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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."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RamiK on Monday March 16 2015, @07:06PM
The blood sacrifice of the unwanted and criminals in Ancient Greece was called Pharmakos while Pharmakon meant poison/drug (as in Pharmacology).
One theory is that (while there is a slight pitch, vowel length and declination difference that would have helped making sure the words weren't mixed up by speakers) the connotation wasn't a coincident: The thought process behind scapegoating animals and people was that their sins have angered the Gods and have infected the community in the same way a poison infects the body. As such, the diseased and the criminals must be expelled without actually killing them since that will perpetuate the blood debt.
Now, when natural disasters struck or when the curse have already spread beyond the original perpetrator to the entire community (physical contact with the corpse or just benefiting indirectly from the death could have been seen as enough by some), more radical steps were necessary. Some opted for the sacrifice of their children (oddly not as a last resort at times) but eventually (likely through the natural elimination of the devote ;) ) people turned towards sacrificing goats instead.
This, of course, followed by a sense of guilt over the poor goat who had to suffer while doing no wrong. So, people started eulogizing the goats. A.k.a. Goat songs a.k.a. tragedies.
compiling...