The least cruel method of execution?

Thanks, wilso, for clearing the air on what costs the most money. Some people should use their brains more often.

Brand X -- a gulity snicker. I guess someone coudl emulate Rasputin.

...And inexpensive. Who cares how much it really costs anyway, they're better 6 feet under rather then getting a free ride...So they have to live the rest of there lives behind fences and bars, but they don't have to worry about anything. They get food served to them, laundry done, a free roof over there head and all they have o do is hang out. Anything bad that happens to them in jail they deserve.

Drawing and quartering.

(For those of you unfamiliar with the English method, the condemned is first disemboweled--"drawn"--with a white-hot instrument, so as to cauterize the blood vessels. This is so he doesn't bleed to death before the horses tied to his limbs are spurred to the four points of the compass to rip him apart--"quartered".)

Or the old tradition in India where the evildoer's head was placed on a platform, usually a large tree stump, and an elephant placed his foot on top, and at the command, crushed his skull.

Both are quick (to be humane about the killing) and dramatic (in order to exercise the theory of deterrence).

There is a small percentage of the population that does not respond pentathol. There are reports of surgery patients who were awake the whole time and not able to cry out. In addition, the "killing blow" is KCl, which interrupts cardiac conductivity. Patients in the ED who receieve slow infusions of K experience pain since the drug is exceptionally hypertonic. Now picture being paralyzed as the pottasium bolus charges through your body!

Just a little F.Y.I. on firing squads from the Keeper of Useless Data.

The tradition in firing squads is to have between 5 and 9 people on the squad. A round is loaded in each rifle with one rifle containing a 'blank' cartridge ( The rifle will fire, but there will be no bullet expelled)

It is done this way to ensure that each man may be able to believe in his heart that HE fired the 'blank' and thus killed no one.

"In Oklahoma, lethal injection is the preferred method of execution. However, the legislature has provided that if lethal injection and electrocution are ever ruled unconstitutional, then the firing squad will be called out. This is bizarre even by Oklahoma standards. I hate to be the one to break it to them but if lethal injection is ever ruled to be "cruel and unusual punishment," then the firing squad doesn't stand a chance.

Of course, the real question is why would any state still rely on a firing squad when there are more modern methods of execution like lethal injection, lethal gas or riding in a car driven by Rodney King? The firing squad is not only disturbing in principle but it's even more disturbing in application.

For one, the shooters are not employees of the Utah Corrections Department. The shooters are police officers who volunteer for this duty. Now, I will admit that I don't have the most exciting life but even I can think of something better to do on my day off. Whatever happened to gardening, spending a day at the beach with the family or just nursing a bad hangover?"

I've always felt that if I were convicted of a capital crime and given the opportunity to choose the method of my execution...

...I would opt for being placed in solitary confinement with a beautiful nymphomaniac and being offed by being offed, so to speak.

Although I'm not sure that would qualify as uncruel!

Frank, no matter how beautiful they are, somebody somewhere is tired of their ****!

Depends on what sort of conversation she makes...



Strange. Pit bulls are highly resistant to it, and so are given larger doses, but I'd ascribed this to their high proportion of muscle mass.

Very grim board, this one...

As I understand it, the reason firing squads are still used in Utah has something to do with Mormanism and spilling blood (literaly) as a form of atonement.

Mikal Gilmore wrote about it in his book "Shot To The Heart" about his brother, Gary Gilmore, who, I believe, was the last person in America executed by firing squad. I don't remember the specifics, sorry.

Anyway. I agree that they're all barbaric.

Just FYI:

In 1977 Gary Gilmore was one of the first people to be executed in Utah by firing squad in over 10 years. But as recently as 1996 there were still execution by firing squad.

Utah used to have a rule that if the condemned refused to specify which manner he prefered, that firing squad became the selection automatically.

The Death Penalty
It's a grim topic. Only 3 states do not have the Death Penalty.
Seems to me that most people are in agreement with it. Even on an International level, no one seems to balk at assasination of people that are considered evil.

I feel that there is no method that isn't cruel in some manner.

An aside: I read somewhere that the commandment, "Thou Shalt Not Kill", was mis-translated. It actually means "Not Murder." There is a difference, right?

Well, as the form of government we have here in the U.S.A. works, if enough people come out against the death penalty it wll be taken off the books.

Thats the great part of Democracy (Even a representative Republic like ours) , the will of the people is usually followed.

As to the 'cruel and unusual' part, I think it is more 'cruel' to drag it out for 15+ years before executing someone.

And the original Commandment real 'You shall not commit murder' or some such, difficult to translate from the Hebrew-->Latin-->French-->Old English-->Modern English

I honestly do think life in prison without possibility of parole is more inhumane -- but that is just my take on things.

I'd personally rather be dead than in prison without the possibility of getting out.

The folks who wrote up that "Shalt not..." bit looked up to a God who did a fair amount of smiting on their behalf...

And who's to say they were always justified, hey patiodog?

Retribution?
"An eye for an eye etc." The concept seems to linger.

Well, when you think about it, isn't lethal injection pretty barbaric? We take a person, strap him (or her) down on a table, insert needles in the person's veins, then push a button to begin a series of intravenous injections that render the person first unconscious, then dead.

Unless that person is somehow clueless as to what is occurring, I can't think of much that would be more terrifying. The fact that it may involve less physical pain does not mean it is humane in my book.

How about we set the condemned man up with a hooker, then hit him in the back of the head with a sledge hammer at the moment of release? If you are looking for a humane way to take a man's life, that's got to be near the top of any list.

Or, we could just accept that there is no humane way to take a life and warehouse the worst offenders somewhere until they die. Life in prison may be too good for some of the evil people out there, but then is it really supposed to be about retribution, or about making society safe from these predators? I'm inclined to believe that the latter is our goal (or should be) and that capital punishment does nothing but diminish us as a society.

Once we decide that allowing this or that person to live among us is too great a risk, what we do with that person says nothing about who he or she is, and everything about who we are as a society.

If it's a Jeffrey Dahmer type, I like the "release him into the prison yard and turn your back" approach. Worked for Dahmer.