Why Is The Us So Determined To Continue With Terrible Execution Methods?

[ToraToraTora]

http://news.sky.com/story/1699116/oklahoma-execution-officials-were-careless
Read this, I also saw the report on the TV this morning. You'd think they were ordering chemicals for cleaning a carpet. Even when using the right drugs it's a terrible method! Quite breathtaking stupidity! "That sounds the same must be ok" - did they ever touch on chemistry? PS This is about execution methods not the rights and wrongs of executions, start your own thread if you want that.

[andy-hughes]

I think that, hand in hand with the ability to secure a job in executing people, you must have developed a certain laissez-faire attitude to the comfort of the prisoner in question.

As you say, the morality of execution is a separate argument - but I have to say that the evolution of this singularly barbaric method beggars belief.

If you can find a group of people who think it necessary to swab the arms of a prisoner who has minutes to live, then I think that indicates some serious swerved thinking in terms of the best method of taking someone's life.

[agchristie]

You would think that those put in charge of carry out the executions would more than double check that they were following correct procedures.

Why does the US persist with this form of execution? It really does make you wonder.

[Jackdaw33]

Surely there must be a drug which causes instant paralysis then death? The Americans have always been very inventive when it comes to methods of execution. About the only thing they haven't tried is burning at the stake.

[pixie374]

Why would you want "instant paralysis" first? Will have a Google and see what they use at Dignitas...

[albaqwerty]

Why can't they give them the equivalent of the drug which puts animals to sleep?

Jack, didn't they burn folk at the Salem witch trials?

[pixie374]

From wiki...

/Edit
In general, Dignitas uses the following protocol to assist suicides: an oral dose of an antiemetic drug, followed approximately 1 hour later by a lethal overdose of powdered pentobarbital dissolved in a glass of water or fruit juice. If necessary, the drugs can be ingested via a drinking straw. The pentobarbital overdose depresses the central nervous system, causing the person to become drowsy and fall asleep within 5 minutes of drinking it. Anaesthesia progresses to coma as the person's breathing becomes more shallow, followed by respiratory arrest and death, which occurs within 30 minutes of ingesting the pentobarbital.

In a few cases in 2008, Dignitas used breathing helium gas[4] as a suicide method instead of a pentobarbital overdose. This avoids the need for medical supervision and prescription controlled drugs, and is therefore cheaper and more available.[5]//

[jno]

is it really the method that's a problem? Sounds like monumental incompetence on the part of the people who are using it (or human error, as they probably prefer to call it).

[naomi24]

Making the condemned suffer is spiteful. If the object of the exercise is to dispose of the guilty, a painless general anaesthetic could be administered and the job could be done simply and with minimal distress.

[Jackdaw33]

In England and America witches were hanged. In Scotland and Europe they were burned.

[andy-hughes]

Naomi - //Making the condemned suffer is spiteful. If the object of the exercise is to dispose of the guilty, a painless general anaesthetic could be administered and the job could be done simply and with minimal distress. //

You have a wonderful gift for understatement there!

You have to wonder if the additional torture is covertly accepted as revenge in addition to the inevitable death being administered.

[ToraToraTora]

even if it works as intended jno it's a terrible system.

[Jackdaw33]

We had it off to a fine art. From the cell door opening to being dead on the end of the rope took on average 15 seconds. Our executioners knew their job.

[jno]

it doesn't sound like a terrible system - if it works. If you accept capital punishment (which you suggest is a separate queston), this was meant to be the least objectionable way of doing it. I don't have a better suggestion, but I don't know enough about these things.

[naomi24]

andy-hughes /You have a wonderful gift for understatement there!

You have to wonder if the additional torture is covertly accepted as revenge in addition to the inevitable death being administered. //

I think that's what I said.

[andy-hughes]

jno - //it doesn't sound like a terrible system - if it works. If you accept capital punishment (which you suggest is a separate queston), this was meant to be the least objectionable way of doing it. I don't have a better suggestion, but I don't know enough about these things. //

I think the fact that it works is not in dispute, since death is the outcome, but the gist of TTT's argument is not whether or not the method works in achieving death, but more the seriously horrible suffering endured by the prisoner on the way to that death.

It makes a mockery of the notion that this form of execution is 'humane' - and drags officialdom into the same moral quagmire as the murderers they dispatch.

[THECORBYLOON]

I did say on a previous thread that nitrogen gas is an alternative method of execution and I see that the Grand Jury that looked into the botched executions has recommended that nitrogen be used in future.

[Jackdaw33]

How would nitrogen gas work? The old gas chamber was even more inhumane than the present method.

[andy-hughes]

Jackdaw - //How would nitrogen gas work? The old gas chamber was even more inhumane than the present method. //

I would not be delivered in a gas chamber.

Gas chambers were used simply as a more efficient method of murder - and again, no thought was ever given to the suffering involved.

Administering gas to one person is obviously far easier to control in terms of time taken - there is no comparison to be drawn.

[naomi24]

A painless general anaesthetic – and the rest done when the condemned is ‘out’. That’s humane.

[andy-hughes]

Sorry - It would not be delievered ... amazing how a typo can alter the entire meaning of a sentence.

Next week - Let's eat kids ... oops, that should be Let's eat, kids.