# Prison executions : Who knew they were so expensive? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 7, 2017, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prison-executions-who-knew-they-were-so-expensive/783987 "2017-04-07T15:38:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2017, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prison-executions-who-knew-they-were-so-expensive/783987/41 "2017-04-17T01:33:05Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Cool to watch a fellow human being be crushed to death. > > [Piper adds **Two Many Cats** to his personal _List of Creepy People I’ve Run into on the Internet_.] Really, executions ought to be flagrantly disgusting, in order that we might reflect on whether it should be employed in the first place. And we would be able to make note of whom we would rather not sit next to. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2017, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prison-executions-who-knew-they-were-so-expensive/783987/42 "2017-04-17T01:41:45Z")
> [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#): > > Which suffering would be, afaik, less than when inhaling cyanide gas. > > It seems as if instant death (in so far as it’s possible) wouldn’t be enough- there has to be a modicum of discomfiture to the condemned. I think you mean “discomfort.” “Discomfiture” means “embarrassment.” ---
**Author:** ![Beren\_Erchamion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/90ced4/32.png) [@Beren\_Erchamion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beren_Erchamion)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2017, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prison-executions-who-knew-they-were-so-expensive/783987/43 "2017-04-17T02:02:42Z")
> [@FavreCo](#): > > He’s such a well behaved murderer. > > _The state’s Parole Board issued a non-binding ruling on Wednesday that McGehee should be spared from execution because none of his co-defendants were sentenced to death and McGehee has been an exemplary inmate during his 19 years in prison._ > > You have got to be fucking kidding. Just kill him already. He’s wasting oxygen. He’s a human being. If he’s reformed, I see no reason why he shouldn’t be free to get on with his life like the rest of us. ---
**Author:** ![The\_King\_of\_Soup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a87d85/32.png) [@The\_King\_of\_Soup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_King_of_Soup)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2017, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prison-executions-who-knew-they-were-so-expensive/783987/44 "2017-04-17T02:13:02Z")
If you support the death penalty, all you lack to be a murderer yourself is opportunity. ---
**Author:** ![thirdname](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d07c76/32.png) [@thirdname](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thirdname)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2017, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prison-executions-who-knew-they-were-so-expensive/783987/45 "2017-04-17T03:41:20Z")
People talk about “humane” execution, but they seem to be much more concerned with what an execution looks like than whether there is actual suffering. There are very easy ways to kill with little or no suffering. Several simultaneous high-caliber gunshots to the brain. (Yet firing squads seem to insist on firing at the chest instead.) A pound of high explosives wrapped around the head. Vaporization by a thousand-pound bomb. Being choked out by a martial artist (blood choke) seems to be pretty painless. They could just do something like that with some apparatus, and not let go. Or kill them in some other way once they’re out. ---
**Author:** ![Beren\_Erchamion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/90ced4/32.png) [@Beren\_Erchamion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beren_Erchamion)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2017, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prison-executions-who-knew-they-were-so-expensive/783987/46 "2017-04-17T03:56:30Z")
Or we could behave like civilized people and not kill them at all, and instead show them love and compassion as we try to help them understand why what they did was wrong so that, when they do, they can get on with their lives just like the rest of us. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2017, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prison-executions-who-knew-they-were-so-expensive/783987/47 "2017-04-17T04:55:45Z")
> [@The\_King\_of\_Soup](#): > > If you support the death penalty, all you lack to be a murderer yourself is opportunity. On that theory, anyone who likes eating meat but won’t go and slaughter their own cow or shoot their own deer either is obligated to become a vegan or starve, right? ---
**Author:** ![drad\_dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@drad\_dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drad_dog)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2017, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prison-executions-who-knew-they-were-so-expensive/783987/48 "2017-04-17T04:56:16Z")
They wouldn’t be so expensive if snowflakes weren’t gumming up the works with stays and writs and lawsuits. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2017, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prison-executions-who-knew-they-were-so-expensive/783987/49 "2017-04-17T12:52:55Z")
The best execution method is to incarcerate them humanely until they die of old age. ---
**Author:** ![Two\_Many\_Cats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8dc957/32.png) [@Two\_Many\_Cats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_Many_Cats)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2017, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prison-executions-who-knew-they-were-so-expensive/783987/50 "2017-04-17T13:02:08Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Cool to watch a fellow human being be crushed to death. > > [Piper adds **Two Many Cats** to his personal _List of Creepy People I’ve Run into on the Internet_.] Remind me to explain the concept of dark humor to you sometime. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2017, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prison-executions-who-knew-they-were-so-expensive/783987/51 "2017-04-17T13:26:46Z")
> [@thirdname](#): > > People talk about “humane” execution, but they seem to be much more concerned with what an execution looks like than whether there is actual suffering. There’s also an obsession with the idea that new and shiny technology is necessarily better than what was done before. Like there’s some kind of innate belief that capital punishment is kind of barbarous, but we can escape that by mechanizing it properly. If the condemned is surrounded by all kinds of magical machines whirring and doing some of the work, we must be better than all that flawed stuff in the history books. Even before the electric chair, I think there was a state that invented some Rube Goldberg machine to jerk the rope up and fling the condemned into the air rather than letting gravity do the work. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prison-executions-who-knew-they-were-so-expensive/783987/52 "2017-04-18T07:37:59Z")
The hangman in Ontario tried that, as described in the wiki article for [Capital Punishment in Canada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Canada): > [@](#): > > Early in his career, John Radclive persuaded several sheriffs in Ontario and Quebec to let him use an alternative method in which the condemned person was jerked into the air. A gallows of this type was used for the execution of Robert Neil at Toronto’s Don Jail on February 29, 1888: > > The old plan of a “drop” was discarded for a more merciful machine, by which the prisoner is jerked up from a platform on the ground level by a weight of 280 lbs, which is suspended by an independent rope pending the execution … At the words “Forgive us our trespasses,” the executioner drove his chisel against the light rope that held the ponderous iron at the other end of the noose, and in an instant the heavy weight fell with a thud, and the pinioned body was jerked into the air and hung dangling between the rough posts of the scaffold.[21] Note that, consistent with your thesis, it was automatically assumed that the new system of flinging someone by the neck into the air was “more merciful” than dropping them down a trapdoor. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prison-executions-who-knew-they-were-so-expensive/783987/53 "2017-04-18T07:47:14Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Note that, consistent with your thesis, it was automatically assumed that the new system of flinging someone by the neck into the air was “more merciful” than dropping them down a trapdoor. :rolleyes: Wouldn’t that be true though? ISTM that the quicker it’s over the more merciful, and if this system placed greater force on someone’s neck and therefore broke it faster, it would be more merciful. Don’t get me wrong I’m no supporter of either capital punishment or “new and shiny is better” but this particular example seems to me - on the face of it - to work. ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prison-executions-who-knew-they-were-so-expensive/783987/54 "2017-04-18T08:01:52Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Note that, consistent with your thesis, it was automatically assumed that the new system of flinging someone by the neck into the air was “more merciful” than dropping them down a trapdoor. :rolleyes: I’ve mentioned this before, but I have had the dubious distinction of being in a death chamber. It was in Fremantle Prison, in Australia. I was a tourist, and I took the tour of the decommissioned prison. The tour included the death chamber. It had the gibbet, the noose, and the trapdoor. Below the trapdoor was about twenty feet of empty space. It was explained to us that the placing of the noose on the side of the head and “the drop” was what mattered; done properly, it would break the condemned’s neck, ensuring a quick and speedy death. As it was explained, hanging according to the correct protocol seemed more humane than anything else. Quick and painless–if there must be capital punishment (which I abhor) in various jurisdictions, then in the name of humanity, can we not go back to tried and true methods? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 9:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prison-executions-who-knew-they-were-so-expensive/783987/55 "2017-04-18T09:53:30Z")
> [@Unabashed\_Fascist](#): > > Specifically, N2 as a byproduct of liquid nitrogen. Liquid nitrogen is N2; specifically, it’s N2sub[/sub]. Back to Chem 101 with you! > [@thirdname](#): > > Being choked out by a martial artist (blood choke) seems to be pretty painless. They could just do something like that with some apparatus, and not let go. Congratulations, you just reinvented the garrote. ---
**Author:** ![SaneBill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e68b1a/32.png) [@SaneBill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SaneBill)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prison-executions-who-knew-they-were-so-expensive/783987/56 "2017-04-18T13:00:08Z")
> [@Spoons](#): > > As it was explained, hanging according to the correct protocol seemed more humane than anything else. Quick and painless–if there must be capital punishment (which I abhor) in various jurisdictions, then in the name of humanity, can we not go back to tried and true methods? It takes a lot of calculations ( and ‘luck’ ) to do the hanging right. Weight, drop, will the rope stretch, how muscular the neck is and so on… [Black-Jack Ketchum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Ketchum) is one of many who got too much rope, and got his head ripped off. If the rope is too short person strangles slowly, unless hangman grabs around the legs of the condemned and breaks the neck ( and tries not to rip the head off… ) And [Gordon Stewart Northcott](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wineville_Chicken_Coop_Murders) fainted just when the trapdoor was opened, so the rope was already tight when he fell and calculations went off the window. It took him eleven minutes to strangle to death. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prison-executions-who-knew-they-were-so-expensive/783987/57 "2017-04-18T15:10:02Z")
People today unfamiliar with hangings might not get the significance of this W.C. Field’s line: > [@](#): > > \<\>As my dear old Grandfather Litvak said, just before they sprung the trap\<\> ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c57346/32.png) [@Little\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Pig)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prison-executions-who-knew-they-were-so-expensive/783987/58 "2017-04-18T16:20:51Z")
[Capital punishment in Utah](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Utah). Utah is the only state besides Nevada to have ever used the firing squad, although executions of this type are authorized in Oklahoma for prisoners **who successfully challenge the constitutionality of lethal injection and electrocution**. ---
**Author:** ![Sunny\_Daze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunny_daze/32/438_2.png) [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prison-executions-who-knew-they-were-so-expensive/783987/59 "2017-04-18T17:21:27Z")
> [@Two\_Many\_Cats](#): > > Remind me to explain the concept of dark humor to you sometime. Start with Looney Tunes cartoons. Chock full of good examples. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2017, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prison-executions-who-knew-they-were-so-expensive/783987/60 "2017-04-18T18:31:28Z")
> [@Sunny\_Daze](#): > > Start with Looney Tunes cartoons. Chock full of good examples. 😃 How about death by “this time, we didn’t forget the gravy!” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prison-executions-who-knew-they-were-so-expensive/783987.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prison-executions-who-knew-they-were-so-expensive/783987.md?page=4)