REcent thread on lethal injection in GQ, where that point came up:
Not according to the Supreme Court in the Glossip decision.
And a previous thread last year on the point Hari Seldon raises. Devolved into a train wreck and got closed, but some useful info there.
I cannot lie - I had to laugh at Colibri’s final (and yes - closing 
) comment in that thread.
I wonder what 100,000 mics of LSD would do. 
ever been a botched firing squad execution? There have been with drugs and hangings although they eventually killed the guy in the end. .
I’ve always been partial to the guillotine myself. Really. Fast, efficient. I doubt you could both it if you tried.
Assuming “both” is really “botch”.
Any machine can malfunction on any given use. Even a very simple one. And by definition, it worked the last time you tested it before it malfunctioned.
But I agree that overall if we want an impressive and grisly form of State-sanctioned vengeance, this one is probably the most goof-proof, both against human error at the moment, or machine malfunction when needed. And unlike some other methods, there’s very little way any plausible problem can create a hazard to the executioner, witnesses, etc. Not so with firearms, poison gas, etc.
I would expect that someone facing a firing squad would feel pain, since the need of a squad means they aren’t specifically and accurately firing at some special place where the person is dead before they feel it. I’m also not sure any method is actually instantaneous, and so any method that would cause pain if you survived should, in my opinion, be ruled out as a valid method.
I also 100% understand why they would need to have tests on humans for lethal drugs. It’s just normal that what works in other animals may not work in humans. It’s why we have human trials after animal trials for other medical situations.
Granted, you can’t actually kill humans in a study, but you very much could test for removing consciousness and inability to feel pain. You can test to make sure the drugs don’t interact, with one negating the other.
And maybe you can actually kill, if it’s in a euthanasia setting. Give the data, and offer incentives for the patient to be able to give to the family. And then monitor brain waves to prove pain doesn’t happen.
There are ways to have tests in humans, if we really want to. There’s no reason to go back to methods that are more likely to cause pain.
Focusing on physical pain is IMO a bit of a red herring here. There’s no shortage of mental pain during the whole lead up to the final ceremony.
IMO It’s sort of a 17th or 18th Century morality that focusses on the physical while ignoring the mental. Go back much earlier than that and worrying about the physical pain of the executed seems a ludicrous bit of misplaced sentimentality.
Here in the 21st Century we ought to be able to do better.
OTOH …
In my line of work a rueful refrain about fatal accidents is “oh well, it won’t hurt for long.”
It’s not suffocation - it’s asphyxiation, and is probably the most humane, foolproof method of execution. It’s the generally accepted method for self-euthanasia. With helium, nitrogen, and other inert gases there is no sense of suffocation. That feeling is a result of CO2 blood levels rising, not from a lack of oxygen. With these gases, you can be out in 5-10 seconds with a deep breath and be dead in 5-12 min. You’ll never feel a thing.
outside the US only India and Japan are big democratic countries that still use the DP. Almost all the rest are communist and/or dictatorships. Great company we keep - N. Korea, Russia, Iran, etc
Which is why it isn’t preferred by the angry masses and the politicians that cater to them. The death penalty isn’t a solution to the problem of crime-it is there to offer second-hand vengeance. If it doesn’t offer satisfaction to those who insist that violent suffering must begat violent suffering, then it just won’t fly.
Yes, “botched” was meant. Hard to botch the guillotine. I mean, the blade’s not suddenly going to stop halfway through your neck.
guillotine was used as recently as 1977 in France they abolished the DP in 1981
I knew this fact thanks to a humorous moment at a quiz night in a British pub in Bangkok. The emcee asked, “What was last used in France in 1977?” And someone shouted out, “Soap!”
The USSR solution to that was to simply inform the condemned that their appeals had been lost and then shoot them in the back of the head immediately.
wiki: "Although most nations have abolished capital punishment, over 60% of the world’s population live in countries where the death penalty is retained, such as China, India , the United States , Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria , Ethiopia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran , and among almost all Islamic countries, " Also Singapore
So you are saying Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Singapore & Egypt, are communist and/or dictatorships?
This will come as a great surprise to those nations.
Mind you, I am not a big proponent of the DP and see no reason to rush the process.
But if you want to use international comparisons, get your facts straight.
If Egypt isn’t strictly a dictatorship, it seems to share most of the major hallmarks of one: little or no freedom of the press; strictly enforced laws against disrespecting the official religion; arbitrary detention, torture, and even execution of political dissidents; rampant corruption of the political elite…
@DrDeth: Good point.
For round numbers just the big 3 China, India, and the USA represent 40% of the world population. So about 2/3rds of all people living in death penalty countries are covered right there. After that we start down into the long tail of smaller countries.
I suppose a better way to say what @Bijou_Drains may have meant is that the US is the sole DP country claiming to be a “Western liberal democracy” and while a few of the others totally are or at least aspire to being a “democracy”, there’s an authoritarian streak in how many (most?) of them are actually governed. As @psychonaut points out about Egypt.
Is this man’s horror show ever going to end?!