South Carolina re-instates death by firing squad, schedules first execution

I don’t think it’s about wanting the convicted person to suffer. If it were, I would think people would be more in favor of life in prison, probably in solitary confinement. That would likely result in a lot more suffering. I think it’s more about revenge and retribution.

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If you know a better way to find a witch, I’m all ears. /s

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Ask them? All the witches I know are pretty open about it.

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I’m not in favor of executions, but if you have to, I think the best option is a futuristic amusement park where dinosau – wait, this just in, you don’t have to and no civilized country does.

Why is it discussions about euthanasia never seem to bring up favorite techniques for killing people, but ones about state murders with no legitimate purpose always do?

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But the crafty witches lie about it. You might say they are … witch crafty.

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I mean, I think I’d prefer that to electrocution or a botched lethal injection. Though, why not carbon monoxide?

But, anyway, I’ll repeat my stance:

The state doesn’t get it right enough to be trusted with administering capital punishment. They also use it as a tool to get false confessions.So ban capital punishment.

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It’s about punishment, which is a core concept to conservatives. It’s why US prisons are such hellholes- that’s how the right wants them. They don’t see prison as an attempt to rehabilitate or a way to protect society from dangerous people. It’s about punishing mistakes. When you to speak with death penalty supporters, the most common reasoning given is “there must be an ultimate punishment for the ultimate crime”. The notions that maybe we don’t need punishment at all, and punishment serves no societal function, never occur to them.

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It’s because of that one guy they tried and failed to execute in the chair, the penniless sap who worked for the railroad, remember? He was a poor conductor?

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Many that I’ve had did.

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Retribution is “punishment inflicted on someone as vengeance for a wrong or criminal act,” so … that’s what I said.

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The history of execution methods is just about the opposite of that.

We moved away from gruesome methods like hanging and shooting to sanitize and automate the process. Remove the human element. It goes hand in hand with taking it out of public view.

Electric chairs, gas chambers and lethal injection were all created as a “humane” and “clean” solutions to the brutality of execution. Though to some extent to mitigate the impact on the executioner, and remove skill or complication necessary to conduct it properly. Rather than to be less cruel to the executed.

All of them are pretty damn gruesome, pretty unreliable, slower and more painful in the end.

Every review I’ve seen on the subject, whether scientific or legal. Finds that properly conducted long drop hanging and shooting kill a person quickest and most reliably. Shooting/firing squads tend to produce the lowest error rate.

That makes me real suspicious of nitrogen hypoxia. Since it fits pretty nicely in the sanitize it by over
complicating things end. And it was cooked up largely to allow the use of gas chambers in an
environment where no one will sell states or prison systems the compounds needed to gas people.

And finding a way to actually do it reliably as proved to be pretty difficult. Oklahoma is, I think, the only state to approve it. They abandoned implementing it because they could not find a way to pull it off reliably.

Ultimately if we’re going to execute people. It’d be better to stop pretending it’s not cruel and gross. Simply go with the methods we know work. So I don’t have a problem with states bringing back firing squads, or even hanging.

The public is opposed to them because they sound bad. All the other methods are mostly about avoiding that public opposition. It’s about keeping it palatable enough to keep it legal.

We should just do away with it. But if we won’t then it’d better to do what works, instead of pretending.

We don’t, cause if we did. We’d do away with it.

Because when it’s been done it’s been absolutely horrifying.

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“Might I interested, sir, in our new special; Death by Firing Squad? Or would you prefer the more usual cocktail of lethal drugs? The firing squad is locally sourced and artisanal.”

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judge dredd pink GIF by Frank Macchia

Where I come from that’s satire. Over there its business as usual.

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I once spoke with John Wagner, and he bemoaned the number of people who told him that the world would be a better place if Judge Dredd was real. This was in the UK; so I don’t think we can get too smug about being more sophistimacated than our American cousins. :grimacing:

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People do always seem to assume they should be the Judge, not the judged.

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Because the cruelty is the point. Despite the name, the American carceral archipelago exists to punish, not correct. Especially with for-profit prisons and multi-year pre-trial imprisonment. Recidivism is good for business. Rehabilitation is bad for the bottom line.

There is no right enough. Premeditated state-sanctioned homicide in defense of no one is simply wrong.

Yes.

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Probably why folks like that carpenter’s son mentioned not throwing the first stone…

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And something about motes and beams.

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Exactly this. My understanding (as a lay person) is that firing squad is more “humane” than the faulty lethal injection methods that are currently in use. Still don’t know how to feel about the death penalty, other than I believe it has been shown to NOT be a deterrent. But if a loved one of mine was killed, I am pretty sure I’d be find with the death penalty for the killer. But what if the wrong person got executed. Sigh.