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posted by n1 on Monday March 16 2015, @05:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the killing-me-softly dept.

Matt Ford writes in The Atlantic that thanks to a European Union embargo on the export of key drugs, and the refusal of major pharmaceutical companies to sell them the nation’s predominant method of execution is increasingly hard to perform. With lethal injection’s future uncertain, some states are turning to previously discarded methods. The Utah legislature just approved a bill to reintroduce firing squads for executions, Alabama’s House of Representatives voted to authorize the electric chair if new drugs couldn’t be found, and after last years botched injection, Oklahoma legislators are mulling the gas chamber.

The driving force behind the creation and abandonment of execution methods is the constant search for a humane means of taking a human life. Arizona, for example, abandoned hangings after a noose accidentally decapitated a condemned woman in 1930. Execution is prone to problems as witnesses routinely report that, when the switch is thrown, the condemned prisoner "cringes," "leaps," and "fights the straps with amazing strength." The hands turn red, then white, and the cords of the neck stand out like steel bands. The prisoner's limbs, fingers, toes, and face are severely contorted. The force of the electrical current is so powerful that the prisoner's eyeballs sometimes pop out and "rest on [his] cheeks." The physical effects of the deadly hydrogen cyanide in the gas chamber are coma, seizures and cardiac arrest but the time lag has previously proved a problem. According to Ford one reason lethal injection enjoyed such tremendous popularity was that it strongly resembled a medical procedure, thereby projecting our preconceived notions about modern medicine—its competence, its efficacy, and its reliability—onto the capital-punishment system. "As states revert to earlier methods of execution—techniques once abandoned as backward and flawed—they run the risk that the death penalty itself will be seen in the same terms."

 
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  • (Score: 3, Flamebait) by VLM on Monday March 16 2015, @07:06PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 16 2015, @07:06PM (#158522)

    The fault seems to lie with pig headed legislators

    And the folks trying to get rid of the death penalty want it to be a horrific spectacle of torture, so we'll be sickened into banning the whole thing.

    You end up with both sides wanting some kind of horrific torture, for totally different reasons.

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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @07:26PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @07:26PM (#158534)

    And the folks trying to get rid of the death penalty want it to be a horrific spectacle of torture, so we'll be sickened into banning the whole thing.

    Are you listening to yourself? The people who want to get rid of the thing want to get rid of the thing.
    *I* want to get rid of the thing and I *don't* want it to be a horrific spectacle of torture. I am against that kind of shit.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Tuesday March 17 2015, @02:25AM

      And the folks trying to get rid of the death penalty want it to be a horrific spectacle of torture, so we'll be sickened into banning the whole thing.

      Are you listening to yourself? The people who want to get rid of the thing want to get rid of the thing.
      *I* want to get rid of the thing and I *don't* want it to be a horrific spectacle of torture. I am against that kind of shit.

      I used to be of two minds about the death penalty. It is a fact that no convicted killer who has been sentenced to death and executed for their crime has ever killed anyone else.

      At the same time, if you wrongly convict someone and put them to death, you can't bring them back. Blackstone's Formulation [wikipedia.org] applies in spades here, IMHO.

      What is more, I can't speak for others but I think a lifetime spent mostly in an 8x10 cell, with every move regimented and controlled would be a much worse punishment than death.

      As such, I think that the death penalty should be abolished. I also don't think we should make a horrible spectacle of torture and death, either. Another murder, whether painless or agonizing (and the death penalty is murder -- state-sanctioned, but murder nonetheless) won't balance the scales of justice, and it make barbarians of those who engage in it.

      --
      No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr