If they're going to execute you, why do you care how it's done?

In My Humble Opinion
1

This is a weird subject - it touches not only on highly controversial methods of judicial punishment, but also aspects of suicide and euthanasia.

Imagine you’re on death row. All appeals have been turned down, there’s no chance of a last-minute pardon. It doesn’t matter whether you’re actually guilty, or what your stance on capital punishment is. The state will shuffle off your mortal coil whether you like it or not. Nothing short of a dramatic jail break will delay the proceedings.

Do you care how it’s done? What considerations go into your decision: level of pain, duration of the procedure, respect for your personal dignity, respect for your family, etc.?

(I want to live. Even though I deeply believe in an afterlife that is far more rewarding that anything we can imagine here, I don’t want to go there just yet. No, I’m not depressed. That said…) I think that, if I were at this point in the system, I’d be inclined to take whatever they give me as long as (a) it doesn’t last much more than 10-15 minutes and (b) my family gets some kind of closure - a body to bury, whatever. I hesitate to engage in macho swaggering here, but I’m not sure fear of pain would put me off of the procedure, if I’m going to die anyway.

Not to say that I wouldn’t hold out for a dramatic escape, though.

I’ve been thinking on this after the stories this past summer about lethal injection, and how through the phenomenon of anasthesia awareness, the recipient may feel all the pain as the KCl cocktail stops the heart. Horrifying, yes, but the condemned is about to die, and in fact will die relatively quickly.

(Mods, if this is more appropriate for IMHO, please accept my apologies and my thanks!)

2

If I’m going to be executed, I want it to be spectacular! I want it done in a public square in front of a huge crowd! Broadcast live on television! My last words a topic for talking heads! And I want a dramatic method! None of that electrocution shit for me! GUILLOTINE! GUILLOTINE! GUILLOTINE! With a big final drumroll, and a betting pool on how many times my neck shoots out jets of blood!*
*From a bit of reportage by Charles Dickens, about a public beheading he once witnessed in Italy.

3

I don’t care so much for people quibbling about the details for other people. They are going to be worm food anyway but that wasn’t the question. Yes, I would like to choose for myself. It gives me a small degree of control over the only thing that I have left. It is just a smaller version of what other people want in their own lives (they are dying someday too). I would like some say in how I die if I have to go through it anyway.

The gas chamber doesn’t sound good at all, hanging has that old-west feel to it but it is also demeaning, the firing squad is pretty masculine and they give you a cigarette, and lethal injection has modern medicine behind it but it is really kind of meh. Given the choice of anything, I would like to be thrown from an airplane at 15000 feet with no parachute but I am not sure anyone will accommodate that.

4

As an ex-skydiver, I’ve always thought making a last jump without a chute would be cool.

Of the more conventional methods I’ve always favored firing squad, there’s something dignified about standing tall, facing your executioner, proudly, maybe defiantly. Don’t ask me to give a rational explination for that.

5

I would want to die with as much dignity as possible.

6

Yeah, it looks more like a personal poll, to me.

[ /Moderating ]

7

If it’s up to me, I’ll go with “natural causes”, thank you very much.

8

Why not a fast acting poison? Say, a pill that’s so quick you’re dead just after you put the glass of water down.

That’d be dignified, wouldn’t it, Batsinma Belfry?

Good enough for me, anyway.

9

You can’t have that, AHunter. The OP specifically says you’re being executed, so the cause your demise.

Therefore, I am sentencing you to death by heart attack from incessant sex with gorgeous nymphomaniacs (or the male equivalent if you’re a female).

Death could come in one or a thousand and one nights. Maybe more.

Sorry, but you asked for it.

And there’s no appeal.

10

I’ll have what she(or he)'s having!

11

I would chose some way that couldn’t be botched in some painful way the first time around. Hmm, so I am guessing being put to sleep and then not waking up.

12

There’s always that method Arthur Charles Herbert Aruncie MacAdam Jarrett chose in The Meaning of Life.

13

So be it. You shall be eaten by bears. Can’t get more natural than that!

14

Being a whimp, I’d select whichever procedure seemed like it offered the quickest and least painful demise. Right now, I’m leaning toward lethal injection.

The chair is just too . . . messy.

The gas chamber is sort of frightening. I’d probably try to hold my breath and spend my last few moments in fear.

Hanging is just too undignified.

The firing squad has a bit of panache, but I’d be worried they’d miss and not kill me instantly and I’d be in pain.

Yep: lethal injection for me. Nice and clinical-- like going under anaesthetic for surgery. Fall asleep and that’s it.

15

I’d want something spectacular but painless. Like a firing squad, maybe, or a bomb.

16

Er, semi-serious question (semi-hijack, as well): seems to me that there might be other methods than those commonly used that might be just as effective, but they aren’t used. Some do-it-yourselfers like to suffocate themselves with laughing gas, so I’ve heard. Sounds good to me - um, as an execution method, not as a way of avoiding life’s little problems. What’s wrong with something like laughing gas for state executions?

17

I’d choose whatever method made it possible to use my corpse for organ and tissue donation. I hate wasted meat. I don’t think that’s possible with gas or electrocution, so looks like I’m hanging or being shot.

18

A buttload of morphine might be nice too.

19

Well, first, avoiding agony would be pretty high on my list. Anything that involves teeth or open flame isn’t high on my list.

Next, I’d go with “dignity”…this, like all things, is relative, of course. I, personally, would consider lethal injection to be as undignified as hanging. A firing squad would be OK—at least I could die like a man (or a beast), not a “patient.”

After that…personally, I’d like it that my death could acheive some practical purpose. Like having my guts harvested for transplant. Failing that, something big and showy that would stick in people’s minds (hey, if I have to die, I might as well gain immortality in the process!).

20

If I was being executed by firing squad, my last request would be for the commander to leave a pause between “Aim” and “Fire!”- something in the region of 70 or 80 years, perhaps. :wink:

Apologies to Captain Blackadder

Failing that, a Pixie Caramel might also be in order… :smiley:

This is quite possibly the most obscure reference in the history of the SDMB, but I’ll be interested to see if anyone gets it.

Being serious though, I’d probably opt for the Soviet Russian method*, whereby they took you out of your cell for exercise one morning and you got shot in the back of the head by someone with a pistol, who was
concealed behind the door or otherwise out of sight.

*Not the being thrown into a furnace one!