They could always mirror the Japanese and use the gallows. It’s relatively quick, anonymous, efficient and tidy. The four executioners press four buttons to release the trap door, but nobody knows which one actually works. The act takes place in a quiet, carpeted room, and the corpse is quickly whisked away via gurney in the hall beneath.
Ehh… still horrible. I believe the death penalty should be abolished. Too expensive to taxpayers, and the chance of one innocent person being executed in the name of “justice” is one chance too many.
The only possible benefit to this, is that it makes it harder to hide the barbaric cruelty of executions.
Of course, those who believe in executions will still strive not to see how awful they are - because they don’t want to see it.
It is of course so ironic that they could still execute people without those drugs, if they chose to put people to sleep and then give them fentanyl overdoses. Or many other similar approaches.
But those more merciful methods can’t even be considered, because they’re too merciful. They aren’t painful enough.
Try to hide it as they might, the cruelty is the point and the reason behind pushing executions. As opposed to even life imprisonment.
I do wonder if the Japanese system is even more sadistic than the American one, because the prisoners are never told when they will be executed, for days, months or years. “While in their cells they are required to remain seated, and free movement is not allowed,” says Sakamoto. “Conversation with prisoners in adjacent cells is strictly prohibited.”
Japan’s system may seem nice because of the lack of blood, but it has its own cruelty to it and I’d not hold it out as a model of kindness and humanity.
There’s a kind of righteous bloodlust behind the death penalty. People who support it are thrilled by the thought that killing can be done for the good of society, to uphold order and justice. Executions have to be spectacles, because they are ceremonies to affirm that justice is being done.
I wouldn’t consider the Japanese prison system to be the model of kindness and humanity. In fact, it has its own set of human rights violations, only with an authoritarian flavor instead of the malicious neglect you see in US prisons. The method of execution is tidier, but the emotional torture is not.
As I said in my original post, I don’t condone the death penalty at all.
