Blackhawk wrote:I come back to what I've said before: We have painless ways to execute people. I've had enough surgeries to know that we can knock someone out without them batting an eyelash, and a hundred ways to kill someone once they're out. We also have these tools called 'guns', and it wouldn't be that hard to come up with something that was the equivalent of a shotgun in the mouth. Not pretty, but instant and painless.
And yet we choose these convoluted, questionable methods that result in fear and pain, and in most cases we can't ever confirm, because the person who experienced it is dead.
I could tell you a foolproof, quick and painless medication cocktail for lethal injection. It's really not difficult at all, but those of us in the medical community have agreed that assisting with these protocols falls outside the ethical commitment to 'do no harm.'
So what happens? They recruit individuals with inadequate knowledge or technical skills and things go wrong. The lethal injection protocols followed by many states (available for review by an easy Google search) are very effective and peaceful in principal, using medication dosages so far beyond what is actually necessary that they'll definitely work. The reason you hear about problems is often because the people carrying out the execution screw it up as a result of poor training... trying to use IV access that isn't placed correctly (ie not actually in a vein), injecting medications in the wrong order, or any number of other mistakes. Done correctly, the technique accomplishes the task well.
Looking through history the most humane death was the guillotine.
--------------------------------------------
I am Dyslexic of Borg, prepare to have your ass laminated.
I guess Ray Butts has ate his last pancake. http://steamcommunity.com/id/daehawk
"Has high IQ. Refuses to apply it"
When in doubt, skewer it out...I don't know.
How about we let the condemned choose amongst, say, injection, suffocation, firing squad, and guillotine? I suspect that most would opt to be "put to sleep" but some might prefer the firing squad or hypoxia. I really doubt that anyone would prefer having their head chopped off. But giving them a choice is arguably the most humane option, insofar as execution can be compatible with humanitarianism.
Blackhawk wrote: Sat Jan 27, 2024 5:37 pm the equivalent of a shotgun in the mouth. Not pretty, but instant and painless.
I'll never forget being subjected to a couple of days in school in 6th grade, where local cops came in and showed us videos of people who drank and drive, did drugs, suicide, etc. Deaths...very very graphic scenes of death. One of the slides was someone who attempted to commit suicide with a shotgun. but missed...and just severely maimed him. Not really sure what the actual lesson we were supposed to take from that was, but in MY brain, it was "never try suicide via shotgun".
Carpet_pissr wrote: Sun Jan 28, 2024 1:43 pm
Not really sure what the actual lesson we were supposed to take from that was, but in MY brain, it was "never try suicide via shotgun".
Carpet_pissr wrote: Sun Jan 28, 2024 1:43 pm
Not really sure what the actual lesson we were supposed to take from that was, but in MY brain, it was "never try suicide via shotgun".
"Learn to aim."
A friend of mine killed himself this way many years ago. I've always been grateful that I wasn't the one to find him. I used to go to his house 2-3 times a week after work, but I went off to college and we lost touch a couple of years before he pulled the trigger.
A jury was being chosen for a murder trial nearly three decades ago in California. The state was seeking a death sentence for Ernest Dykes, who had been charged with killing a 9-year-old boy during a robbery in Oakland.
Weighing who should be struck from the jury pool and who should be kept, a prosecutor made notes about a prospective juror:
“I liked him better than any other Jew but no way.”
Other notes about prospective jurors bore evidence of similar prejudice:
“Banker. Jew?” read one.
“Jew? Yes,” read another.
The notes — just handwritten scribbles — were discovered recently in an internal case file from the 1990s when Dykes was convicted of murder and sent to death row. A federal judge who is weighing an appeal by Dykes told the Alameda County district attorney’s office to conduct a top-to-bottom search for any additional documents, and that search turned up the notes, which are now in the hands of the judge.
The notes offered a startling glimpse into a practice that some defense lawyers long suspected was going on, and that a former prosecutor had alleged was common in Alameda County: prosecutors seeking to exclude people of certain faiths, races or genders.
...
Allegations of religious and racial bias in Alameda County jury selection have surfaced before. In 2005, John Quatman, a former prosecutor in the district attorney’s office, gave a sworn declaration that “it was standard practice to exclude Jewish jurors in death cases.”
Quatman said at the time that a trial judge in a death penalty case had advised him to make sure that no Jewish jurors were selected.
“He said I could not have a Jew on the jury, and asked me if I was aware that when Adolf Eichmann was apprehended after World War II, there was a major controversy in Israel over whether he should be executed,” he said. Quatman added that the judge said that “no Jew would vote to send a defendant to the gas chamber.”
There is limited polling on Jewish views of the death penalty, but a 2014 poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that among Jews, support for capital punishment was notably lower than among white Protestants and white Catholics, while higher than among Hispanics and among Black Protestants.
It is surprising to me there are higher support for capital punishment among white Catholics compare to among Jewish people when the official position of Catholic Church is against death penalty.
A pair of blood-spattered trousers in a miso tank and an allegedly forced confession helped send Iwao Hakamata to death row in the 1960s.
Now, more than five decades later, the world’s longest-serving death row prisoner has had his name cleared, according to public broadcaster NHK.
A Japanese court on Thursday acquitted 88-year-old Hakamata, who was wrongfully sentenced to death in 1968 for murdering a family, marking the end of a marathon legal saga that’s brought global scrutiny to Japan’s criminal justice system and fueled calls to abolish the death penalty in the country.
Judge Kunii Tsuneishi of the Shizuoka District Court ruled the blood stained clothing which was used to convict Hakamata was planted long after the murders, NHK reported.
“The court cannot accept the fact that the blood stain would remain reddish if it had been soaked in miso for more than a year. The bloodstains were processed and hidden in the tank by the investigating authorities after a considerable period of time since the incident,” Tsuneishi said.
A Texas judge has blocked the execution of the first man to be put on death row in the US for murder charges related to "shaken baby syndrome", less than two hours before the capital punishment was due to be carried out.
Robert Roberson, 57, was sentenced to death in 2003 for the death of his two-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, after a post-mortem examination concluded she died of injuries from abuse.
Roberson and his lawyers have long maintained the child died of complications from pneumonia.
...
But only 90 minutes beforehand, a Travis County judge issued a temporary restraining order to stop it going ahead, so that Roberson could testify in a hearing at the state legislature next week.
The decision came after a panel of the Texas House of Representatives issued a highly unusual subpoena for Roberson late on Wednesday, hoping that authorities would have to send him to appear at a hearing on 21 October.
A bipartisan group of 86 Texas lawmakers, dozens of medical and scientific experts, attorneys and others - including best-selling author John Grisham and pro-death penalty Republicans - have all called for Roberson to be pardoned.
The group argued that the conviction was based on outdated science, before authorities gained a proper understanding of "shaken baby syndrome".
...
Roberson's supporters include Brian Wharton, the lead detective who investigated the incident in Palestine, Texas.
“I will forever be haunted by the role I played in helping the state put this innocent man on death row,” Mr Wharton was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.
