I’m as anti-DP as they come, but I do wonder why, if we’re going to have it, we need go to all this trouble to sanitise it. Either these people deserve to die, or they don’t. If they do, what’s wrong with a bullet to the head?
Have you not been following the news on the death penalty? The companies that make the drugs typically used in executions have been deliberately making them either unavailable or unavailable to states that have the death penalty due primarily to international pressure. Using expired drugs would violate the ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ limitation in the constitution since the state could not ensure their effectiveness at rendering the person unconscious, so once they hit their used by date the drugs are useless.
Yeah, we kicked that around in a recent thread. Zero downside option. That, and CO, except that the latter could be hazardous to anyone nearby if vented.
Unless the person has built up a tolerance to it, and they’re still loitering on the cot an hour later, almost dead but not quite. Eventually the prisoner dies, but then the AP reporter runs out to file a story about another botched execution, and the news trucks start pulling up at the prison, and now the warden has a scandal on his hands. That would be inconvenient.
You can kill someone pretty easily by strapping them to a gurney and pumping chemicals into them. What’s harder is doing it in a way that’s fast, consistent, and not gross to watch.
Guillotine. Simple, quick, and probably pretty close to painless, given that the final loss of consciousness likely sets in before the shock wears off.
I’m totally against the death penalty, but if we’re gonna have it, let’s not be squeamish about the fact that we’re killing someone, which is AFAICT the only reason not to go this way.
Except that a lot of states passed laws that mandate lethal injection for execution based on older Supreme Court cases. So they would have to pass a new law to use a different method, come up with a set of procedures, and then deal with the slow appeals process as prisoners argued that the new method was cruel and unusual, or that it is a post de facto change to the law, or any other defense.
I assume you mean CO or nitrogen overdose. A CO2 overdose is anything but humane – it’s extremely painful and feels like you’re suffocating. You’d be gasping for breath and your lungs would be burning.