I would tend to agree, but the fact is that it was used for decades before AND after WWII (up through the 1990s in fact) for executions by various US states, including California. And Arizona through 1992, when lethal injection was adopted.
If I had to guess, I’d guess there’s some level of legislative action that has to happen to change/add execution methods, so Arizona is likely just reverting to one that was approved and used in decades past for what they thought would be a minimum of fuss.
Even the Nazis didn’t choose it for any reason other than it was sufficiently lethal, already being produced, and relatively easy to produce. Zyklon B was an insecticide, not some devilish compound devised expressly to kill innocents.
That’s why I’m contending that the news articles are essentially clickbait; this isn’t anything NEW at all, or really even all that newsworthy. But the fact that the same chemical compound was used by the Nazis in the Holocaust makes too lurid of a headline to pass up.
No you don’t. You pass out quickly, never having known what happened.
People who have survived nitrogen exposure say that they were just going about their business, and the next thing they knew they were being surrounded by a medical team.
But what you say here is not really the case. People are stating that they are against the death penalty. However, they realize that it is going to be used, so they also criticize the method that it is done by.
You probably don’t want to be killed, but you probably also have ways that you would really not want to be killed by. Objecting to being tortured to death is not accepting being killed.
I guess that’s part of the disagreement. I don’t think that these people deserve to be killed by any method either.
Either one is the government eliminating undesirables. Sure, the Nazis found far more people to be undesirable, and for far more reprehensible reason, but we put people to death in the United States because we want to kill them, not because they need to be killed.
The problem with these “A is just as bad as B” arguments is they work both ways. When you claim that A is just as bad as B, you’re also implicitly saying B is no worse than A.
“Porn is a crime against women! Watching or reading porn is as bad as committing rape!”
“So you’re saying raping a woman is no worse than reading a Playboy?”
“What? No, you horrible person! Rape is a horrible crime! It’s much worse than reading a Playboy!”
“You’re the one who just said reading porn is as bad as rape.”
“Well, it made a lot more sense in my head.”
The same thing happens when you compare genocide with capital punishment. You’re trying to condemn capital punishment. But you’re also trivializing genocide.
We need to be able to say A is bad while recognizing that B is worse. We’re not condoning A by saying it isn’t the worst thing ever.
Yup. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve personally spoken with a woman who underwent nitrogen exposure for teaching purposes, and a guy who nearly died of CO poisoning but was found in time and recovered. Neither of those experiences was unpleasant (at the time) to the person involved. The women recovered pretty immediately when given oxygen, and the guy had a horrible headache after he was resuscitated, but said he felt really good, in a drunk sort of way, while it was happening.
I’m convinced that Arizona is using insecticide, and not N2, BECAUSE it’s vicious and nasty and punishes those undesirables they want to kill. And I think that’s evil.
But do you accept that there are people who can see a significant moral divide between capital punishment in Arizona and the Holocaust? And that while you may not agree with their views, those views are not irrational?
100% agreed. It is about punishment, about getting vengeance. Getting them back for their transgressions. It’s not about public safety or deterrence.
IMO, the only justification for the death penalty is for someone that cannot be contained. If you murder someone, go to jail, break out and kill someone while you are escaped, then I can get behind putting you down, as it is evident that separating you from society is not enough to protect society from you.
And in those extremely rare cases, it should still be done as humanely as possible. It should be done with a regret that it is necessary, not with a desire to see you suffer and die.
Sure, I never said otherwise. I see that there is a significant moral divide between capital punishment in Arisona and the Holocaust as well.
Do you accept that those who see parallels between them also see that divide?
This question seems predicated on your assumption that those who see parallels between the method of capital punishment and the Holocaust do not see a significant moral divide between the two, and as such, is useless as a contribution to a productive discussion.
It is certainly less morally reprehensible to execute someone for brutally murdering a random stranger than for being mentally defective, or for being of the wrong race.
But… there’s a surprising overlap in those categories. Studies have shown that a fairly large fraction of people who commit violent crimes have brain damage. They probably are physically less able to control their emotions and actions than people with healthy brains. I’ll see if I can find some of the studies… And look at the correlation between race and the death penalty in the US.
Yeah, I feel pretty comfortable criticizing Arizona for killing people with Nazi methods of killing prisoners. It’s a difference of degree. Yes, a large difference of degree. But I’m not sure it’s a difference of kind.
Why should the prisoner suffer? If they could be given a painless death, why not?
I don’t think much of the death penalty, mainly because it’s so final. Mistakes happen, but if the convict is dead, you can’t make up for it.
Anyway, if you must kill your convicts, give them a painless death. Torturing them doesn’t do anybody any good.
Questions: Since Arizona seems determined to use cyanide, why use Zyklon B, a pesticide forever tainted, fairly or not, by its association with the Holocaust? It’s not like hydrogen cyanide was used in US gas chambers back before lethal injection. They used sodium cyanide crystals dropped in sulfuric acid and water.
Is there some reason that method can’t be used now? Too messy? Less effective?
You disagree with the DP. That’s perfectly fine. But why is it extra bad just because we use an execution method that we originally used, that the Nazis borrowed, and we have used since? I’ve yet to hear a logical, rational reason to make this connection.
How can nitrogen displace air? It is lighter than oxygen, the other main component of air. It is certainly not poisonous, so it matters not if the prisoner holds his breath. He will die of hypoxia, not nitrogen poisoning in either case.
Arizona hasn’t executed a death row inmate since 2014, when Joseph Wood’s execution by lethal injection took two hours, the longest in U.S. history. It was supposed to take 10 minutes, but the botched execution went horribly awry.
“Witnesses reported that Wood gasped and snorted more than 600 times during the execution,” the Death Penalty Information Center said in a press release. “Subsequent litigation forced the state to abandon that execution protocol.”
In March, the department announced it would begin using a new execution protocol, the barbiturate pentobarbital, according to the center. However, the department said it could not obtain a supply of the lethal injection drug.
and
Arizona has a controversial history with trying to obtain lethal drugs to kill death row inmates. In 2015, Arizona tried to illegally import sodium thiopental. The drug, which had been used to carry out executions, was no longer manufactured by companies approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and federal agents seized the shipment at the Phoenix airport before the drugs made it to the department.
Really, Arizona?
The science doesn’t sound that difficult to me. Where do they get the supply to put nitrogen in your tires? Or, there are companies that produce liquid nitrogen, so get a supply of N2 from them. Googling indicates LN2 expands 696 times as it warms. But I guess those companies don’t want to be associated with executions?
As I’ve said before, if you want to execute someone, shoot them in the back of the head. With instant total destruction of the brain it’s going to be about as painless as you can get, certainly less than that botched one you allude to.
The brain matter sprayed on the wall is disturbing to us, not the prisoner, but I’m okay with that. Barbarous is barbarous does.
I did not use scare quotes around the word “criminals”- Nazi Germany, like every nation, had it’s share of murderers, rapists, etc- and i am not talking about those sanctions. Everyday common criminals lived there just like everywhere.
Here’s my painless, mess-less death penalty solution. Dig a 5’x5’x10’ deep pit. Suspend a concrete block that’s 5’x5’x10’ tall over the pit. Put the prisoner in the pit, drop the block. Carve the inmate’s name and the years he was alive on the exposed face of the concrete block, and you’re done. Instant, painless death and a burial all in one step, and nobody has to look at the messy aftermath.