Because the animal doesn’t know what is about to happen, maybe?
Despite the implication posted in here, the last I checked no physician was required to be a member of the AMA to practice medicine (I knew a few who let their membership lapse), so whatever “stance” the AMA has has no bearing in law unless it’s been specifically legislated for.
Harder than you would think, apparently. That page is rife with examples of botched lethal injections due to inability to insert the needle; long history of needle drug addiction in the inmates seem to be a common problem. A couple of the more gruesome mistakes:
I’m not sure you’d want to use that argument in opposition to the death penalty. And how would measurements of psychological “torture” apply to life in prison without parole? What’s the effect of knowing you will never, ever walk free?
The repercussions on crime and punishment might be undesirable as well. Someone could argue that if you take your victim by surprise in committing a murder, it’s less heinous because they didn’t know what was coming. :dubious:
I think the worst the A.M.A. could do to a member who assisted in an execution is revoke their membership. And I haven’t seen such a provision in the bylaws. Maybe some state medical board forbids it on pain of losing your license, though I can’t confirm that.
Incidentally, I’d be willing to bet that more than a few members of this board have gone through incidents where it took a half hour for an IV to be inserted or for blood to be successfully drawn. If all those cases are “torture”, then our Amnesty International rating has just gone down a few more points.
Knowing you will never walk free again is a small price to pay for depriving someone of even the chance to breathe. There is nothing that can really be called inhumane about attempting to prevent a person re-offending. That can be achieved in a secure enough jail, so why is the DP necessary? Taking a life deliberately is deemed the biggest societal sin for the individual, so why should it be different when the state does it?
What implication was that? Are you suggesting there are non-AMA doctors participating in executions?
Personally, I don’t like lethal injection. It’s a bunch of contrived bullshit in an attempt to appease the Professional Whiners Association.
Hanging and firing squads are speedy and effective.
Cooey ought to get on a exercise bike and while he’s pedaling, read Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song. At least Gary Gilmore wasn’t a little wussy boy.
Gary Gilmore:
Hanging isn’t always reliable. Firing squads, probably more so.
No.
As an aspiring humanitarian, I’m willing to waive the raping and torturing.
::raises hand::
That would be me. Once, when I was scheduled for a cystoscopic kidney stone removal, I was actually late getting into the OR because two freakin’ anesthesiologists had to work for better than an hour to get an IV into me. In that hour, they stuck me a combined total of more than 15 times. One of them finally got an IV in the veins in my foot (on the third try).
If that was torture, maybe I should have sued?
As to the OP, listen, I had a very unhappy childhood. I’d say it was probably on par with the unpleasantness of the subject’s childhood. And yet, I managed to grow up and never murder and/or rape anyone.
It’s not that I have no sympathy for him. It’s that, at some point, the greater good of society has to come first, imho.
Baby steps?
I myself would be willing to go even further, and cut the punishment in half by only killing him once.
King Solomon could not have spoken wiser words. 
How do you know it’s bullshit? Let’s let the courts decide that. Do you just hate the Eighth Amendment and Due Process?
Yeah, what nerve we have, giving prisoners an appeals process.
ETA: What Blalron said. (Read all posts first, then post reply…)
Context, anyone? Note the passage you’ve quoted and my words “at the very end”. The defendant has his appropriate appeals over the last two plus decades, and I do not object to the such review for a conviction of this gravity. To drag out the appellate process, ad infinitum, and cry boo-hoo, I’m too (fill-in-the-bullshit-blank) to be put to death is an abuse of the system.
1.) No inmate has ever dragged out the appeals process ad infinitum. Their appeal is either granted, or they are executed, well before infinity.
2.) It is not possible to abuse the legal system, at least not without the complicity of the court. Any legal proceeedings are executed only if the court deems them to be meritorious. To that extent, unless a defendant breaks the law by filing a legal motion, no abuse is possible.
The point is: who are you to say how many appeals someone should get?
And what you’re seeing is an act of desperation. That you can feel so good about seeing such a behavior is disturbing.
This would be either a 50%, or 100% improvement than a double murder, depending on what mathematical model you want to use.
Proof:
2 innocent victims/1 POS murderer=2/1, so we are twice as humane as him.
1 POS/2 innocent victims=1/2, so there would be one death as opposed to his two.
Not counting the variable that he was a cold-blooded murderer, that killed two innocent victims, and had 22 years of life longer than they did. I don’t know how to factor that.
IAAHistorian, not mathematician.