So exactly what would be wrong with a lethal heroin overdose? The poor bastards that get it unintetionally don’t seem to be feeling too much pain. Or much anything at all for that matter.
I know this isn’t Great Debates, but why is this a bad thing? Surely these people did not go out of their way to find a painless method for their victims to die.
Au contraire mon ami. That has been the rationale for every single one of the OP methods. They all were considered less torturous than burning at the stake.
Judge Judy I think you’ve misunderstood FatBaldGuy. He was saying ‘Why so much bother to make executions painless when the condemned doesn’t care about the suffering they inflicted?’
Reading that, it could be clearer.
If I understand him, FatBaldGuy is saying ’ Killers like Johnny Doe (also known as the Hypothetical Strangler) don’t care whether their victims suffer or not. Why do we go to such lengths to be sure these killers are executed painlessly?’
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. Yes, this is what I was saying.
Because we hopefully are not like the killers being put to death.
I remember being put out using NO[sub]2[/sub] at a dentists, would that not be a better method than a less stressfull method than a needle which could be followed up by lethal injections. Unconsciousness through constriction of the arteries in the neck (forget their name) is not particularly painful from my own experience.
Bippy
WAGs
It’s easier to restrain an arm so that a needle won’t pull free than it is to secure the head and neck so that the mask won’t come loose.
Why deal with a pressurized tank of gas if you don’t have to?
The risk of leaks etc would require building a gas chamber.
I was kind of thinking a gas chamber for NO[sub]2[/sub] would be the way to go, the convict would probably go out laughing but I don’t see that as a bad thing. (I see the death penalty as a whole as a bad thing, but that is fopr GD)
WAGs
Switching to a laughing gas chamber would be expensive for states without cyanide gas chambers.
Such a change would require legislative stuff- reports, subcommitees, possibly referendums etc
Depending on how you introduce the gas and eliminate the air, the condemned may actually have some minutes of conscious asphixiation.
Finally, unless some real evidence that lethal injection is not painless is uncovered, why get rid of it?
True it would be expensive, then my earlier cheap method would be ideal, drop 10 tons onto the head of the condemened person from about 10 feet should have enough force to destroy the brain in less than 0.001 seconds. (guessing but educatedly)
Why bother with a ten ton weight, the machinery to lift it etc? Why not just a point blank shot to the head with the appropriate caliber fire arm?
I’d like to see a cite that says lethal injection is painful, as I suspect it’s a ‘fact’ conjured up by death penalty opponents (I oppose the death penalty in most cases, but that’s no reason to make stuff up).
This is how lethal injection works. First, the condemned is given sodium thiopental (sodium pentothal), which is a general anaesthetic. This puts them into a very deep sleep, from which they never awake. Then they are given pancuronium bromide or another muscle relaxant, which paralyzes the diaphragm and stops respiration. Finally, some states administer potassium chloride which causes the person to go into cardiac arrest.
The first stage of a lethal injection puts the person under general anaesthetic. The drug that is used is the same drug that is used to put patients under for operations. If you aren’t going to feel say, having your chest cut open and your heart or lungs worked on, you’re not going to feel an injection of a muscle relaxant. Then you’re dead.
CO is reportedly painless and is a lot like going to sleep.
Dr. Guilotin’s “la guillotine” of 1792 was fast and efficient. No reports of record as to how the decapatee perceived the painlessness of the operation. Of course the prisoner could have died of fright as the sharp blade fell…
Slight hijack in the name of fighting ignorance:
While NO[sub]2[/sub] would successfully kill the convict, pulmonary edema doesn’t sound like a particularly nice way to die. For a hilarious death, N[sub]2[/sub]O would be a better bet.
So true. I’ve been put under 4 times in my life. The last three were Versaid with a Pentothal chaser. The very last time I was given the pentothal as they were wheeling me from the pre-op room. I don’t recall entering the OR.
You could have done anything to me at that point and I wouldn’t have cared. Hell, even with a heafty dose of Versaid I wouldn’t have cared.
If you want a true, pain free way to kill someone, that’s a damn good way to start. After they’re under you could kill them anyway you wanted (drug overdose, gunshot to the head, eaten by rabid badgers, etc)
I like the C02 method as attempted on Diagnosis Murder one time. Put victim on gurney. But block of dry ice in pail of water under gurney. Slide into morge chamber and shut door. C02 gradually increases and the victim dies. You don’t even have to wheel him to the morgue.
Thanks for that. So N[sub]2[/sub]O is the gas used in dentists and boy-racer cars.
Wouldn’t anything be painless if we anesthetized the convict to the same level that is used in general surgery?
Although I do remember the assertion that some cases of lethal injection could not be proven to be painless. So why not used twenty times the normal dose of anesthetic, and then finish him off in any reasonably efficient way?
On the other hand, it is not so pleasant to die of cancer, either, so perhaps we are not guaranteeing a pleasant death to lifers, either.
Regards,
Shodan
No scheme anyone comes up with is going to be acceptable because the anti-DP aren’t raising this argument because they think it’s genuinely painful, they’re just raising it because they’re skeeved with death in general.
Think about it, when you go in for a heart transplant say, you get put under GA and they take your heart out of your body. At that stage, your medically effectively dead. Once they put in a new heart, your back alive again. If they executed someone by following a heart transplant procedure all the way up to taking the heart out and then stopping, you can’t logically argue that a DP person would feel pain whereas a heart transplant would not. Therefore, unless they feel Heart transplants are cruel and immoral due to the pain they cause, they can’t really level this argument against hte DP.