Yeah, I’ve always thought anesthetic ought to be administered in executions by mask. Don’t know why prison staff always have to mess around with needles.
Another vote for carbon monoxide poisoning. Painless unsuspecting onset and very effective.
Don’t quite a few people die by accident while working in an enclosed space without enough oxygen (or with too much of some gas)? If they don’t even realize something’s wrong and get out of the container, it must happen pretty quickly.
Get a 10 ton slab of concrete, suspend it, place convict underneath, cut cord.
Instant Death: Guaranteed
Fretting about messiness is what got us where we are.
Nitrous oxide or CO2 sounds like a good idea. However, if the convicted has killed a child, then he/she should be put to death very, very slowly and very, very painfully. Flaying alive, for example, with intermittent waterboarding, perhaps. Or being chained naked to an anthill and covered in honey, with special attention to especially sensitive body parts. Or all of the above.
And where is that?
Where people keep objecting to each new method of execution over problems with causing death immediately and consistently.
Strap them into a belt of explosives and blow them up?
Fire them out of a cannon?
The James Bond baddie death of your choice?
- fecking bizarre thread.
Getting chased off a cliff by topless women?
It’s been my observation that many capital punishment advocates talk extensively and with much graphic description about how some people should be made to die horribly, but few of these advocates are actually willing to torture someone to death themselves.
And most of the folks I know who have tortured someone to death really seem to regret it afterwards.
It’s a funny world.
Well, for one thing, the people tortured by the people you know most likely didn’t deserve it. 
As to your other point, there are many jobs that people look to others to do that they don’t want to do themselves. And there are generally people somewhere who will do them. For example, historically there has never been much of a problem finding executioners, yet I imagine most people wouldn’t want the job.
But what if said inmate has AIDS or some other contageous blood disorder? (That would probably be a problem with MY suggestion for bringing back the guillotine.)
Seeing as I am an advocate, I’ll point out that I don’t consider dropping a 10 ton slab of concrete on someone a horrible death. That it would be splattertastic is certain, but that itself isn’t a goal. And I do have issue with the fact that the death penalty is essentially only legal in cases where the local populace would be morally outraged and want some good old fashioned “justice”. That’s an awful and stupid basis for law. There is no goal in achieved by killing someone slower. It should be as fast and humane as possible.
Hose, water drains. Worst case, you douse the area in gas and light it. This can all be automated.
Missed the edit window:
As one of the capital punishment advocates, etc., that you mention, Qadgop, I would like to see the same thing done to criminals that they do to their victims, insofar as is possible. If they kidnap a 14-year-old girl, slice her Achilles’ tendons so she can’t escape, slit her anus with a knife to facilitate anal rape and laugh at her screams of pain as she is being anally raped (this would be Paul Bernardo), then they get sliced tendons and sliced anuses and raped the same way in return (with an artificial penis, that is). And this is before they serve the rest of their sentence or get executed.
I think that if such were the case, there would be a greater sense of justice having been done on the part of the victims’ families and much of the rest of society, and more importantly we’d see a drastic reduction in instances where people inflict sadistic harm on others.
(And this is coming from a guy who captures bugs in the house and sets them free outdoors. Even spiders and wasps. I’m not a bloodthirsty guy except when it comes to people who deliberately inflict pain and death on innocent people.)
I believe that inflicting such a punishment on an individual, even in a just cause, will irrevocably damage the person meting out such punishment.
I am SOOOOO stealing this!!!
Starving Artist – there’s that pesky problem of “cruel and unusual punishment”. I think it’s in some document that the Found Fathers came up with – can’t remember the name.
I’m of the belief, again, the death penalty is wrong – except under extreme circumstances, like say, Bin Laden – but for argument’s sake, it should be as humane as possible. How are we any better than those we put to death?
I contend that it’s neither. If similar punishment were to be inflicted upon someone for robbing a bank or stealing a car, then yes, that would be cruel and unusual punishment. But giving him his just deserts is not cruel – he selected his punishment when he dished it out; and it wouldn’t wouldn’t be unusual if that were to become the standard practice. (After all, the definition keeps getting redefined downward, so there’s clearly flexibility in deciding what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. I’m merely suggesting that it be flexed in the other direction.)
And if the Fathers had been found sooner they would probably agree with me.
I’m sure you’re right. We’re just talking hypotheticals here though, and I think there’s a certain cathartic effect in playing around with these ideas even though they will never come to fruition.
Personally I’ve found that dwelling on such thoughts just elevates my blood pressure and makes me grind my teeth, and I end up with a headache. And the perpetrators are no worse off for my exercise.
And believe me, I’ve imagined far more excruciating scenes for some perpetrators than you’ve outlined. Having a firsthand knowledge of human anatomy, physiology, and pain thresholds has been a dubious benefit for me at times.