I don’t want this to turn into a debate about whether or not we should have capital punishment at all, please. If we’re going to have capital punishment in the U.S. - which seems likely, in at least several dozen states, for the foreseeable future - I think the actual execution method should be low-cost, reliable and relatively quick.
Shooting, I think, is out; too messy and unreliable (although Nevada still offers it, ISTR). Likewise electrocutions. Hangings can go badly awry if the hangman doesn’t use the right formula for prisoner weight, length of drop, etc. Gas chambers are a big hassle. Lethal injections depend on finding a vein (which was a big problem in an Ohio execution recently).
Everyone’s got to breathe. Why not drowning?
Say the prison has a small pool - it’d only have to be a little bigger and deeper than a hot tub. The condemned prisoner can be anesthetized into unconsciousness - no Hippocratic Oath problem there - and strapped into a chair or gurney. It’s lowered into the water after a medico has confirmed that the prisoner is totally unconscious. After ten or fifteen minutes it’s raised again and the prisoner’s death is confirmed. The pool can be easily drained and cleaned if the prisoner lost control of his bowels while drowning. Execution complete.
I don’t think there’s a “cruel and unusual punishment” problem under the Eighth Amendment. It’s unusual, sure, in Anglo-American penal practice, but not cruel. It seems to me a better, surer, less complicated method of execution than many of those used historically.
No licensed health professional would participate in rendering a person unconscious so they could be executed. At least not if they wanted to keep their license.
If the condemned is unconscious, a wood chipper is a humane execution. If you go to the trouble of rendering someone unconscious, a lethal injection is the neatest way to finish them off. Drowning, at the very least, abuses the corpse quite a lot.
Lethal injection has the crucial problem I already mentioned.
How can it be cruel if they’re unconscious? I don’t see how it abuses the corpse, either; certainly far less than hanging, shooting or electrocuting.
I oppose waterboarding, if that’s what you’re driving at, Mach Tuck. Obviously that’s a different process, done on (1) people you want to keep alive, (2) to get them to talk, (3) while they’re still conscious, (4) by making them think they’re actually drowning. None of those factors apply here.
Since when? It’s hard to beat the reliability of a pistol shot to the back of the skull. Heck, you could even charge the family of the executed the cost of the bullet ala China.
Why not a vacuum chamber? Better yet, do it on the cheap and use a plastic bag over their head.
Isn’t beheading actually one of the quickest and least painful methods of execution? (Hell of a mess, though) Too bad it’s not very practical to set up a guillotine in an execution chamber.
(FWIW, I am against the death penalty. But if you have to do it, find the quickest and least painful method possible)
Just use air evacuation. Put the condemned in a chamber and evacuate the air to something comparable to an altitude of 30,000 feet. By all indications, he should drift off quite painlessly, perhaps not even aware that it’s happening.
I hope against hope that my dog was put down with more grace than the modern lethal injection I hear described elsewhere. He was a good dog and didn’t deserve any pain.
Nonono, all prisons that do execution have to dig a deep pit with spikes at the bottom and hire a Leonidas look-alike to yell THIS IS <City> and kick them in.
But seriously, aside from the mess I really do think guillotine is the best option.
But you have to find a vein to anesthetize the condemned, so your problem with lethal injection doesn’t go away. If your plan is to gas them into anesthetization then you may as well just keep on gassing them into death as well.
Your dog, being in the hands of medical professionals who do this all the time*, almost certainly had a quick catheterization and peaceful death. I’m not saying it’s always easy and instantaneous to get a vein, but (in experienced hands/assuming the dog is not grossly obese) the vast majority of experiences with venipuncture or catheterization are done within a couple minutes at most.
In addition, the most common euthanasia technique in pets is overdose of barbiturate anesthetics, period. Some vets give sedation before the lethal injection, but neuromuscular blocking agents (which paralyze your muscles but do not affect your consciousness) are not used, unlike in human executions. Potassium MAY be used in an anesthetized animal, but I haven’t met any vets that use it. IOW, you don’t need to worry about your dog suffering or being aware but unable to move.
*If the guy in Ohio were a drug abuser who needed surgery, not execution, the anesthesiologist could (would?) have dropped a central line after MUCH less dicking around with peripheral veins.
OP, how do you propose to anesthetize these people prior to drowning them? I suppose you could use high doses of intramuscular anesthetic agents (I’m thinking ketamine +/- benzo), but IANAD.