That does makes sense. Sometimes, for instance, you might have to end up killing someone in self-defense or to save someone else they are attacking. And your first choice for these non-executions was…
So I will grant that tripping a supervillain who’s trying to kill you so that they just happen to fall into a ready guillotine does sound kind of cool in an action movie way. But do you really think it’s practical enough to bring up on a thread that, I remind you, is about a state trying to murder its own citizens?
Agreed, the thing is barbaric, the medical theater only exists to disguise this fact and seems to do so at the expense of the executed. If you want to kill me, five shots to the head is best but I guess I might have to settle for five to the heart. If we really have to do it, and I don’t think we should, it should be fast and sure. Actually this is why the guilittine was created, a French doctor was disgusted by the botched executions and created a method that was sure and consistent. Gruesome, yes, but the whole damn idea is gruesome, don’t put dressing on it to pretend it isn’t.
It seems unlikely a U.S. judge would agree to that, since they regularly insist prisoners must be “competent to understand why they’re being executed” before they can be killed
and also the whole point of all this is the authorities don’t want the hassle of dealing with drugs anymore
I am against the state killing as punishment, but I’ve always wondered why they didn’t just use fentanyl or some other opiate instead of these chemical cocktails.
And if they’re reviving old methods, what’s wrong with the guillotine? It’s a little messy maybe, but great theatre.
I put up a youtube video of a clip above. The presenter was Thatcherite ex MP Michael Portillo, hardly a voice of the left, but the pro death penalty people treated him like he was some kind of liberal hippy all the way through the show IIRC.
ETA: It seems to have been eaten. Was it because of the video?
That was similar to the outcome of the clip, Portillo was enthusiastic about the idea of nitrogen as an ethical capital punishment and the pro death penalty guy was insistent that it needed to be painful or it wasn’t justice.
Speaking as a person who knew someone who was killed in a shooting spree*, that isn’t justice, it’s vengeance. It won’t bring the victim back and it won’t take the pain away.
* Jamie Clark, a friend of my brother, killed in the 2010 Cumbria shootings. I’m still anti-death penalty.
Not the way the US does it where they try to shoot the heart. The Chinese method of a single gunshot to the head is probably much more “humane”, to the degree that state is sponsored violence can be called such.
The eagerness with which Republicans wish to rush retributive justice is despicable. Especially given the racial imbalance of death sentences. It’s pretty much a rush to kill minorities with guns, only legally, using the power of the state to do it.
I would argue that is exactly where it started. It is the particular method approved by SC in the headline that is intended to shock us, presumably because is is explicitly violent. After all, the title isn’t “South Carolina intends to execute people.” because that is unlikely to shock people into changing their mind into opposing the death penalty. If the conversation starts with a revulsion for one particular method of doing something, than one can not be surprised that it continues to discuss other methods. If you want to discuss the horribleness of the death penalty, than that is where you should start.
Guillotines were DEFINITELY not instantaneous. ISTR that some of the victims of a scientific bent would count several numbers before their lips stopped moving. .
A friend taught English in China for a while. She told me the public executions - featuring compulsory attendance - in the town made her quit and go home.
Far too many rethugs and their ilk seem to have what I call occasional - or constant, in some cases - century-numeral dyslexia. They think it’s the 12th century, not the 21st.
The best possible outcome if you’re going to be hung: your head rips off, which is, unfortunately, an outcome that’s not as desirable among spectators. English executioners developed elaborate formulae over time to prevent that particular outcome in the 19th century. There’s a fairly narrow margin between between ripping off heads, and long slow strangulation. American executioners frequently miscalculate (or don’t bother calculating at all).
