Kentucky and Death Penalty

[Gil Hamilton]

Because it's painless only in theory. Read http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article ... =8&did=478 and tell me you think that's a "dignified" way to die. When it goes wrong, it's torture, nothing more.

Now compare that to the zero ways a high-caliber bullet to the head (from close range, of course) can go wrong. No slow lingering death, you're perfectly normal and pain-free, then before your brain even has time to process a message from pain cells it's completely destroyed. A pistol shot to the head might carry some bad historical connotations, but I'd prefer it no questions asked to lethal injection.

That's true of any execution that goes wrong. If you fail to hang someone properly and their neck doesn't break from the fall, they end up strangling to death. As CmdrWilkins points out, even the firing squad can go wrong. That's not the point.

I've never bought the idea that somehow people are suffering a slow agonizing death from lethal injection. Every time this topic comes up, someone makes this claim and I've never bought it. The anesthetic used in lethal injection is the same one used during major surgeries when a general anesthetic is used. Actually shuts down receptors in the brain that feel pain themselves as it's function and works very quickly. During executions, they use a MUCH larger dose of the thiopental than they do in surgeries (which is very carefully administered by weight of the patient to wear off at a specific time). With a dose that large, someone could whack them a couple times with a baseball bat and they still wouldn't feel it.

If you think that the process itself of getting a vein and such is undignified, wel, it doesn't strike me as that much more undignified than donating blood physically. As someone with deep veins, I've had a nurse manage to stick both of my arms repeatedly because she couldn't get a good vein when I was having blood drawn. It sucks, but I'm not seeing where it is a horribly torturous ordeal. I mean, we already put them in the American prison system, what more indignities could we inflict on them beyond that?

[Darth Wong]

Errrr, ok, I'll clarify.

I meant forgiveness in the sense that once the price has been paid (by the criminal), the victim should "let go" of its need for revenge, or else the wound will never heal.

Why the fuck should the victim let go of his hatred for the criminal? Do you think you can justify it by simply stating it, over and over and over like some kind of telemarketing message?

That doesn't mean the victim has to lose sleep for the rest of his life over it, but there's no reason why someone can't maintain a healthy life and still be able to say for the rest of his life, "I hate the fucker and I wish he were dead".

I'll use your example to explain my point. The idea is that, If someone punches me in the face, I should contain the urge to punch him back, and instead sue him for agression and let the system punish him, and then let go of my agression (a bit simplified, but that's the gist).

Why?

The forgiveness bit comes at the end. No matter how much I want to punch him back, once the guy has been punished by society, I should forgive him and let go of my anger.

Why?

The whole concept is that if I take revenge on the guy, I'm no better than him, and I'm actually contributing to the problem, rather than solving it. That's the difficult part of doing the right thing: When you really don't want to do it.

Why?

I hate to break it to you, but this ain't Sunday School. You can't just preach it and have people say "amen". You haven't done jack shit to justify your position; you simply stated it again.

[Anguirus]

I've never bought the idea that somehow people are suffering a slow agonizing death from lethal injection.

Well gee, did you read the link?

It's not that lethal injection should not, in theory, be painless. It's that somehow you still get dozens of incidents reported where the "professionals" in charge of the execution fuck up and appear to cause excruciating pain.

[Gil Hamilton]

Well gee, did you read the link?

It's not that lethal injection should not, in theory, be painless. It's that somehow you still get dozens of incidents reported where the "professionals" in charge of the execution fuck up and appear to cause excruciating pain.

As a matter of which, I did read the link and there aren't even four dozen examples on that page of execution mixups TOTAL and half the lethal injection ones are problems with the nurse finding a suitable vein. You're exaggerating.

[HemlockGrey]

I will also point out that, the person who cannot protect themself should not expect anyone to protect them.

That's, um, that's sort of the entire point of the social contract. What the hell are you talking about?

[Flagg]

Yeah, except you can't unkill someone if you find out they aren't guilty.

So we can't kill anyone anywhere because we might someday kill an innocent man?

Umm... Yeah? Unless you think killing innocent people every now and then is "worth it".

That's flimsy logic at best, because there exists a VAST number of methods to prove the guilt of innocents of someone. The Duchess's example of a Federal Department set up with the express purpose of reviewing all Death penality cases.

One could also set the bar of evidence very high for example, it is not an all or nothing thing as anti-death penalty advocates would have it.

So you would rather spend millions (or even billions) on federal departments and new standards of evidence to keep killing people rather than to lock them up away from society for the rest of their lives?

And yes, I know that's still "death by old age" in your view, but since you can't unkill the wrongfully convicted, but you can release them from prison, then I don't see how it isn't the better option.

I'm gonna quote myself to make it clear what this is regarding:

If we absoluetely must have a death penalty, then I agree with the federal agency and higher standards of evidence proposals. I just don't agree that we need, or should have capital punishment.

[Aaron]

I'll use your example to explain my point. The idea is that, If someone punches me in the face, I should contain the urge to punch him back, and instead sue him for agression and let the system punish him, and then let go of my agression (a bit simplified, but that's the gist).

The forgiveness bit comes at the end. No matter how much I want to punch him back, once the guy has been punished by society, I should forgive him and let go of my anger.

You do know that if someone attacks you can respond with physical force within reasonable limits, right? In other words if you get punched in the face you can do the same to him and enough to drive him off. He'll still get charged if you do, you don't have to just absorb it like a buddist monk.

[K. A. Pital]

Capital punishment can potentially save lives of other humans, so the question of it's social utility is not just "kill people not to waste material resources, or waste material resources not to kill people" - this simplifies the dilemma to a point where the solution seems easily obvious - better waste materials than kill. But is that so simple?

First of all, any unit of resource spent on a death row criminal could alternatively have been spent to save a dying non-criminal human - this is a potential life saved. A more direct and simple example is organ processing from dead criminals, which saves the lives of other people faster and more direct than simple re-distribution of material resources.

Now, I understand that gross inequality in resource redistribution could be seen by some as not requiring correction in such small examples, and there is no certain guarantee that resources saved from stopping support of human life for criminals would be used to save other people. The donor organ situation, however, is explicitly only allowing people to be saved through the death of others, organs can't be applied in another fashion.

This is a tough dilemma, similar to choosing between expanding basic healthcare versus improving the high-end healthcare services. The latter could save people with rare, strong and deadly, but rare diseases, the former could save more children and people in rural areas previously void of any healthcare. One must weigh carefully which would benefit the real life-saving possibilities for the majority of people in such a situation, IMHO.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Out of curiousity, do you have a fear of needles and have trouble getting blood drawn/donating blood?

No, I chat casually with the lab tech while the blood is drawn, don't even flinch. I could have it done every day and not give a day. I've never fainted or even closed my eyes.

Because I'm struggling to figure out why you think that a chemical cocktail that painlessly kills a person while they are knocked out is somehow any less dignified than marching them to the gallows and hanging them or putting them against a wall and shooting them. It's not romantic as the latter two (if you can call such things romantic) and it certainly doesn't fit into your whole the Imperial Age Is Super Awesome thing, but really, we are already executing them, very likely after many years on death row. If they aren't at peace with it or at least willing to face it, going to the gallows or being shot isn't going to be any better for then than getting strapped to a chair and then put to sleep. Chances are they've gotten most of the indignities in their life out of the way while in prison waiting for the State to get around to killing them anyway.

I simply believe it to be beneath human dignity while at the same time not at all painless because of the level of fuckup involved and because its peculiar nature means that when you fuck it up, the person suffers for an hour or two, unlike whereas if you fuck up a hanging or a firing squad, the guy twitches for twenty seconds while the presiding marshal draws his .44 and finishes him off with a bullet to the head.

[Imperial Overlord]

One of the scariest parts of fucking up lethal injection is that part of the cocktail can work and part not, leaving a paralyzed man to die slowly in agony with none of the observers noticing.

[Gil Hamilton]

I simply believe it to be beneath human dignity while at the same time not at all painless because of the level of fuckup involved and because its peculiar nature means that when you fuck it up, the person suffers for an hour or two, unlike whereas if you fuck up a hanging or a firing squad, the guy twitches for twenty seconds while the presiding marshal draws his .44 and finishes him off with a bullet to the head.

Simply beyond human dignity? I believe alot of things are beneath human dignity, like the current penal system. What of dignity when we are already killing them after a lengthy stay in said system?

And how often does that happen? The person before gave a link where most of the problems with lethal injection were finding a suitable vein, which with people who are interveneous drug users can be challenging, even if the person in question is trained nurse or doctor. One of the problems, I suppose, is that by definiton the person administering the lethal injection is not a anesthesiologist or a medical doctor (the hippocratic oath and all is somewhat against executing people) so the people doing it are EMTs (I think), but that is somewhat of a quibble.

I'm going to need, however, for you to go into the painfulness of the procedure though. How exactly can it be that painful if there is that much sodium pentathol in their system? You can literally saw someone's leg off without them feeling it with a 7mg/kg dose of the stuff (that's with a big guy like me) and they use a MUCH more massive dose than that. Please give some honest details there. This is another one of those things where you are big on imagery and somewhat short on details. If we are going to condemn something, you need more than your own opinion.

[Gil Hamilton]

One of the scariest parts of fucking up lethal injection is that part of the cocktail can work and part not, leaving a paralyzed man to die slowly in agony with none of the observers noticing.

Out of curiousity, how do you know that part of the cocktail isn't working if they are under a drug coma?

[Imperial Overlord]

One of the scariest parts of fucking up lethal injection is that part of the cocktail can work and part not, leaving a paralyzed man to die slowly in agony with none of the observers noticing.

Out of curiousity, how do you know that part of the cocktail isn't working if they are under a drug coma?

I don't honestly don't know how they would determine if part of the cocktail isn't working. I do know that the frequent histories of drug abuse can make determining how much anasthetic to give to them difficult.

[Gil Hamilton]

I don't honestly don't know how they would determine if part of the cocktail isn't working. I do know that the frequent histories of drug abuse can make determining how much anasthetic to give to them difficult.

That's kind of a non-issue. They don't carefully measure dosage when they are killing someone. You don't have to. It's in surgery where they have to carefully calculate based on weight and drug resistance exactly how much anesthetic to give (which is somewhat exacting and why anesthesiologists are paid the bucks).

[Imperial Overlord]

That's kind of a non-issue. They don't carefully measure dosage when they are killing someone. You don't have to. It's in surgery where they have to carefully calculate based on weight and drug resistance exactly how much anesthetic to give (which is somewhat exacting and why anesthesiologists are paid the bucks).

Except if they don't give enough anasthetic, you die in agony and they aren't trying to give lethal overdoses of anasthetic, so yes it does fucking matter. Its the third part of the cocktail they kill you with. If they just overdosed the guys on opiates instead of the three part chemical cocktail of the paralyzer, anasthetic, and poison then it would be less of an issue.

[Stark]

Gil, that's WHY there are problems. Lethal injection is overcomplicated and poorly measured: if it was 'blast with 2000ccs of morphine', there wouldn't be a problem besides cost. It's a multi-stage process full of potential points of failure.

Seriously, read about the method they use, the people that do it, and what happens when it goes wrong, and tell me that that's somehow better than being hung.

[Oskuro]

Why the fuck should the victim let go of his hatred for the criminal? Do you think you can justify it by simply stating it, over and over and over like some kind of telemarketing message?

That doesn't mean the victim has to lose sleep for the rest of his life over it, but there's no reason why someone can't maintain a healthy life and still be able to say for the rest of his life, "I hate the fucker and I wish he were dead".

Sorry if I sound like a telemarketer, or worse, a religious zealot (oh the shame). I was talking about actions, not feelings. Of course, a victim should keep hating the criminal, I just meant that following through with those instincts is bad. And I'm not talking about going into a coffee shop and coming face-to-face with your child's rapist bragging about what he did... I'm talking about knowing that said rapist has been released after spending most of his life in prison, and going out of your way to ruin/end his life. That sort of thing.

Again, my point is that the imprisonment of a criminal will not satisfy the need for revenge of its victims, but society, who must be dispassionate, should not succumb to this anger, and make sure even the criminal's rights are respected, no matter how little the scumbag deserves them.


As for the punching example, it was more of a metaphor than anything else, trying to point out how conflict should be resolved in a civil way. Substitute "punch me in the face" with "raped my wife" if the punching scenario looks too silly. Also, another flaw of that scenario is that you're right there, and react in the heat of things. I wouldn't blame someone who outright kills a man when catching him in the act raping his wife. And probably a court of law wouldn't either (not too harshly at least), taking into account both self-defense, and mental instability due to anger.

I hate to break it to you, but this ain't Sunday School. You can't just preach it and have people say "amen". You haven't done jack shit to justify your position; you simply stated it again.

Apologies if I come out as preachy. I'm trying to explain my position, but have trouble translating my thoughts into words (maybe you've noticed how I write overly-elaborated phrases when something simpler should do, not sure why, I'm seriously not trying to sound pedantic or preachy).

To make it as clear as I can, my justification aganist the use of death penalty, is that society has to make sure the rights of every one are respected. Killing someone will deny that person the chance to repent, or worse, will deny justice the chance to find out if that person was actually guilty. As clint eastwood said in a movie:

"When you kill a man, you not only take all that he was, but also all that he'll ever be"

Of course, the flipside of this is that society (and by society I mean the whole legal/judicial system) must make sure a criminal does not hurt others again. Probably the problem here is that keeping a murderous lunatic alive is expensive.


Anyway, apologies again if I come out as preachy.

[Gil Hamilton]

Except if they don't give enough anasthetic, you die in agony and they aren't trying to give lethal overdoses of anasthetic, so yes it does fucking matter. Its the third part of the cocktail they kill you with. If they just overdosed the guys on opiates instead of the three part chemical cocktail of the paralyzer, anasthetic, and poison then it would be less of an issue.

There isn't a worry about that, IO. They give a MASSIVE overdose of the general anesthetic, which BY ITSELF would be lethal. The potassium chloride and parcurium bromide are there to actually speed up the process by stopping the heart. If they just took the same dose of sodium pentathol (which is a barbituite) it WOULD kill the condemned, it would just take an hour as opposed to ten to fifteen minutes.

[Rye]

I don't see why they can't just perform a controlled demolition of the offenders. Get them to drink a sedative at the end of their last meal, put on suicide bomb vest, dump in concrete hole round the back of the prison, detonate by remote, wash out pit, next one in.

[CmdrWilkens]

I don't see why they can't just perform a controlled demolition of the offenders. Get them to drink a sedative at the end of their last meal, put on suicide bomb vest, dump in concrete hole round the back of the prison, detonate by remote, wash out pit, next one in.

Because, all things aside, destroying the body beyond the ability of the family to have a decent burial (or the option for cremation) is unneccessarily harsh on the family of the condemned. While I do support Capital Punishment there is no need to make it so destructive as to deprive the family, who did not commit the crime, of at least some small chance at closure. Simply put destroying the body is cruel to the non offending family.

[brianeyci]

There's something here that's missing that nobody's brought up: concern for the executioners.

A firing squad is supremely superior to all the other alternatives in this regard. They can load seven guns with blanks, and have one with a bullet. Or three with bullets, however many is necessary. If all eight are marksmen, at point blank range, there will be minsicule chance of miss. They just got to pick a gun that it's hard to tell if you're shooting a live round or not, and ready. Even if it's easy to tell (I don't know I've never fired a gun) there's a psychological factor: maybe it wasn't his bullet that killed the guy, and maybe he heard wrong.

Then nobody has to go around their whole lives thinking that they killed a man. A hood works for hiding the identity of the executioner from the public, but the executioner still has to live with himself. I remember a news article with an executioner who retired, and they were having trouble finding people for the job. I sure wouldn't want to be the guy who hangs people for a living, and I especially wouldn't want to be the guy digging in someone's arm to stick in a needle.

Doctors will be loathe to go around killing people involuntarily with lethal injection. So the injection is administered by substandard people. But it's a lot easier to find eight reservists to form a firing squad to kill a serial rapist or mass murderer, and they will never even know if it was their bullet that killed the guy (or if their gun even fired a bullet.)

[Durandal]

Ethically, I support the death penalty. But I don't think it can be implemented fairly in the United States due to lingering attitudes of racism. The lion's share of death row inmates are minorities, and not all of them are guilty or even deserving if they are.

[Kamakazie Sith]

I hope my previous point was clear despite my convoluted english.


Anyway, there's no way to be humane when killing someone who does not want to die. The mere knowledge of its fate is a torture by itself, as pointed previously. Probably, the most cruel part of a death sentence, is the time spent in Death Row, waiting for the inevitable...

Yes, but they probably should have thought about that before they took the life of another person.

And please, tell me something, if there is no vengeful intent at all in executions, then why prevent Death Row inmates from commiting suicide? They would be ending the threat they present anyway, right?

It's part of the legal system. They're promised food, protection, etc until their judgment is carried out. You could argue the same for someone sentence to life.

Barring a hypothetical super-human who could not be contained by a simple cell, or maybe an straight jacket, I see no need to execute someone, no matter how potentially dangerous they might be.

That's a good point. Nobody has ever escaped from prison. NOBODY!

Even the most obscene killer could repent from its crimes. Who has the right to take that away from them? Who can see the future and tell what'll happen?

Society has that right. It's simple numbers. Society has more than that one person. That one person chose to end the life of another person is an exceptionally horrible manner, or his target was exceptionally vulnerable. We're not talking about executing someone for stealing bread here.

Lets not forget that the ability to forgive is not only a sign of greatness, but the only way social wounds can be healed and finally closed. Execution is an outright refusal to forgive.

I like how you demand to know who has the right, and then claim that "forgiveness is a sign of greatness". In some situations it can be a sign of weakness.

[Kamakazie Sith]

Sorry if I sound like a telemarketer, or worse, a religious zealot (oh the shame). I was talking about actions, not feelings. Of course, a victim should keep hating the criminal, I just meant that following through with those instincts is bad. And I'm not talking about going into a coffee shop and coming face-to-face with your child's rapist bragging about what he did... I'm talking about knowing that said rapist has been released after spending most of his life in prison, and going out of your way to ruin/end his life. That sort of thing.

Again, my point is that the imprisonment of a criminal will not satisfy the need for revenge of its victims, but society, who must be dispassionate, should not succumb to this anger, and make sure even the criminal's rights are respected, no matter how little the scumbag deserves them.

How is imposing a death penalty violate those rights?

As for the punching example, it was more of a metaphor than anything else, trying to point out how conflict should be resolved in a civil way. Substitute "punch me in the face" with "raped my wife" if the punching scenario looks too silly. Also, another flaw of that scenario is that you're right there, and react in the heat of things. I wouldn't blame someone who outright kills a man when catching him in the act raping his wife. And probably a court of law wouldn't either (not too harshly at least), taking into account both self-defense, and mental instability due to anger.

Ahh Utah certainly isn't anywhere close to perfect. Here you can kill someone who is trying to rape your wife, and be legally justified.

To make it as clear as I can, my justification aganist the use of death penalty, is that society has to make sure the rights of every one are respected. Killing someone will deny that person the chance to repent, or worse, will deny justice the chance to find out if that person was actually guilty. As clint eastwood said in a movie:

The only thing you have is the flaws of punishing the innocent. However, you're not taking away any rights of a truly guilty person that deserves the death penalty. They gave up those rights when they choose that path of action, and don't forget that. Don't forget about the rights of the victim, and potential victims. Those should ALWAYS take priority over the rights of the criminal.

Of course, the flipside of this is that society (and by society I mean the whole legal/judicial system) must make sure a criminal does not hurt others again. Probably the problem here is that keeping a murderous lunatic alive is expensive.

No, the problem is that no system is perfect, and you run the risk of this person escaping. I'm not even talking about someone that murdered someone in a crime of passion. I'm talking about a psychopath.

Anyway, apologies again if I come out as preachy.

Not preachy, but it is naive and unjustified.

[Imperial Overlord]

[
There isn't a worry about that, IO. They give a MASSIVE overdose of the general anesthetic, which BY ITSELF would be lethal. The potassium chloride and parcurium bromide are there to actually speed up the process by stopping the heart. If they just took the same dose of sodium pentathol (which is a barbituite) it WOULD kill the condemned, it would just take an hour as opposed to ten to fifteen minutes.

really?

They might aim for that, but there's too many cases of people convulsing in agony for me to believe that they get it right often enough and when they screw it up its a prolonged period of suffering, not a few moments between the first bullet being fired and the coup de grace.