Cruel and Unusual

[digitaldiscipline]

Am I alone in thinking that, if the state has already made up its mind that someone is such a blight on society that they must be put to death that it's more than a little academic whether or not it hurts when they die?

They're being killed. They probably inflicted a lot of pain on someone (or several someones) to earn their sentence. I don't see any value in commuting a few moments' agony just to appease an already justification-riddled sense of fairness.

This is one more illustration of a basically OK idea that's been fucked up by bureaucrats, lawyers, and do-gooders getting their noses bent out of shape after sticking them where they have no business being.

Was there something -wrong- with shooting them? Other than it being messy and mediapathic? Hell, that might be a lot more effective as a deterrent. Most folks understand what a bullet is, whereas a three-drug cocktail is a much less concrete notion.

And, really - we've got some very good chemists in this country. How fucking hard can it be to whip up a one-drop solution?

Comments

[etcet.livejournal.com]

my understanding from the NPR report this morning is that there's an anaesthetic, one to stop breathing, and one to induce cardiac arrest. with so many neuro-, pleuro-, and other types of toxins available, I'm amazed that there hasn't been a better concoction.

shit, why not use the pink juice that vetrinarians use to knock down animals?

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

Got plenty of chemists, and plenty of poisons already. Aenethesiologist spend years learning exactly how far they can push a sedative based on observable medical criteria. You'd think it would be a simple matter to go just a little over the line.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

This guy in CA is going to ride a straight Sodium Pentothal for a half hour tonight, apparently.

I don't grok why they don't anesthetize using whatever, and then introduce plain old cyanide.

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

Cyanide's a risk and a pain to handle. We've got lots of stuff that's not so much of a hazard to prison staff.

[zen-pooky.livejournal.com]

dood. if it was the state that had this problem, i might be inclined to agree with you, but I respect the doctors' desire to inflict no more harm.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I guess my complaint arises from the fact that, as best as I can tell, there isn't any documentation supporting the discussion that the current process actually hurts.

I don't understand what the doctors were doing there in the first place - are they ensuring he dies safely? are they trying to gauge whether or not he's in pain? (and if he is, is pulling him back into the land of the living "cruel and unusual punishment" in its own right?)

i admit that this is a moot point if the state doesn't execute people. however, assuming that the state is right to do so, i think that getting caught up in a fractal net of concerns about the feelings of the condemned is missing the damned point. *shrug*

[the-yellow-king.livejournal.com]

I am in perfect agreement.
Frankly, a well-executed hanging is quite humane done correctly, and, if done publicly, would serve as a deterrant. The last part, as always, is IMHO.

[mykal.livejournal.com]

You are certainly not alone. Cryassers keep pushing the envelope of "cruel and unusual". Case in point was the story of Michael Morales, who is 75 and waiting for his turn at the needle. "Too old to die" he says. He is in such poor health that putting him to death now would be wrong. Pfft. He's blind and in a wheel-chair now, but he wasn't 25 years ago when he had his fun raping and murdering. Just fuckin' kill 'im.

[the_axel]

As I understand it, the reason for making executions as clean as possible is very much the same reason that torture isn't part of the penal system - not for the benefit of the criminals but for the people who have to handle them.

Performing brutal acts brutalises & demeans the people doing it and the society that tells them to do it.

So, to minimise the amount of neccessary bad acts done, it is done as humanely as possible. Hence why hangmen were highly trained professionals and their job was to ensure that the criminals in their charge died quickly of a broken neck rather than slowly of suffocation.

& as was pointed out, performing painless executions is really simple - just dose the guys last meal with a large amount of Heroin.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I suspected part of it (the example I recall was that firing squads involved three gunmen, two of whom had blanks), and it does make sense.

What I'm given to wondering, is "If he never leaves any survivors, where do the stories come from?" aspect of "this tincture causes pain to the condemned."

[deansavatar.livejournal.com]

Re-instate Mademoiselle Guillotine (http://www.metaphor.dk/guillotine/)

[razerwolfe.livejournal.com]

I'm all for punishment fitting the crime. If the guilty party has inflicted pain during his acts, then let him feel lots of crunchy pain on is way out of this world.

I've envisioned a room where the guilty party is placed unfettered opposite a door. Between him and this goal are the family members of the victim(s) wielding weapons of their choosing. If he can make it out alive, he can go free; otherwise ... :-D

[gooddamon.livejournal.com]

Personally, I'm against the death penalty entirely. Oh, there are certainly people who should die - in some cases, death by sporking wouldn't be out of the question.

But our justice system is totally fucked up. I don't trust it handling life-and-death cases, especially when even now, we don't do DNA testing in every death penalty case.

Death's irreversible. It's not like you can take it back and say, "oops, sorry, got the wrong guy." I'm not comfortable with our current margins of error in the matter.

[fenixinthedark.livejournal.com]

Reality check:

Our legal system is aaaaall about being "fair" and not meteing out any "cruel or unusual punishments", regardless of how unfair or unusually cruel the crime itself was.

The second some lawmakers kid is the one tortured to death in horrific style will be the moment at least that little part of the system stops looking at it as "fair" and starts looking at it as "punishment". Take a look at James Brady and all the lobbying against gun laws that occurred afterwards...and why? Not because hundreds of people die year after year from gun related injuries, but because a single Reagan official got shot. The cause was suddenly furthered exponentially because one old white man took one to the head. Who cares about all the black teens who die every year. *Now* it's important...

Another reality...if anyone *ever*, *Ever*, *EVAAAAR* harms my child, there won't be enough left of his bloody corpse for a trial let alone a sentencing or death penalty. Momma don't play that shit.