this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2023
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Showerthoughts
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I'll be honest, i never thought about HOW death sentences are executed, mostly because i live in a country where death sentences are seen as barbaric and are not possible thankfully. But now that i think about it, a "mutli-drug cocktail" sounds like one of the worst ideas, next hanging and guillotine.
Well the whole execution thing IS pretty barbaric. In the US it costs more to execute someone than jail them for life. And we've been fucking around for some time debating what is a humane death and what isn't, while a lot of the pro-execution people really sound like they WANT someone to suffer.
Electric chair for example basically boils a person alive; and the cyanide used in a gas chamber is also quite a painful death. Firing squad CAN be fairly quick, but one wonders why is the person shot in the heart rather than in the head that would cause instant painless death? Hanging, when done correctly, is fairly instant and painless. When done incorrectly it leaves a person suffocating to death while hanging on a rope, which is a very painful death. Guillotine, like hanging, is fairly painless when it's done correctly, however the concept is quite barbaric. And there's some suggestion that the human head remains conscious for several seconds after execution-- I read something a while back of a scientist who was sentenced to death by guillotine, he told his assistant he'd keep blinking as long as he could, the assistant recorded 10 or 12 blinks.
Wherever you are from I think has the right idea. Executing people causes more problems than it solves, and creates huge possibility of suffering. I believe there are some people in the world who do deserve to die, but I don't think it should be up to me (or any human or group of humans) to make that determination. We just make too many mistakes.
Being drawn and quartered or golden bulled sounds like one of the worse ideas.
Hanging, rifle line, and the guillotine are slightly better as they’re less violent and more ‘matter of fact’.
A multi-drug cocktail sounds like one of the most humane methods, medicinally and painlessly ending a life. Sadly they’ve fucked up even that by not doing it properly.
The problem is you can't get any actual doctors to help make it medically sound on account of that whole "do no harm" thing they're supposed to uphold, so you end up with quacks that use a functionally random set of drugs that make it appear to the crowd as a painless way to die when in actuality its one of the most brutally painful possible ways to die.
Death can be a freedom from harm, ex. Euthanasia.
So if they were going to die anyway, a doctor could rationalise it as helping them have the least suffering.
The issue with things like hanging is that there's more room for political abuse because it's so theatrical. Even if a lethal injection took place in a town square, it would have nowhere near the same capacity for terrorism and suppressing dissent.