The ends of the political horseshoe come together on this one. Both extremes can take some little solace that the most gruesome killings are efficient in both ending life and deterrence. The right hopes it will deter crime and the left hopes it will deter the death penalty.
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Given how often electric chairs fail to kill people, and how lethal injections are probably a pretty horrible way to die by most accounts, the firing squad is the least painful way to go. But that presumes they’re accurate shooters who are actually going to hit the heart, and I’d not assume that, given the general levels of (in)competence involved.
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Dead man Wenceslao woke up
On the next day evening
With the corpses round about
But still alive and breathing
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People who are opposed to the death penalty because it might be painful are EXACTLY the people I’m talking to when I say ‘stop kidding yourself’ if you’re ok with less painful methods. If you’re OK with killing a convict, then don’t get squeamish when the time comes. You’re only trying to be humane to assuage your own conscience.
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Is there a sense in which this is progress on part of people trying to eliminate the death penalty through the courts and lobbying of pharmaceutical companies? It seems like South Carolina has given up on trying to execute people with lethal injection. An obvious next step to argue that firing squads and electrocution both constitute cruel and unusual punishment, which they clearly are. Making a prisoner choose is more cruel and unusual, not less.
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Yes, I believe this is a kind of progress by pro-life anti-execution campaigners. Shooting and electrocuting were thought cruel, so pro-killing states switched to poisoning. With poison off the table, it forces people to re-examine the cruelty of shooting people or electrocuting them, or perhaps, questioning the whole rationale for state killing.
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That kind of progress is called accelerationism, and unfortunately it comes at the expense of real people being executed in the meantime.
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I doubt death-by-gunshot is entirely like on TV where the bad guys just fall down and stop moving
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I’d demand trial by combat with Henry McMaster. And no proxies or champions!
No, but if you get hit squarely in the heart, you’re at least going to be in enough shock and die quickly enough that it won’t be a slow, painful death. But that assumes a degree of competence, that they’ll actually shoot you in the heart.
Are they going to broadcast it on TV? Seems like the next logical step in the cruelty that is 'Merica.
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Um, wouldn’t a headshot be quicker? My impression is that if the heart is stopped, there’s still cessation of blood flow and oxygenation, which will cause brain death, eventually. But if a headshot takes out the brain stem (and probably other parts, I guess) death is instantaneous?
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And I’ve never understood how this is supposed to work. Firing a blank is different than a bullet. Driving gas and mass rather than just gas definitely feels different, recoil wise. The shooter would know.
Is is just for plausible deniability? You may know what you had, but the other firing squad members only know what they had. Nobody other than the shooter knows who actually had the bullet?
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The UK doesn’t have the death penalty any more.
(Although I’m sure some people will try and bring it back)
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I would think beheading/the guillotine would be the least painful and would satisfy the main aim (sorry for the pun) of the death penalty which is public retribution.
My understanding is that we employ a particular execution process because the pro-capital punishment public doesn’t have the stomach for more painless methods.
I think you might have a bit of a common misunderstanding regarding firing squads…
If there are 8 murderers in the shooting squad, 7 are issued rifles with a regular bullet, and 1 is issued a rifle with a blank. The purpose of the blank is so that everyone who is pulling the trigger can assume that it was everyone else who actually shot the target, and they had the blank. Of course, everyone knows that they had a real bullet, it’s just a decency to allow them to pretend.
This is a common misunderstanding, that only one person has a real bullet. This is also to make it less likely that all the bullets will miss critical targets.
I am pretty against executions (except for very, very specific circumstances; that perhaps would affect one or two people a decade); but I can’t figure out why states are not just using OD doses of drugs like Heroin.
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Headshots can get really messy for the person being hit. The skull changes the trajectory of (and even deflects) bullets, you can get hit in the head and miss the brain, you can get hit in various parts of the brain without immediately dying, etc.
Yeah, but it’s not an option as it requires someone to build the darn things, and no one is, nor will. (Also, I suspect the historical allusions would be disturbing to the state, here, so even if they could get one, they wouldn’t.) They’re not doing lethal injections because no one will sell them the required drugs; they already have electric chairs and so, so many guns (and, sadly, people willing to use them).
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Ah. Then it’s all plausible deniability.
Why not 8 bullets then, and just tell them that someone had a blank?
And yeah, it’s kind of weird that some things are ok, whereas others are too brutal. Why not a thick metal collar with a ring of high explosive in it? Gross and brutal, but no question about efficacy or speed. Why not the proverbial giant ACME brand 40 ton weight to instantly crush you? Why not some buff shirtless guy in a black hood with a large axe? Why not a guillotine? (I know the answer, but conflating a firing squad with these somewhat ridiculous execution methods makes a certain point).
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