We took our dog to the vet last year when it became clear he could no longer enjoy life, and stayed with him for the procedure. It went very well. Our boy calmly went to sleep, and after a few minutes, maybe ten, was no longer with us. The vet closely monitored his breathing and heartbeat throughout, and it was clear to me that he went easily. I’m not a vet, but I know he didn’t suffer, certainly no more than he already was.
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Nitrogen asphyxiation seems to me like an acceptable alternative to lethal injection. A lot of suicide related discussion boards seem to favor it. Nitrogen asphyxiation doesn’t cause “air-hunger” or a panic reaction, nor prolonged delirium the the way carbon dioxide/carbon monoxide poisoning does.
Disclaimer: I’m only for the death penalty if guilt can be proven with the same mathematical level of certainty physicists use at the LHC etc. As it stands, I can’t be pro-death penalty as there are far too many false convictions.
I am utterly against the death penalty. We are incapable of anything close to perfect an impartial justice, to say nothing of the virtues of rehabilitation or the promise of technology to fix terminally fucked up. That said, if we are going to have the government execute people, why the bloody fuck are we using the stupidest methods in existence. There are so many better and vastly more humane, surefire options.
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Chop off their head with a big old pneumatic blade. Yeah, it is messy, but separating the head from the body is a pretty surefire way to kill someone quickly and with minimal pain. Knock’em out ahead of time and you can also spare them the terror and the theoretical few seconds that they live beyond the decapitation.
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Nitrogen asphyxiation. If I have to die, sign me up for this method. You just go sleep. There is no pain. You just put them in a coffin sized sealed tube and pump it full of nitrogen. You don’t realize that you have no air O2. You just get sleepy and a little euphoric, pass out, and then die. You can combine this with option 1 and make sure that the job is done, or simply just leave them in for a few hours.
Personally, I think we should just abolish it. If humane reasons and fear of screwing it up are not enough, then it should be abolished for dully practical reasons. The US can’t extradite a number of nasty folks from various countries because most civilized nations won’t send the US criminals if there is a chance they might get killed.
I came to ask pretty much the same question. Why nut just use a general anesthetic then introduce an air bubble into the vein to induce a heart attack? An overdose of a drug like heroin is even better.
Disclaimer: I’m completely for capital punishment, at least for the majority types of murder (anything pre-meditated) and violent rape. People found to be falsifying evidence on cases where the death penalty is being sought, should also be charged for some form of Attempted Murder.
“Attempted Murder”? Why not murder one? It’s pretty much premeditation of a murder if you set them up to be executed. How is that any different than hiring a hitman?
As best I can tell, American capital punishment is as dysfunctional as it is largely because of its controversial status:
Because of its unpopularity, especially among ‘medical ethics’ types, there has been a pretty massive brain-drain: you essentially can’t get a doctor or anesthesiologist to touch the job (even if some are personally in favor, that would be professionally toxic), and (as in the Oklahoma ‘well, let’s just try a new untested combination that’s legally shrouded in secrecy!’ ) even getting drugs can be tricky.
On the other side, as a defensive strategy, various gruesome but relatively swift and effective techniques have been discarded because of the strong (albeit pretty much entirely nonsense) sentiment that ‘goriness/unpleasantness to watch’ is somehow even vaguely a proxy for how ‘cruel and unusual’ something is.
We thus end up in the perverse situation where downright hopeless non-medical staff, who probably know less about finding a vein than some of the junkies they have locked up on site, are playing doctor, because ‘medical’=‘humane’, with repeated horrendous results, despite the fact that a real anesthesiologist (or even a vet) probably knows a dozen ways to kill you before you notice, and the prison staff probably have plenty of people who could put three rounds into your head or guillotine you.
Aside from the various horrors of the ‘justice’ mechanism by which we fill death row, that’s the really sick thing: we kill people most unpleasantly because killing them less painfully would be icky, and bad PR.
I’m personally not opposed to capital punishment (in theory: not as implemented, either in selection or method); but there is something uniquely repulsive about the sentiment of ‘squeamish vengeance’ that animates the current system. Oh, yes, they are criminals and we must have blood; but no, no, we want a nice little medical tableau, complete with quick-release curtains that can shield the audience’s eyes if things start going wrong.
Because, in accordance with the grammar of my statement, their actions would have been discovered BEFORE the person was executed. Therefore, only “attempted murder”. But yes, if the manipulation/falsification of evidence was discovered post-execution, then those people would be guilty of some level of murder, and should be treated as such within the law.
In the previous decades there have been many cases in the press about people getting out of prison, and even off death row, because evidence given at the time was found to be wrong. I have always been angered by the lack of action against those who rigged the game.
Ugly corpses. Families still want their bizarre burial rituals.
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