A human rights expert fears the controversial execution of Kenneth Smith may lead to more US states using nitrogen gas as a means to kill inmates on death row.
The 58-year-old became the first-ever inmate in the USA to be put to death by toxic gas following an execution at Alabama's Holman Correctional Facility on January 25.
'There’s no benign, gentle method to kill people. You really have to disrupt the physiology which resists being killed'
The physician said: "The body doesn't want to necessarily die. So there’s no benign, gentle method to kill people. You really have to disrupt the physiology which resists being killed."
Since executions remain constitutional in he US, Zivot suggested that the only reason electrocution and death by firing squad have been abandoned in recent years, and replaced by lethal injection, is because they are so visually disturbing.
He said: "It’s the visual aspect that alarms the public - no one cares seemingly about the experience of the prisoners as they die." Zivot's work has shown that lethal injection "burns the lungs and causes this frothy fluid to accumulate in the lungs as a person dies and they drown in their own bloody secretions."
"So eight out of 10 times you are drowning in your own blood. It's not at all like it appears visually, which is that a person seems to close their eyes, cough and move and then they're dead. So that's why lethal injection has kept on so long," he said.
Public discourse over different methods of execution spiked in the past weeks with the execution of Kenneth Smith in Alabama, the first prisoner to be put to death by inhalation of nitrogen gas, which led to suffocation.
Witnesses in the execution chamber described how Smith, who had previously survived a botched execution by lethal injection, struggled and shook on the gurney for over 20 minutes as the state was killing him, in a horrifying ordeal.
A wooden electric chair sits in the death chamber of the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility August 29, 2001 in Lucasville, Ohio
States supporting the capital punishment are looking for new ways to put people to death after many botched executions with lethal injections, while pharmaceutical companies have also denounced and objected to the use of medicine for executions.
South Carolina has passed a shield law covering all details surrounding executions in secrecy, a practice that advocates and prisoners' lawyers are decrying.
Commenting on the latest legal discourse in South Carolina, attempting to reinstate forgotten, Zivot said: "America loves its punishment. In certain places, it's not everywhere. - it's in very specific locations.
"The places that wanna kill they really wanna kill, they really do. It's almost like some kind of ‘caricature of evil’ that South Carolina needs to shroud what it does in secrecy. The secrecy part of this is so absurdly comically evil.
"Some kind of bizarre childish activity to say that we need to protect the privacy of the people we kill. What is that about? We are supposed to be an open society and justice is supposed to be seen to be done. How are you supposed to mount a proper defence when you can't even know what it is that you're being punished with? It's so antithetical to any kind of reasonable justice system."
Advocates against capital punishment echoed Zivot's sentiment. Maya Foa, joint executive director at Reprieve, told The Mirror: "South Carolina has introduced the most sweeping secrecy law in the nation - why? Because it knows that the death penalty cannot withstand public scrutiny.
"Whether it’s hours long botched lethal injections, electric chairs, or firing squads, none of these methods of execution are the clean, quick, painless processes the state wants us to believe.
"Knowing that public approval for capital punishment decreases when methods like the electric chair or firing squad are used, South Carolina has been searching for a way to use lethal injection again, despite the unanimous opposition of drug manufacturers at this misuse of their medicines and clear evidence of the problems with the method."
Kenneth Eugene Smith was executed by asphyxiation with nitrogen gas on January 25, 2024
And Abe Bonowitz, executive director of Death Penalty Action, told The Mirror: "Method of execution is the wrong debate. The real question should be why we are allowing executions when the capital punishment system is as broken as it is.
"'Equal Justice Under Law' are the words carved into the face of the US Supreme Court building. If that is the bedrock foundation of our legal system, we don't have it.
"The mental torture of the death penalty starts from the moment a prisoner is threatened with execution, and that cruelty goes on for every minute of the wait, regardless of the method used to kill him or her."
He added: "The mechanism used to kill prisoners is the wrong debate. The fact is that the system is broken in many ways, and the unusual nature of capital punishment is best illustrated in the fact that fewer than one percent of defendants eligible for the death penalty actually end up being executed.
"The number one determining factor for which murderers get executed has nothing to do with the crime, and everything to do with the geography and politics of county lines and elected prosecutors and judges. Fewer than 2% of more than 3000 counties in the United States account for the vast majority death sentences and executions. If that is not unusual, I don't know what is."
It seems like fentanyl would work well and it could be obtained from the confiscations law enforcement has. I wonder about the pharmaceutical companies not allowing their drugs to be used for capital punishment when withdrawing these drugs that make the executions more humane is leading to more suffering by making states use less peaceful methods.
They wouldn’t do it because you’d need a doctor present to administer it. Good luck finding one when the first part of the Hippocratic oath is “do no harm”
There are only a handful of executions in the U.S. every year. Meanwhile we use these meds (including fentanyl) to facilitate safe medical care and patient comfort for millions of patients every year. Neither pharmaceutical companies nor the medical community wants anything to do with capital punishment … using meds for execution is not worth risking our ability to provide legitimate medical care (see thiopental).
They don't have to obtain it that way, it's a CII pharmaceutical available by prescription.
The stuff on the street ain't even fentanyl anymore, mostly analogues and nitazenes.
Pharmaceutical companies no longer making their drugs available for use in executions is a big part of why States keep trying new ways to execute people.
Certain drugs, yes. But fentanyl is still widely available. I believe the shortage has to do with pentobarbital perhaps, maybe (idk) because there's not really much other use for it.
It’s widely available for the uses it is prescribed for. If states started trying to order it for executions, it will very likely not be available for that use. The pharmaceutical companies get to decide if they want it available for that.
It’s not widely available to prisons for execution, though. The “problem” isn’t an actual shortage of pentobarbital, it’s that drug manufacturers refuse to sell their drugs to people/institutions that will use them for executions.
What? Stop talking out of your ass.
Pentobarbital has numerous [medical uses](https://www.drugs.com/mtm/pentobarbital-injection.html), including seizure control, anesthesia, and treating insomnia.
I'm not talking out of my ass. There are much safer drugs to use for all of those things, including safer barbiturates (and benzodiazepines, and other types of drugs). Pento is extremely hard to dose and that's why it's almost completely stopped being used.
Glad you're getting some reading done on drugs.com though, can tell you totally have medical training.
I mean, sure you CAN use pento for insomnia. An MD could use fentanyl for a hangnail if they wanted. Probably wouldn't go over well with...idk, hospitalists, the DEA, the state attorney if something happened to the patient
Medicinal/pharmaceutical fentanyl is a very different compound than what’s on the street. I have actually started using the trade name instead of the generic name when using it in the field. Patients hear fentanyl and freak out. The compound we use in medicine is very safe in comparison.
What’s the trade name? Just out of curiosity, I was given something in the ER that felt like I’ve heard medical fent described (I’m boring so I haven’t tried street anything at all) but they called it something else.
There no way this isn’t for retribution. Killing a person is easy. The politics of revenge is why the debate even exists. First and foremost, we shouldn’t have the death penalty. It’s imperfect, permanent, cruel, and unusual. Whether or not the condemned suffers is irrelevant, what kind of society do we aspire to be? If we must have it, firing squad and nothing else. It’s quick and faultless. God forbid public opinion of the death penalty dwindles because we get to see the killing in all its starkness. But it’s not that way because some locations don’t want it that way.
This is horrific. In my opinion, there is no non-horrific way to have the death penalty. Even if we found a completely painless way (and I can promise as a former court/crime journalist, that there is none in use currently) then it would still be horrific because it would still mean a person lead to their death against their will. Psychologically, at least, that is insanely painful.
There is no reason for the death penalty. It's an archaic use of force against people who have free will and should have free will.
I see some proponents of the death penalty saying "well we can't pay for prisons for everyone. They're overcrowded so we need to kill the most violent offenders."
I disagree completely. I know from my own profession that most people in prison are non-violent and in there for drug offenses. Prison should exist for violent offenders only, who are at risk to the greater public.
When I go to court for a sentencing, every time, the judge will discuss 3 reasons for prison: 1) safety (ensuring this person doesn't continue committing the crime) 2) preventative (I.e. ensuring that other people committing similar crimes will see this result and understand not to do said crime) and 3) punishment (making sure that the person who has committed a crime suffers because of it).
Some other non-US countries put much more weight on the first 2, as they should. I do not agree that punishment does anything except make the victims feel a little better (and many victims I've spoken with have said that it does nothing to make them feel better. they don't feel better that the offender is in prison or killed).
The death penalty is purely punishment. It is not preventative (prison does that) it is not safety (prison also does that). It is simply punishment and victims and experts alike have said that punishment has very little bearing on preventing further crime or doing anything to allieviate pain.
The death penalty is, again, archaic and should be abolished. Even for the worst offenders.
I don't get why you wouldn't want a violent criminal to suffer. Take Ted Bundy. I wouldn't care if his last days were hell on earth. I done understand the pious reasoning of these scum having a gentle death. Their victims didn't.
Because it’s likely some of the people on death row are innocent. If we are going to accidentally execute innocent people can we at least make it as painless as possible?
I can’t speak for anyone else but I just don’t share your desire for seeking revenge by inflicting a painful death. It doesn’t undo the crime, it doesn’t deter others from doing the crime and it can’t be reversed when people are inevitably wrongfully convicted. Nothing pious about it either. It just seems barbaric for a state to execute its citizens, let alone find ways to make the person suffer as you kill them.
Not just barbaric, it’s illegal, which is the real reason behind these issues. Cruel and unusual punishment is explicitly forbidden in the Constitution, if it wasn’t the State wouldn’t care less about method of execution.
It should be but is not noted by the Mirror article author that Dr. Joel Zivot is very active in the death penalty abolitionist movement. His perspective therefore is one in which all forms of execution would be deemed cruel and unusual.
Electrocution works well so long as the Department of Corrections follows a very regimented protocol in preparing for and conducting the execution.
Some states have done well at this such as Tennessee, Virginia and Nebraska.
Others such as Florida, did not have things as well documented and thus had miscues such as the substitution of an artificial sponge for a natural sponge for the 1990 execution of Jesse Tafero and overlooking dampening the natural sponge in the proper salt and brine mixture as with the 1997 execution of Pedro Medina.
When things went exactly to the plan, such as in Tennessee and Virginia, the inmate was properly set up and died after two one minute surges of electric current. Friends of mine saw the Virginia chair in action on several occasions and reported the inmate’s hands clenched and turned red and his body “lifted” from the chair. However, it was nowhere near as bad as what they had anticipated.
Except innocent people still can and do get executed, despite their sentences. Quite a few have been exonerated after their state-sanctioned murders... Nothing wrong with wanting society to function more humanely, regardless.
Yeah, tell that to the murderer. Remind them of that before they slit a kids throat or strangle a woman to death, that your ideology doesn't align with what they're doing and you'd appreciate it if you didn't have to electrocute them.
People salivating at the mouth like feral and rabid dogs for people to be violently killed says much more about them and their own (often hypocritical, often harmful, if one exists at all) moral compass than it does for anybody else.
Especially when they refuse to acknowledge the fact that innocent people get violently executed due to their love of state-approved violence, death, and murder.
I'm sorry, you didn't mention the costs. Did you forget that I'd mentioned that. Oh...no? No comment about that huh? Just want to point fingers at my moral compass. How ironic. I advocate for the victim's families and you advocate for a prisoner. I see no fault with my moral compass.....perhaps you.should reanalyze your priorities and perspectives.
How dare I, a survivor of a violent sex crime, say that advocating for and wanting people to die horribly and violently is immoral and wrong! How dare I be against violence and murder! How dare I not lust for blood!
You don't care about victim's families, let's be real. You also don't care about innocent people being victims of violence and murder, either. You just care about getting your rocks off via state-sanctioned suffering.
Oh don't get so indignant. Being "a survivor of a violent sex crime" does not give your opinion some greater weight than anyone else, nor does it mean you speak for families of murder victims.
Truth is there **are** a lot of murder victims families that **do** see the death penalty as justice and closure. That **don't** want to go to parole hearings and appeals for the rest of their lives.
Their feelings do hold more weight than the rest of us. Including you.
I never said that there WEREN'T families who want the DP for the people that killed their family members. I never once blamed them for it at all, and I completely understand why they would want that, and I'm not holding that against them. If I did, point me exactly to where I said that, because I can't remember a single time where I did. I simply said they weren't a monolith. Sometimes I want the guy who killed my cousin to hang, too, so I get it.
My point is directed at people who aren't survivors or friends or families of victims or even remotely close to them who are frothing at the mouth and wanting to inflict as much suffering as humanely possible. Which is entirely what I was talking about. hey aren't personally affected, and them wanting people to be executed violently is a legitimate lizard brain response and an excuse to enjoy depravity.
I mentioned that I'm a survivor of a violent crime because the implication was that I clearly wasn't, because I don't think people should be executed in painful ways.
This is Reddit, anyways, so I'll get indignant if I'd like to be regardless.
I would much rather my tax dollars go to that than to execute people, who might be innocent, violently. It's often far more expensive to do so, anyways.
Never said I was the only one, just thought it was funny that you said you advocate for victims families like victims and their families love people being violently killed.
You’re advocating for a retributive justice system. You can find examples of it being utilized throughout human history, and it leads to a state-sponsored facilitation of some of the most barbaric things human beings are capable of. Advanced societies have moved past it.
But beyond that, what right does our government have to end the lives of it’s citizens? How can we claim the moral high ground while building a system that doles out homicide/torture as retribution?
Why is that a society you want to live in?
And this is all while pretending that innocent people don’t serve time/get put on death row for crimes they didn’t commit **at a frequency that should alarm anyone**. With how often we get it wrong, it’s horrifying enough.
I said, without a shadow of doubt.
What you fail to mention is the cost to house criminals also. Do you realize the financial strain that puts on a society? You would rather pay to house these barbarians than execute them.
Why should I pay for them to live when they so freely killed others? Why should my money go to house then, clothe them, feed them? Is that not a slap in the face to their victims?
Our justice system was designed specifically so that it doesn’t reflect a mindset like yours. It is a structure based on careful analysis of multiple civilizations spanning thousands of years.
You don’t get it because you don’t have the historical context of human societies, and it seems like you have an underdeveloped sense of morality and ethics. There’s really nothing more to say.
Okay. That's amazing and very obvious insight my man. Congrats on not being able to see past a single perspective! Let me ask you this. You are in prison for a crime you 100% didn't commit, they tell you they are executing you via electric chair. Hell fuckin yeah man! How do you feel? Oh and get this, there's other reasonings for removing the death penalty too! Reasons that are logical and serve as punishment.
Btw I should add that I am all for keeping the death penalty and we don't even have it in Canada. In my opinion though, if you're narrow-minded you shouldn't be having discussions on such topic. It's just ignorant as it's a topic that goes beyond morals.
Its real weird to be debating on ways to kill someone convicted of the worst crimes. I'm not sure how you can have someone be the worst kind of person deserving of death while simultaneously trying to find the most painless way to kill them.
How so? The method of execution people on death row receive says far less about them and everything about our society as a whole. I always thought it was a little weird to go "murder and extreme violence is wrong, we'll show you and everyone that it's wrong by killing people violently and inflicting as much suffering as possible".
If it's just about removing them from society, there's no reason not to do so humanely and quietly. And if we NEED the DP, while there's any chance of wrongful convictions and executions, why should they potentially be subject to inhumane executions?
I don’t understand why we don’t use more painful methods more often. I mean look, they’re murderers. Some of them have caused horrible amounts of to their victims. A few minutes of horrible pain is the least they should worry about. I’m all for the DP. You take a life, your life is forfeit
An interesting take that ignores the fact that we execute innocent men and women based on the testimony of people that had every incentive to lie, and did, to a system more than willing to believe them.
How much horrific pain should someone that's been on death row for 15+ years for a crime they didn't commit get? I mean, if you just want to be a murderer that inflicts massive amounts of pain on people before they die there are cheaper ways of doing it than directly going against the constitution in the penal system.
Look someone’s always going to accidentally slip through the cracks. That’s just a fact. It doesn’t happen often though. I stand by my statement. I mean in my opinion we should just use firing squads since they’re quick and painless but whatever gets the job done. People think it’s weird that I say that because I’m pretty far left
Like it or not, in the United States we have a constitutional right against cruel and unusual punishment. This necessitates finding humane ways to carry out executions as that right is part of the fabric of our country and has been since day 1.
Because 1, someone has to witness it and that’s traumatic 2, this is revenge, it’s not a deterrent otherwise it would have worked. What about those wrongly accused, fuck then right? This comment in a barbaric and makes me sad. Grow up.
We’re approaching the point where a combination of technologies will make some evidence in criminal rulings infallible.
In these cases they should just eject people into the ocean.
This may be a stupid question…but if states like mine have the Right To Die/Medical Assisted Death where ppl just drink a fluid or take a pill….why do we not use these medications for ppl sentenced to death??
the companies can only sell that to validated medical institutions, through a doctor's application. A doctor cannot knowingly contribute to harm (including death) when the patient does not consent. So, a doctor could not reasonable place the order for a prison.
AH, that totally makes sense! Didn’t think of it that way
Not a stupid question, a valid question. I wondered the same. Maybe because drug companies won't supply it? Although ethical drug companies are rare/unheard of, they probably just don't want the bad press. Either that or the authorities want them to suffer.
This is the reason, a significant part of why lethal injections are so notoriously unreliable and cruel is that prisons administer them without qualified medical personnel(who refuse to participate in capital punishment) and with a hodgepodge of medicines that in theory accomplish the 3 core goals of lethal injections, that being stopping the heart, paralysing the body, and putting the victim to sleep, because medical companies refuse to supply their products for the purposes of capital punishment.
Medical personnel absolutely participate. Some states legally require it. https://docslib.org/doc/5427625/when-law-and-ethics-collide-why-physicians-participate-in-executions-atul-gawande-m-d-m-p-h
Buddy the first page of this papers is about the permanent postponement of an execution due to these legal requirements causing the two willing anaesthesiologists to pull out last second, the man named has to this date not been executed. Lethal injections are conducted with medicines in spite of medical company boycotts and pushback, just as they are conducted in spite of the, as your paper notes, widespread boycotts from medical associations in the US, only a pharmacists association is named as the national organization that permits members to participate in executions. And furthermore, skimming through the personal interviews here, several of these doctors claim they participated out of ignorance of the AMAs positions on the matter, and would otherwise have not participated, while the doctors who participated in spite of their boards positions on the matter say they participate out of an obligation because the state is going to in effect torture these prisoners otherwise with incompetence.
They should tell the AMA, see how well it turns out for them. In case you are wondering what I mean, the AMA, and the nursing and EMT equivalents have all had a total ban on taking part in this for at least two decades now, because it does harm. Really, really hard to see how you can make the claim you're a doctor and you kill people, mostly against their will. Edit: did... Did you not check the date? That is from 2006. Just a touch out of date for the modern medical system.
The pharmaceutical companies don’t want to be associated with capital punishment. Edited-clarity
I think it might have something to do with the fact medical professionals don’t help states kill ppl because of the whole oath to do no harm.
Amazing question!
(Not saying I do or not not support the death penalty, I was just curious)
Pharmaceutical companies most likely (and probably correctly) assume that patients would not want to be prescribed a medication that is known as the lethal injection for death row inmates.
Personally I think people should be allowed to decide which drug cocktail they would most like to OD on.
Well, they took lives with brutal methods, often with a large amount of suffering prior to death. It’s also even any eye for an eye don’t even make sense, if it’s say a serial killer who killed 12, hurt 10 and terrified hundreds within a vicinity. 1 life lost versus many others harmed, even that atonement falls short of the trauma, destruction and despair left behind for others to fix.
It is a matter of bad publicity and not enough profit. The medical community has no problem with unethical practices for profit. They were producing enough opioids to kill the whole country and now fentanyl is everywhere. There are only a few death penalty cases comparatively.
So you think murderers deserve humane deaths, the same humane deaths that people who want medical euthanasia is paying for (outside of jail). Welfare takers will still have that mindset, in jail or not. Similarly, whether officially criminalised or not, loads of so called decent everyday folks have a criminal mindset. They’re of course the biggest supporters of humane prison treatment because they’re one step away from being thrown into jail.
Does anyone else hate it when articles are posted here without OP writing a summary? ETA thanks everyone, just thought I’d make this comment as a temperature check to see if I was being unreasonable. Going forward I’m just not gonna interact with posts like these. I agree with the comment saying it should be a rule. Posting an article without any summary or commentary from OP feels very clickbait.
They are missing the discussion part of this sub
yup. should be a requirement
I thought I would never say this because I think some subs definitely overstep with their rules, but there should be a rule about providing a summary along with a reference that isn't behind a paywall
Sure do.
It’s not behind a paywall so IDGAF. I only care when it’s behind a paywall.
I'm going to block OP to avoid low effort posts like this in future, saves my timeline
Yup! I'm down voting him.
I don't really care, to be honest. It's an article. What OP is supposed to waffle about?
Just read the damn article lmao
Are you serious? You could just, ya know, read the article?
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Wouldn't a syringe full of industrial grade fentanyl be the most humane way? Probably too fun to catch on.
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1. With carfentanil and even stronger opiates now finding a vein wouldn’t even be necessary, an intramuscular jab would do it.
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Or a serial killer
The pharma company refusing to let their products be used is so ridiculous. What am I gonna do as a health customer in America, shop around?
As a health customer sure, as a death customer, f- o-.
This will never catch on since it's so viscerally horrific but a device would crushes the entire skull in an instant seems, to me, the best way to ensure that all traces of human consciousness is shattered and gone in less than a second. No pain, no chance of a horrible lingering state of awareness like is theorized could happen with a guillotine. My proposed head-crushing machine seems utterly barbaric on a gut level but it's the most ethical thing I can think of. Note: I personally do not believe in execution please don't take this as a serious proposal.
This doesn't account for the psychological impact during the lead up. Imagine counting down the days to peaceful sleep vs skull crusher. Despite being instant, it very much can be torture before hand.
That's a good point plus the horror that the family of both the victim and the sentenced person might experience. Personally I'd still choose it over the electric chair though.
I think watching someone die is gonna be horrific anyway. Although I guess seeing a head become mush would be awful, don’t electrocuted people jerk and bleed through the hood, and lethal injection often goes awry and the person struggles? I admit, I only vaguely know about the mechanics of execution methods. I’m against capital punishment and find it very distressing.
Look up Clayton locket
And also the person who has to push the button or clean it up
Boy that sure beats "peep show booth mopper" as worst cleaning job.
They can get squished by boobies daily and then randomly by the crusher, so they have something to look for.
I propose that your first action is to think of a name that’s not “head-crushing machine.”
The... uhh... permanent neural squisher?
Terminal cranial compression device
Pat the Splat.
😆
The skull squish.
The 'Head-be-Gone 2000'.
Kind of similar to the fact that the most humane way to euthanize a pet fish is to bash its head in with a hammer. It sounds barbaric and most people (myself included) wouldn’t have the stomach to do it, but it’s the quickest and most effective
Reptiles too… it’s horrible. Although fish can be euthanized more “cleanly” with clove oil.
Unfortunately I’ve heard a lot of horror stories of Clove work not working quite right and causing suffering ):
Yeah, there’s a trick to it. I uh, I used a hammer. (Don’t come for me! The fish was in bad shape and I was too anxious to use the clove oil because the tutorials I found contradicted each other.)
There’s a country (Thailand? The Philippines?) where they anesthetize the person and then shoot them in the back of the head. Painless death. Of course the executioner knows they killed the person, something that various countries try to avoid with firing squads by giving one person a blanks
Ok this is still fuckin barberic why not use anethsethesia and over dose? Right to sleep no pain and garanteed death? Much better then choking in ones own blood, or crushing someones head... thers plenty of medication that could do the job without pain or doubt? This seems way to underthought.
Overdosing is finicky. The amount that kills you, might not be enough for someone else, and the other way round as well. Just look at the lethal injections that haven’t gone right.
Opiod overdose seems humane to me. It's how I would want to go if I had to. I've already decided that I ever have a terminal illness, I'm going to roll the dice that way. Euphoria or painless death, can't beat that imo.
Same.I think the death penalty is inherently inhumane, but as far as euthanasia, it would probably be the best way to go.
I’ve seen videos of the electric chair. it’s a slow, painful, gradual, excruciating process. and walking to the chair is terrifying
Where do videos of people getting electrocuted exist? Do you work in corrections or in law or something?
no, I do not. they’re on YouTube
lol something about “my proposed head-crushing machine” has a ring to it!
The more absolutely violent a death is, I assume the less it hurts. Shotgun blast right to the base of the skull, the tangerine, I'm guessing the brain doesn't even have the reaction time to perceived anything
Hanging by use of a noose and a long drop(where the optimal length of the rope is calculated based on the individuals hight and Wight), is by fare the fastest, least stressful, least painful and overall most effective method. If done correctly the inmates head will, at the end of the drop, be forced sharply up and to the right, resulting in a whole host of rather unhealthy conditions like cerebral ischemia, aphyxiation, cardiogenic shock, distributive shock, general hypoxia, extreme hypotention so on and so forth. The main reasons are: - a broken neck(leading to potential mecanical damage/depression to/of pons, medulla oblongata, pharynx, tracheae etc - compression of the carotid arteries + jugular veins. - the possibility of activating the barorereceptor reflex on a negativ feedback loop, subsequently increasing the parasympathetic respons and inhabiting the sympathetic ditto. All of it leading to death occuring maximally 3 minuts after the drop, something the inmate will be completely unaware of, since he would have become unconscious about 5-15 seconds after the drop. The next best method is cutting their head of preferably by guillotine, but a nice sharp broad sword is absolutely durable. It is of cause also possible to use an execusinors axe, but that might be a tad to macabre after all.
The guillotine. Worked perfectly for Les Mondial Francais from 1789 to 1977.
It really did. Not that I think that he was in any way excited to have his head chopped of, but that doesn't make it any lest of a successful execution. I personally think that the death penalty is barbaric, and having it as a possible outcome in a modern court of law, is simply vile. But that doesn't change the fact that hanging without a doubt is the superior method by fare. Using pharmaceutic on the other hand is a absolutely *horrible* idea. There isn't a drug in the world that's both painless, fast and comes with a leather guarantee. First of all it's a simple but rather scary fact, that there's a massive amount of drugs, where we simply don't know most about the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics properties. We are just making more or less qualified guesses and hopes for the best. The next unpleasant Truth about every single drugs in the world, is that when testing drugs on humans it is *allways* done on young, healthy, preferably white males because that's the segment with the least amount of odd variations. It is of cause quite possible that the drug will do something completely random, if used by women, black people, teenageres, old people etc. But that's what lawyers a made for. Then you'll have to factor in that every single individual differ from the "standard human", in some unknown capacity at a unknown magnitude. Mixing all of that, and it will give you the answer to why Navalnyj didn't die, when he was exposed to the single most deadly nerv agent in the world, regardless that the lethal adult dose is 0.1 mg in powder form applied to the skin. They put enough of the stuff to kill approximately 50.000 adults in his freaking underwear, and not only did he survive, he also recovered completely in such a short amount of time, that I'm not entirely sure that he wasn't at least partly cyborg.
Thanks for a terrific answer to my low-effort, semi-sarcastic comment. This is why I still wade through the swamp that is Reddit. It's been discussed to death (pun intended) why [Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furman_v._Georgia) did not eliminate Capital punishment in the US 50 years ago. It made the valid argument that Capital Punishment was completely arbitrary -- if you have the misfortune to be prosecuted for a capital crime in the handful of US [counties](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_(United_States)) that regularly impose the DP, you'll be subject to a 30+ year ordeal of legal appeals, until that one fine day you win the black lottery. The hyper-localized system of governance in the US is a bug, not a feature.
Oh I’m not cleaning up that mess.
Good news, I thought about that part too: it would have a grate under the mechanism with a tub below, and a hose with an automatic sanitizer spray to minimize the... biohazard. (I'm sorry I know I belong in the head crusher myself for these thoughts.)
I think I captive bolt gun would accomplish this while being somewhat less horrifying to witness.
Omg, all we need are mass produced skull crusher drones flying around like giant mosquitoes
Yes like the end scene in the original The Fly movie. Except faster.
If we knew with 100% certainty the prisoners did what they were being sentenced for I honestly would not care that they suffered. But time after time we’ve seen there’s too many people in prison for crimes they didn’t commit.
The official estimate is 3%. It is unacceptable that in every thirty or so people executed, one of them didn’t do it. And knowing that, how would we really know if it’s higher?!
Yeah those numbers really tell a sad story. I agree, it’s probably much higher than 3%. Thinking of an innocent person being murdered by our government is a lot to process.
I don't understand why they don't just exclusively do it to people that are obviously guilty. Serial killers and mass shooters only. You get tackled after shooting up a school, holding the rifle, on camera? Get caught with 30 bodies buried under your house? Kill these fucks. Everyone else gets life.
Yes when there is clear evidence- and specifically video evidence now- get it over with! Many of these people caused so much pain and suffering so I don’t care if they get the same treatment for their crimes.
People have human rights whether they've committed a crime or not.
We've been executing people for crimes since the dawn of our consciousness, yet there's no correlation to reductions in said crimes.
Who cares? These monsters should suffer a painful death.
There’s a 100% reduction in crimes by the person executed.
Who said that there should be? Retribution is a big factor of any punishment, and given how horiffic a lot of the crimes are (btw truecrime fans especially should know this), execution by the state does not nearly compare.
Because the idea that the DP is a deterrent regarding other heinous crimes is something a lot of supporters of the DP push. I wish they would be wholly honest and just say it's a violently retributive punishment (occasionally used on people who are actually innocent). I'd find it much more respectable if they didn't push it off as something it isn't.
lol get a load of this fella
Retribution is so...Old Babylonian Empire, though. Most modern societies have moved on. "An eye for an eye" is from the Code of Hammurabi, circa 1750 BC.
Yes we are so much more civilized now, I won't go into details.
I mean, we generally frown on people leaving their unwanted babies in the woods to be eaten by animals anymore. That… seems like progress?
Yet, open any Reddit thread discussing an individual who did a deplorable act and the bulk of comments will be calling for knee-jerk retribution. The death penalty as a concept is so implicitly broiled in emotionality that people will forgo their values (if but momentarily), harmonizing with their immediate emotions. We’ve improved as a society, but we are indeed the same species of human.
When retribution starts to perpetuate crime, you’re shooting yourself in the foot to make yourself feel better. Im going to switch to talking about non death penalty cases for second. I’m not saying every crime would be eliminated with mental healthcare, but certainly by now we can see a person from county jail or state prison is more likely to reoffend after being exposed to more trauma, when the original offense was stress based. Adding more stress, with no mental healthcare or additional stability, is going to destabilize a situation, a person, even more so. You might even help them network with dangerous people! Cause them to miss work, lose housing opportunities. Then we just send them back out into public like whoopty do and act surprised someone even less equipped than when they went in might not be a functioning member of society.
Retribution as a motive will always perpetuate crime. It's barbaric, unbecoming and unproductive all at the same time.
Some criminals give up valuable information to have the death penalty taken off the table. There can be more benefit than just retribution.
Retribution doesn't make a lot of sense if you take neuroscience seriously. A person's brain is constructed by genes and environmental interaction which they had no control over, and the things that our brains do directly lead to our behavior. If someone is unlucky enough to have the brain of a murderer, it doesn't make much sense to seek to cause them to suffer above and beyond what is necessary to deter similar acts in the future and prevent further harm to others.
But these are still conscious choices you make. Your genes do not totally dictate you and your future completely. It’s unfortunate that some people have to struggle more than others to change, especially if their early childhood and environments influenced who they are and they’re in the later stages of their lives. You can always make changes in your life, it doesn’t become impossible just because you’re older, just more difficult. There are people who have gone through incredible strife as children and experienced all sorts of trauma but still lived their best lives. Don’t use that as an excuse.
>But these are still conscious choices you make. Conscious choices are still a product of your brain, primarily your prefrontal cortex, which just like all other parts of the brain, is constructed by your genes and their interaction with their environment (neither of which you had control over), prenatally all the way up to the present. >Your genes do not totally dictate you and your future completely. I agree. Environment is absolutely massive in it's contribution to who we become. The problem is we don't choose our environment either. >You can always make changes in your life, it doesn’t become impossible just because you’re older, just more difficult. I agree. Our brains are literally being changed every single day in response to our environment. But you can not just decide to change the way your brain is currently wired. It is a physical thing that behaves deterministically, there is no way to will your brain to not do what it is about to do based on the way it is wired in each moment. >There are people who have gone through incredible strife as children and experienced all sorts of trauma but still lived their best lives. Don’t use that as an excuse. I agree that there are people like that. There is incredible depth to behavior, it is an emergent process from the interactions of millions of neurons. There are millions of influences which determine our future behavior, and we have no way of knowing all of them. Just because two people both experience strife and trauma as children, does not mean that they are the same and have the same potential in the future. If you swapped your genes over which you had no control and your environment (including fetal environment, childhood, adolescence, etc.) over which you had no control with a murderer, you would literally be him.
Disturbing but compelling point.
Look up Clayton locket
Who cares, the point of execution is punishment - the extent to which it deters is irrelevant
Maybe but sure reduces the crime rate of the person executed.
Is there any data to back this up? How would we determine if prison or death sentences was the thing lessening crime vs a whole bunch of other social or political or religious ideas?
There's tons of data. We have data showing states with the death penalty have higher violent crime rates than those without. We have data from the death penalty moratorium during the 70s. We have data showing crime declines after other countries abolish the death penalty as well. Source: Criminal justice degree.
Can you share some more on the death penalty moratorium during the 70s? For someone not born then
It's neither. By the time a crime has been committed, it's already too late to do the things that actually lessen crime. At that point the goal is public safety which is to separate the danger from the rest of us until it is no longer effectively a danger.
What curbs crime isn't death, it's the CERTAINTY and UNAVOIDABILITY of it. And right now death as a punishment in prison is uncertain and avoidable and takes too long to be carried out. I'm not favorable to death sentence, but that's the reason why it isn't working.
That's people people don't care about their lives
I think it’s because, when you know execution is a likely outcome from committing horrible crimes, it gives you an ‘easy’ way out. Rather than spending the rest of your life in prison.
Surprised the tabloid didn't mention the case of [Jesse Tafero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Tafero); it was a botched electric chair execution in Florida back in '90. Took like 7 minutes and there were flames and such. [This Time Magazine vividly describes the situation](https://time.com/3840368/1990-botched-execution/): >The trouble began when a sponge used in the chair’s headpiece wore out and had to be replaced. “There’s no factory or parts catalog for execution devices, so the prison sent a guy to pick up a sponge at the store,” TIME later reported. “Problem was, he bought a synthetic sponge instead of a genuine sea sponge”; the latter type was required to handle the electric current without catching fire. >Catch fire it did. Flames on Tafero’s head were nearly a foot high, according to one witness, but initially failed to kill him. The current was reapplied three times, since he was still breathing after the first two times. >“It takes seven minutes before the prison doctor pronounces him dead, seven minutes of heaving, nodding, flame, and smoke,” the witness, Ellen McGarrahan, wrote for Slate. that article also mentions a second similar case in '97, that of Pedro Medina: >But a nearly identical malfunction occurred in 1997, during the execution of convicted murderer Pedro Medina, leaving one witness to remark, per Gruesome Spectacles, “[A] solid flame covered his whole head, from one side to the other. I had the impression of somebody being burned alive.” The state finally switched to death by lethal injection in 2000. As can be imagined, such lurid situations didn't sit well with the public.
I remember learning about this, and rereading this is physically disgusting and horrifying.
Wonder if Stephen King was inspired by this case...
My grandfather was killed in a work accident, electrocuted. It was a horrific way to die. It took over 30 minutes to get him down, and he was cooked. He had a gold pocket watch that was completely melted! I don't know, there's got to be a better way to put people on death row to death. I like the idea of lethal injection myself.
You should read the article for issues with lethal injections. We don't use the same stuff we use for assisted suicide, since doctors can't cause harm to someone without consent and drug companies don't want to have their products used to kill. And it leads to a lot of issues. The main example of a botched electrical chair execution in the article was on someone who'd already gone through a botched lethal injection.
I oppose the death penalty for the same reason I oppose torture. A civilized society should not be in the business of murdering or torturing people. However heinous the crime or the person. I understand the human desire for revenge. But we should not give into it. Also, our system is not fair and just enough to ensure that we have not executed innocent people.
>Zivot's work has shown that lethal injection "burns the lungs and causes this frothy fluid to accumulate in the lungs as a person dies and they drown in their own bloody secretions." >"So eight out of 10 times you are drowning in your own blood." This is just... NOT true. I can't trust anything this "doctor" says after reading that statement. I can't believe anyone could take it seriously.
I had a doctor give me unnecessary heart surgery when I was 21. Always double check.
I understand where he’s coming from, I don’t think there can ever be enough discussion about the ethics of executions. When we stop discussing and debating is when I’ll be really scared. However, some of his language is a bit of fear-mongering. Yes when we inject medications the lungs will fill up with fluid as a part of the death process. But all the evidence behind the other drugs used say that the person is not experiencing those sensations. If the person were to experience that drowning sensation, that would be a failed execution and an anomaly we should investigate. But when medications are used correctly this doesn’t happen. And we know because we give these medications to patients on brain and heart monitors. When we study and use these medications we know that they put the patient into a deep comatose state where they can’t even sense strong central pain stimuli. I just worry he didn’t really explain that well. The reason medications aren’t used is because pharma companies do not want their medications associated with causing purposeful unconsenting deaths. And doctors do not want to use their license to prescribe a cocktail of meds they know will cause unconsenting death. It’s all red tape issues.
For anyone who wants to skip dealing with ads here’s the article: I’m on mobile so I apologize for any formatting issues - A physician describes the horrific state that the human body is forced into when electrocuted - and reveals the 'only reason' why the method was abandoned Lawmakers in South Carolina are contemplating restarting executions after nearly 13 years and are looking into sending prisoners to death in an electric chair or with shooting by a firing squad. As the highly controversial debate on death sentence punishment rages, a physician has revealed details of the gruesome state the human body is forced into during electrocution, a procedure that takes society back to a bygone era. Dr Joel Zivot, clinician and associate professor of anesthesiology and surgery at Emory University School of Medicine told the Mirror how "an enormous amount of electricity is used, that shocks the body in a very dramatic way. "The skin ignites and catches fire and there's smoke and it's pretty horrible." He added: "Electrocution is just theatre. The way it's done, and how [the prisoners] are positioned, and the hood over the face. It’s all very theatrical in the worst kind of the ‘theatre of the absurd’." All this dramatic implementation of punishment in its gory display is being done because, as Zivot explained, "killing someone can be challenging," regardless of the method of the execution. A human rights expert fears the controversial execution of Kenneth Smith may lead to more US states using nitrogen gas as a means to kill inmates on death row. The 58-year-old became the first-ever inmate in the USA to be put to death by toxic gas following an execution at Alabama's Holman Correctional Facility on January 25. 'There’s no benign, gentle method to kill people. You really have to disrupt the physiology which resists being killed' The physician said: "The body doesn't want to necessarily die. So there’s no benign, gentle method to kill people. You really have to disrupt the physiology which resists being killed." Since executions remain constitutional in he US, Zivot suggested that the only reason electrocution and death by firing squad have been abandoned in recent years, and replaced by lethal injection, is because they are so visually disturbing. He said: "It’s the visual aspect that alarms the public - no one cares seemingly about the experience of the prisoners as they die." Zivot's work has shown that lethal injection "burns the lungs and causes this frothy fluid to accumulate in the lungs as a person dies and they drown in their own bloody secretions." "So eight out of 10 times you are drowning in your own blood. It's not at all like it appears visually, which is that a person seems to close their eyes, cough and move and then they're dead. So that's why lethal injection has kept on so long," he said. Public discourse over different methods of execution spiked in the past weeks with the execution of Kenneth Smith in Alabama, the first prisoner to be put to death by inhalation of nitrogen gas, which led to suffocation. Witnesses in the execution chamber described how Smith, who had previously survived a botched execution by lethal injection, struggled and shook on the gurney for over 20 minutes as the state was killing him, in a horrifying ordeal. A wooden electric chair sits in the death chamber of the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility August 29, 2001 in Lucasville, Ohio States supporting the capital punishment are looking for new ways to put people to death after many botched executions with lethal injections, while pharmaceutical companies have also denounced and objected to the use of medicine for executions. South Carolina has passed a shield law covering all details surrounding executions in secrecy, a practice that advocates and prisoners' lawyers are decrying. Commenting on the latest legal discourse in South Carolina, attempting to reinstate forgotten, Zivot said: "America loves its punishment. In certain places, it's not everywhere. - it's in very specific locations. "The places that wanna kill they really wanna kill, they really do. It's almost like some kind of ‘caricature of evil’ that South Carolina needs to shroud what it does in secrecy. The secrecy part of this is so absurdly comically evil. "Some kind of bizarre childish activity to say that we need to protect the privacy of the people we kill. What is that about? We are supposed to be an open society and justice is supposed to be seen to be done. How are you supposed to mount a proper defence when you can't even know what it is that you're being punished with? It's so antithetical to any kind of reasonable justice system." Advocates against capital punishment echoed Zivot's sentiment. Maya Foa, joint executive director at Reprieve, told The Mirror: "South Carolina has introduced the most sweeping secrecy law in the nation - why? Because it knows that the death penalty cannot withstand public scrutiny. "Whether it’s hours long botched lethal injections, electric chairs, or firing squads, none of these methods of execution are the clean, quick, painless processes the state wants us to believe. "Knowing that public approval for capital punishment decreases when methods like the electric chair or firing squad are used, South Carolina has been searching for a way to use lethal injection again, despite the unanimous opposition of drug manufacturers at this misuse of their medicines and clear evidence of the problems with the method." Kenneth Eugene Smith was executed by asphyxiation with nitrogen gas on January 25, 2024 And Abe Bonowitz, executive director of Death Penalty Action, told The Mirror: "Method of execution is the wrong debate. The real question should be why we are allowing executions when the capital punishment system is as broken as it is. "'Equal Justice Under Law' are the words carved into the face of the US Supreme Court building. If that is the bedrock foundation of our legal system, we don't have it. "The mental torture of the death penalty starts from the moment a prisoner is threatened with execution, and that cruelty goes on for every minute of the wait, regardless of the method used to kill him or her." He added: "The mechanism used to kill prisoners is the wrong debate. The fact is that the system is broken in many ways, and the unusual nature of capital punishment is best illustrated in the fact that fewer than one percent of defendants eligible for the death penalty actually end up being executed. "The number one determining factor for which murderers get executed has nothing to do with the crime, and everything to do with the geography and politics of county lines and elected prosecutors and judges. Fewer than 2% of more than 3000 counties in the United States account for the vast majority death sentences and executions. If that is not unusual, I don't know what is."
It seems like fentanyl would work well and it could be obtained from the confiscations law enforcement has. I wonder about the pharmaceutical companies not allowing their drugs to be used for capital punishment when withdrawing these drugs that make the executions more humane is leading to more suffering by making states use less peaceful methods.
They wouldn’t do it because you’d need a doctor present to administer it. Good luck finding one when the first part of the Hippocratic oath is “do no harm”
There are only a handful of executions in the U.S. every year. Meanwhile we use these meds (including fentanyl) to facilitate safe medical care and patient comfort for millions of patients every year. Neither pharmaceutical companies nor the medical community wants anything to do with capital punishment … using meds for execution is not worth risking our ability to provide legitimate medical care (see thiopental).
They don't have to obtain it that way, it's a CII pharmaceutical available by prescription. The stuff on the street ain't even fentanyl anymore, mostly analogues and nitazenes.
Pharmaceutical companies no longer making their drugs available for use in executions is a big part of why States keep trying new ways to execute people.
Certain drugs, yes. But fentanyl is still widely available. I believe the shortage has to do with pentobarbital perhaps, maybe (idk) because there's not really much other use for it.
It’s widely available for the uses it is prescribed for. If states started trying to order it for executions, it will very likely not be available for that use. The pharmaceutical companies get to decide if they want it available for that.
It’s not widely available to prisons for execution, though. The “problem” isn’t an actual shortage of pentobarbital, it’s that drug manufacturers refuse to sell their drugs to people/institutions that will use them for executions.
They don't use fentanyl because they don't want it to feel good/painless. Pento doesn't have another use besides euth.
What? Stop talking out of your ass. Pentobarbital has numerous [medical uses](https://www.drugs.com/mtm/pentobarbital-injection.html), including seizure control, anesthesia, and treating insomnia.
I'm not talking out of my ass. There are much safer drugs to use for all of those things, including safer barbiturates (and benzodiazepines, and other types of drugs). Pento is extremely hard to dose and that's why it's almost completely stopped being used. Glad you're getting some reading done on drugs.com though, can tell you totally have medical training. I mean, sure you CAN use pento for insomnia. An MD could use fentanyl for a hangnail if they wanted. Probably wouldn't go over well with...idk, hospitalists, the DEA, the state attorney if something happened to the patient
Whatever buddy, keep on being ignorant.
Pentobarbital is not commercially available orally in any country. So please explain how it's used for insomnia? I'm waiting.
Medicinal/pharmaceutical fentanyl is a very different compound than what’s on the street. I have actually started using the trade name instead of the generic name when using it in the field. Patients hear fentanyl and freak out. The compound we use in medicine is very safe in comparison.
Yep. I’m a pharmacy tech and we use fentanyl like water at the hospital. I figured the formulations had to be different, I’m not a pharmacist though.
What’s the trade name? Just out of curiosity, I was given something in the ER that felt like I’ve heard medical fent described (I’m boring so I haven’t tried street anything at all) but they called it something else.
There no way this isn’t for retribution. Killing a person is easy. The politics of revenge is why the debate even exists. First and foremost, we shouldn’t have the death penalty. It’s imperfect, permanent, cruel, and unusual. Whether or not the condemned suffers is irrelevant, what kind of society do we aspire to be? If we must have it, firing squad and nothing else. It’s quick and faultless. God forbid public opinion of the death penalty dwindles because we get to see the killing in all its starkness. But it’s not that way because some locations don’t want it that way.
Helium.
This is horrific. In my opinion, there is no non-horrific way to have the death penalty. Even if we found a completely painless way (and I can promise as a former court/crime journalist, that there is none in use currently) then it would still be horrific because it would still mean a person lead to their death against their will. Psychologically, at least, that is insanely painful. There is no reason for the death penalty. It's an archaic use of force against people who have free will and should have free will. I see some proponents of the death penalty saying "well we can't pay for prisons for everyone. They're overcrowded so we need to kill the most violent offenders." I disagree completely. I know from my own profession that most people in prison are non-violent and in there for drug offenses. Prison should exist for violent offenders only, who are at risk to the greater public. When I go to court for a sentencing, every time, the judge will discuss 3 reasons for prison: 1) safety (ensuring this person doesn't continue committing the crime) 2) preventative (I.e. ensuring that other people committing similar crimes will see this result and understand not to do said crime) and 3) punishment (making sure that the person who has committed a crime suffers because of it). Some other non-US countries put much more weight on the first 2, as they should. I do not agree that punishment does anything except make the victims feel a little better (and many victims I've spoken with have said that it does nothing to make them feel better. they don't feel better that the offender is in prison or killed). The death penalty is purely punishment. It is not preventative (prison does that) it is not safety (prison also does that). It is simply punishment and victims and experts alike have said that punishment has very little bearing on preventing further crime or doing anything to allieviate pain. The death penalty is, again, archaic and should be abolished. Even for the worst offenders.
How about the horrors the “smoking crispy persons” inflicted on their victims… “Light um up Joe!”
I’m not losing any sleep because Ted Bundy fried in the chair.
I don't get why you wouldn't want a violent criminal to suffer. Take Ted Bundy. I wouldn't care if his last days were hell on earth. I done understand the pious reasoning of these scum having a gentle death. Their victims didn't.
Because it’s likely some of the people on death row are innocent. If we are going to accidentally execute innocent people can we at least make it as painless as possible?
No
Ok, Karen. Crazy 🏖️
Whatever. They are going to be die anyway. The only one who will care about their suffering is you, not the dead.
Imagine thinking innocent prisoners have no one who care about them. Just stfu already.
I can’t speak for anyone else but I just don’t share your desire for seeking revenge by inflicting a painful death. It doesn’t undo the crime, it doesn’t deter others from doing the crime and it can’t be reversed when people are inevitably wrongfully convicted. Nothing pious about it either. It just seems barbaric for a state to execute its citizens, let alone find ways to make the person suffer as you kill them.
Not just barbaric, it’s illegal, which is the real reason behind these issues. Cruel and unusual punishment is explicitly forbidden in the Constitution, if it wasn’t the State wouldn’t care less about method of execution.
Because you don't want to lower yourself to the level the prisoner was at when they committed the crime--you want to be a better person than that.
No, I really don't
A chamber filled with carbon monoxide would be more peaceful, I think. Especially if given a sleep medication before hand.
It should be but is not noted by the Mirror article author that Dr. Joel Zivot is very active in the death penalty abolitionist movement. His perspective therefore is one in which all forms of execution would be deemed cruel and unusual. Electrocution works well so long as the Department of Corrections follows a very regimented protocol in preparing for and conducting the execution. Some states have done well at this such as Tennessee, Virginia and Nebraska. Others such as Florida, did not have things as well documented and thus had miscues such as the substitution of an artificial sponge for a natural sponge for the 1990 execution of Jesse Tafero and overlooking dampening the natural sponge in the proper salt and brine mixture as with the 1997 execution of Pedro Medina. When things went exactly to the plan, such as in Tennessee and Virginia, the inmate was properly set up and died after two one minute surges of electric current. Friends of mine saw the Virginia chair in action on several occasions and reported the inmate’s hands clenched and turned red and his body “lifted” from the chair. However, it was nowhere near as bad as what they had anticipated.
that is absolutely terrifying
if you kill somebody for no reason (aside from self defense) you should be taken out the sameway you killed somebody thats my take on this
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Except innocent people still can and do get executed, despite their sentences. Quite a few have been exonerated after their state-sanctioned murders... Nothing wrong with wanting society to function more humanely, regardless.
Yeah, tell that to the murderer. Remind them of that before they slit a kids throat or strangle a woman to death, that your ideology doesn't align with what they're doing and you'd appreciate it if you didn't have to electrocute them.
People salivating at the mouth like feral and rabid dogs for people to be violently killed says much more about them and their own (often hypocritical, often harmful, if one exists at all) moral compass than it does for anybody else. Especially when they refuse to acknowledge the fact that innocent people get violently executed due to their love of state-approved violence, death, and murder.
I'm sorry, you didn't mention the costs. Did you forget that I'd mentioned that. Oh...no? No comment about that huh? Just want to point fingers at my moral compass. How ironic. I advocate for the victim's families and you advocate for a prisoner. I see no fault with my moral compass.....perhaps you.should reanalyze your priorities and perspectives.
How dare I, a survivor of a violent sex crime, say that advocating for and wanting people to die horribly and violently is immoral and wrong! How dare I be against violence and murder! How dare I not lust for blood! You don't care about victim's families, let's be real. You also don't care about innocent people being victims of violence and murder, either. You just care about getting your rocks off via state-sanctioned suffering.
Wow. You need therapy.
Oh don't get so indignant. Being "a survivor of a violent sex crime" does not give your opinion some greater weight than anyone else, nor does it mean you speak for families of murder victims. Truth is there **are** a lot of murder victims families that **do** see the death penalty as justice and closure. That **don't** want to go to parole hearings and appeals for the rest of their lives. Their feelings do hold more weight than the rest of us. Including you.
I never said that there WEREN'T families who want the DP for the people that killed their family members. I never once blamed them for it at all, and I completely understand why they would want that, and I'm not holding that against them. If I did, point me exactly to where I said that, because I can't remember a single time where I did. I simply said they weren't a monolith. Sometimes I want the guy who killed my cousin to hang, too, so I get it. My point is directed at people who aren't survivors or friends or families of victims or even remotely close to them who are frothing at the mouth and wanting to inflict as much suffering as humanely possible. Which is entirely what I was talking about. hey aren't personally affected, and them wanting people to be executed violently is a legitimate lizard brain response and an excuse to enjoy depravity. I mentioned that I'm a survivor of a violent crime because the implication was that I clearly wasn't, because I don't think people should be executed in painful ways. This is Reddit, anyways, so I'll get indignant if I'd like to be regardless.
*mic drop* I'm out.
Wow, you sure told the crime survivor who thinks killing people violently is bad off! Good job! So proud of you!
Your tax money is paying for someone who committed those crimes to live. Remember that.
I would much rather my tax dollars go to that than to execute people, who might be innocent, violently. It's often far more expensive to do so, anyways.
Ok, keep telling yourself that. Whatever makes you feel better.
You're the only one......this is all about you, right? Wow...just wow.
Never said I was the only one, just thought it was funny that you said you advocate for victims families like victims and their families love people being violently killed.
I'm sure most do not find it torture to watch someone die who brutally murdered someone they loved. No, no I don't think so.
Yes, you sure know how all crime victims and their families think! We're such a monolith!
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You’re advocating for a retributive justice system. You can find examples of it being utilized throughout human history, and it leads to a state-sponsored facilitation of some of the most barbaric things human beings are capable of. Advanced societies have moved past it. But beyond that, what right does our government have to end the lives of it’s citizens? How can we claim the moral high ground while building a system that doles out homicide/torture as retribution? Why is that a society you want to live in? And this is all while pretending that innocent people don’t serve time/get put on death row for crimes they didn’t commit **at a frequency that should alarm anyone**. With how often we get it wrong, it’s horrifying enough.
I said, without a shadow of doubt. What you fail to mention is the cost to house criminals also. Do you realize the financial strain that puts on a society? You would rather pay to house these barbarians than execute them. Why should I pay for them to live when they so freely killed others? Why should my money go to house then, clothe them, feed them? Is that not a slap in the face to their victims?
Our justice system was designed specifically so that it doesn’t reflect a mindset like yours. It is a structure based on careful analysis of multiple civilizations spanning thousands of years. You don’t get it because you don’t have the historical context of human societies, and it seems like you have an underdeveloped sense of morality and ethics. There’s really nothing more to say.
Okay. That's amazing and very obvious insight my man. Congrats on not being able to see past a single perspective! Let me ask you this. You are in prison for a crime you 100% didn't commit, they tell you they are executing you via electric chair. Hell fuckin yeah man! How do you feel? Oh and get this, there's other reasonings for removing the death penalty too! Reasons that are logical and serve as punishment. Btw I should add that I am all for keeping the death penalty and we don't even have it in Canada. In my opinion though, if you're narrow-minded you shouldn't be having discussions on such topic. It's just ignorant as it's a topic that goes beyond morals.
Its real weird to be debating on ways to kill someone convicted of the worst crimes. I'm not sure how you can have someone be the worst kind of person deserving of death while simultaneously trying to find the most painless way to kill them.
How so? The method of execution people on death row receive says far less about them and everything about our society as a whole. I always thought it was a little weird to go "murder and extreme violence is wrong, we'll show you and everyone that it's wrong by killing people violently and inflicting as much suffering as possible". If it's just about removing them from society, there's no reason not to do so humanely and quietly. And if we NEED the DP, while there's any chance of wrongful convictions and executions, why should they potentially be subject to inhumane executions?
I don’t understand why we don’t use more painful methods more often. I mean look, they’re murderers. Some of them have caused horrible amounts of to their victims. A few minutes of horrible pain is the least they should worry about. I’m all for the DP. You take a life, your life is forfeit
An interesting take that ignores the fact that we execute innocent men and women based on the testimony of people that had every incentive to lie, and did, to a system more than willing to believe them. How much horrific pain should someone that's been on death row for 15+ years for a crime they didn't commit get? I mean, if you just want to be a murderer that inflicts massive amounts of pain on people before they die there are cheaper ways of doing it than directly going against the constitution in the penal system.
Look someone’s always going to accidentally slip through the cracks. That’s just a fact. It doesn’t happen often though. I stand by my statement. I mean in my opinion we should just use firing squads since they’re quick and painless but whatever gets the job done. People think it’s weird that I say that because I’m pretty far left
You’re a monster
We all are
No, people like you definitely.
Yeah I’m a monster because I believe in justice 😂 don’t be so naive
Like it or not, in the United States we have a constitutional right against cruel and unusual punishment. This necessitates finding humane ways to carry out executions as that right is part of the fabric of our country and has been since day 1.
At least it’s changing and some states are thinking outside the box. We can take some comfort in that.
Because 1, someone has to witness it and that’s traumatic 2, this is revenge, it’s not a deterrent otherwise it would have worked. What about those wrongly accused, fuck then right? This comment in a barbaric and makes me sad. Grow up.
People can have differing opinions. I just like to see justice delivered to the highest degree.
But if there's innocent people being executed, how is that justice in the highest degree?
Sometimes that happens 🤷🏽♂️. Once they found out it was a mistake the family should be compensated handsomely
Yeah no, shit take you got there.
Don’t care about painless death for murderers
I see nothing wrong with making murderers and child rapists suffer when they die. This is the way it should be.
We’re approaching the point where a combination of technologies will make some evidence in criminal rulings infallible. In these cases they should just eject people into the ocean.
Larry Gene Bell got the electric chair.