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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: 2, Insightful) by tftp on Monday March 16 2015, @10:12PM
Assuming that the convicted person is guilty:
Either that, or we accept that we will need to treat such people humanely for the rest of their lives and not bitch about those costs in our taxes.
What makes you think that a being who committed a horrible crime (to deserve death sentence) is a human? What is your criteria of being a human? Carrying human genes? Being equipped with human brain? Using the said brain to think like humans think?
We do put animals down for a number of reasons; the most popular reason is that we want to eat them. This does not create opposition in the ranks of people who dislike death penalty. It means that they don't think cows are humans - even though an average cow is far better than an average serial killer. Perhaps the society should carefully define what a human is before it starts applying human standards to subjects that are on trial.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @04:35AM
What makes you think that a being who committed a horrible crime (to deserve death sentence) is a human?
Ah, they must be extraterrestrial beings taking the form of humans, then. Thanks for clearing that up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @03:12PM
First, a correction: "… a being who is thought to have committed a horrible crime ..." After all, there's no court that cannot err.
Second: What makes me think that being is a human? Well, that being certainly looks like a human, and unlike any other species. But when really in doubt, I think a DNA test should give a definitive answer.