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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 Eunuchswear on Tuesday March 17 2015, @10:47AM
If your maximum security prison is "dangerous" then you're doing it wrong.
Watch this Heartland Institute video [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by mendax on Tuesday March 17 2015, @07:42PM
Dangerous only because of the dysfunctional, dangerous people in it. The problem with maximum security prisons is that officials cannot keep inmates locked in their cells indefinitely. They must be let out for exercise in the yard, meals, and library use occasionally. And then there is education, medical and psychological appointments, and so on. It's a fine balance.
Supermax-type confinement should only be used be used on those where it's absolutely necessary. Having said that, prisons use that far too often.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.