This raises a number of questions:
Judges in several states have started to put up potentially insurmountable roadblocks to the use of lethal injections to execute condemned inmates.
Their decisions are based on new evidence suggesting that prisoners have endured agonizing executions. In response, judges are insisting that doctors take an active role in supervising executions, even though the American Medical Association’s code of ethics prohibits that.
A federal judge in North Carolina, for instance, ordered state officials there to find medical personnel by noon today to supervise an execution scheduled for next week. Otherwise, the judge said, he will impose a stay of execution.
“This, of course, will make lethal injections difficult, if not impossible, to perform,” said Dr. Jonathan I. Groner, a professor of surgery at Ohio State University who has studied lethal injections and opposes the death penalty.
I understand that there will be a not insignificant portion of the population whose attitude will reflexively be “Screw ’em. They deserve some pain.” If that is your attitude, this discussion is not for you, so don’t waste my time in the comments. However, there is something to the notion that it is silly to worry about a little pain when you are, in fact, killing someone.
As someone who is against the death penalty (for reasons stated repeatedly in previous posts), if lethal injection does indeed create a great deal of pain, I would suggest abolishing it in favor of a more gruesome method of execution. Killing people while pretending it is painless will be harder to stop than a few televised electrocutions with the guilty parties extremities and hair on fire and eyes shooting out of their sockets.
Of course, my ultimate goal would be the cessation of government executions completely. The road to that ultimate goal may be shorter if people actually realize how awful the death penalty is, and with these horrid executions we can also put to rest (sorry) the ‘death penalty deterrence’ myth.
Faux News
Absolutely NO doctor is going to risk his/her license by breaking their oath of “First Do No Harm” as well as the AMA code of ethics to assist in an execution.
Except Dr. Josef Mengele of course :-) Yeah, I had to go there. Now flame away.
The Other Steve
I’d like to see us go back to hanging and/or the guillotine.
Rick DeMent
All you really have to do is slip in a tube, drain the blood, the subject passes out, and dies, no pain beyond what you suffer during a routine exam.
But I’m against the death penalty as well so…
fwiffo
There are arguments against the death penalty from almost every direction of the political spectrum.
Small-government conservative: It’s a power the government shouldn’t have.
Economic conservaitve: It’s expensive.
Liberal: It’s a human rights issue.
Religious conservative: It against the culture of life (nevermind that the Bible is clearly pro-death-penalty).
Religious liberal: It violates Christian principles of forgiveness (nevermind that religious liberals ignore at least as much of the Bible as conservatives).
Secular types: The death penalty is something crazy religous people do.
Civil libertarian: It’s cruel (if not unusual) punishment.
Finger-in-the-windists: Almost every other country except some really scary places have abolished the death penalty.
Andrew
fwiffo,
Not to mention the Evil Ones are cleary pro death penalty.
Steve
Historically speaking, by the way, one of the reasons for the prevalence of the death penalty was that there wasn’t really any good alternative. If you go back a couple centuries, the lack of modern hygiene and medicine meant that any jail sentence longer than two weeks was tantamount to death, so it’s not surprising that many countries handed out the death penalty for any serious felony. The concept of “life in prison” simply wasn’t an option.
Vladi G
I’m pretty much unequivicably opposed to the death penalty for moral reasons. However, putting those aside, I can’t really see why a condemned individual suffering a minute or two of pain, no matter how excrutiating, before dying would change anyone’s mind. I mean, are there people out there who say “Well, I believe wholeheartedly that the state should take someone’s life if a jury makes that decision, but my position totally changes if the process causes some pain”?
Really, if you’re willing to kill another person out of spite or some sense of justice, chances are that deep down you just don’t care how it’s carried out.
Vladi G
Make that “unequivocally”
Mr Furious
Vladi’s right. We’re not talking about euthanasia, we are executing people. I’m not sure people are going to get all up at arms about this.
Now I actually do not oppose the death penalty in theory, but I do oppose it in practice. In this country the DP is administered unfairly and unequally and I have no confidence that the nation’s death rows aren’t riddled with innocent inmates.
I simply do not trust the criminal justice system, and there is no undoing the execution of an innocent man. A would rather no one ever be executed again in order to keep that from happening.
For the record, I would certainly prefer that the procedure be painless and as dignified as possible.
capelza
Lethal injection sanitised the death penalty for the fence sitters who were uncomfortable with the idea of electrocution and burnt flesh or the twitching body of the hanged man. The idea od “no pain” made it acceptable to them, or at least tolerable. For others, it made no difference, they’d rather be able to drag the condemned out into the public square and tear then apart themsleves, in a frenzy of bloody revenge (even if they didn’t know who the victim was). These folks don’t care if it hurts or not.
Can the state FORCE medical practitioners to do this? If people are all set on the death penalty ( I am not…) why not create a national set of executioners, like they had in France. Though those folks became social pariahs, they did what no one else would do.
canuckistani
In theory, I could easily support the death penalty for the most heinious, monstrous crimes. For instance, I support the executions of the major war criminals in the Nuremburg trials. However, it is clear that trials run less carefully run the real risk of punishing the innocent, the guilty of lesser crimes or the insane. When the judges are elected officials who could pander to the mob’s thirst for revenge, the risks are even worse. I think in practice, the death penalty is unworkable and unjust, and excepting a very few extreme cases, should be discarded.
Krista
I agree, canuckistani. There are certain criminals who I feel should be put down like a rabid dog. However, it just stands too much of a chance of being abused.
slickdpdx
Are you willing to concede that the fear of a penalty might deter anyone?
If not, I imagine you must drive like a maniac!
Off Colfax
As far as I’m concerned, we should go back to the firing squad. One bullet to the heart or head will kill almost instantly, and with nine other guys firing blank rounds, none of them will know who exactly had the live round in the chamber.
And it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than all those expensive chemicals, monitoring systems, and other folderol that lethal injection seems to require. (For example, why sterilize the equipment? It’s only going to be used on a soon-to-be corpse, and I’m fairly positive that the last thing they’d be worried about would be a rampant infection.)
Vladi G
Fear of a penalty? Yes. Fear of this particular penalty as opposed to, say, life imprisonment? No.
Right, because the only reason to drive in a safe manor is because otherwise, you might get busted. This is the same logic that says if it weren’t for the fires of hell and the ten commandments, people would be murdering each other left and right. Look, just because you may need to fear authority in order to function properly in society, it doesn’t mean that the rest of us normal people do. Thank God the cops are out there to protect us safe drivers from idiots like yourself.
CaseyL
Well, the equipment is handled by prison officials and technicians, who are not soon-to-be-corpses. Maybe the antiseptic procedures are to protect them.
Equipment or technique could go awry. People could get sprayed with blood, with chemicals, with the residue of whatever was in the equipment if it hadn’t been sterilized.
And afterwards, someone has to clean up the death chamber, and put the equipment away.
Par R
I agree that we should stop the lethal injection approach to applying the death penalty. Instead, we should mandate that the individual sentenced to death be forced to read all of John’s screeds opposing the death penalty, together with his acolyte’s agreeing comments in the related thread. This approach may still be a little painful for the convict, but it would likely lead to a solution all could perhaps live with, namely the convicted individual’s suicide.
Vladi G
Unfortunately it hasn’t killed you yet. Please keep reading.
Zim
Another argument against the death penalty is that it corrupts the executioner. While the executioner is doing the government’s bidding he is also committing an act of murder – for most of kind of people, this would have a lasting impact on their emotional lives – unless of course they enjoy it a little too much, which is even scarier.
Brian Palmer
I’m not sure where I stand on the death penalty; I think most days I favor it as a possibility. But I agree wholeheartedly that there’s almost certainly too many innocent people on death row. There’s probably too many innocent people *everywhere* in the prison system, along with people serving grossly unfair sentences.
What needs to happen is systematic cleansing of the criminal system. We need rational sentencing (no more mandatory 10 years for minor amounts of drug possession), re-examination of what constitutes probable cause, re-consideration of what should actually be illegal, and a renewed social commitment to the idea of innnocent until proven guilty *beyond a reasonable doubt*. In addition, we need to deal better with recidivism and post-prison opportunities (restoring full rights of citizenship, and making it so people can actually get jobs again — maybe simply by making it easier to create a new identity?).
Those are the things I think are more important than just abolishing the death penalty. As some people have observed, in some ways it’s better to go onto death row than be sentenced to life, if you’re innocent; you get many more appeal opportunities and pro bono assistance, thus a better chance of clearing your name and eventually escaping prison. (Oh, and I’d like a pony).
Vladi G
Weird. Should obviously be “safe manner”.
Realish
Man, I was starting to think I’m the last death-penalty opponent alive. Maybe I just haven’t been reading the right websites.
I must concur with some folks above, though — if you’re going to do something as monstrous as kill someone, why on earth would a few seconds of pain before death bother you?
Indeed, if the goal is retribution — and what else could it be in the case of the death penalty? — why not pain instead of, or in addition to, death? If we’re trying to punish someone, pain seems like the most direct and obvious way.
I mean, if you offer someone the choice of the death without the pain or the pain without the death, which do you think they’ll choose? Why try to pretend that death is “clean” or “humane”?
Death penalty advocates mystify me. Deeply. In such a way as to make me think I come from a different planet. I’ll never get it.
Par R
Vladi G wrote, in part:
Okay, everyone that thinks Vladi G is “normal people,” as opposed to some dirt bag from Chicago, please raise their hand.
canuckistani
Well, if you mean his moral code isn’t based on fear of punishment, I think he’s normal.
ppGaz
Once again …. why do we have to put up with the Pars, the Darrells and the Brians around here? The Three Stooges of the Right?
And please don’t waste MY time with something like “Well, several of you lefties such as yourself, ppGaz, are obnoxious assholes ….”
I’m talking about content. What in the hell do these righty noisemakers have to say, after the rhetorical dust has settled?
“Typical lefty hatred of Bush blah blah blah ….”
“ppGaz’s mother tried to drown him as a baby but failed …”
“All the lefties want is an echo chamber …”
All fine, award-winning “So’s your old man” rhetoric. But no substance. No ideas. No getting the bile out of their systems, and then carrying on something that approximates rational conversation. Just the same fucking drumbeat of lefties-are-shit stuff every goddamned day.
WTF, John and Tim? Seriously. WTF? If these people are the best the right can do, what is the point, exactly?
Is it true that the ppGazs and the paddys are relentless ballbusters? Sure. But we are outnumbered by lefties with reasonable voices and responsible arguments.
Are there righties out there who can make reasonable arguments and carry on actual conversations? If there are, maybe keeping the Three Stooges here isn’t attracting those better commenters? If not, then what purpose are the Stooges serving?
Vladi G
It’s OK. Par was heavily beaten as a child. He needs that fear of the stick to keep him from doing all sorts of deviant things. Why do you think these guys are such huge fans of the Patriot Act. They need to know someone’s watching them all the time or God knows what they’ll do.
mitch
I would like to offer an alternative to capital punishment. It’s called the Societal Restitution Plan – summarized as follows:
All individuals convicted of capital crimes are transported to a lush tropical island
The best of medical service is supplied
Co-ed or same sex options are available
Food is first quality, as is exercise equipment, Internet access, personal trainers, dieticians, etc…
However, everyone is tissue typed…
Whenever a body part is needed for the population at large, the search begins with the condemned. Immediate family members of the victim are at the top of the transplant list.
Parts are taken as needed and surgically removed
When a part is taken that results in bodily death, the remainder of the body is harvested for additional organs.
One potential downside – as the demand for organ transplants skyrockets, more crimes may be deemed “capital offenses.”
I make no claim to originality for this idea. I believe it was first proposed by a science fiction author whose name escapes me many years ago.
Vladi G
Dude, don’t forget. Those organs would immediately turn the people who receive them into killers as well. You really need to watch more movies.
ppGaz
Great idea. More expensive than the costly alternatives we have now, more grotesque, and more cruel to the inevitable innocents who get caught up in it.
Trifecta.
tzs
Larry Niven was the science fiction author. His Gil the ARM stories were set in a world that had organleggers.
GOP4Me
I like this idea. But why treat them so nicely? It makes no sense, to me. If someone commits murder, they get transported to a tropical paradise, and face only the dim off-chance of someday losing a kidney? What if they have hepatitis or AIDS? Who’d want their organs then? I think the Chinese have the best system. After they shoot the prisoners, they take their organs as part of the procedure. It’s considered the condemned person’s way of paying his debt to society. If we want to go with your system, we could set the guy free in the wilderness with a knife and a compass, then let the family of the victim(s) hunt after him. I think the name of that short story was “The Most Dangerous Game” or something, though, so it’s not very original either.
(All the good ideas have been taken, it sometimes seems. Every time I think of writing a screenplay about a killer shark or an aging Mafia Don and his family or a Death Star that destroys worlds at the behest of an evil galactic Empire and can only be stopped by a ragtag team of rebels including a whiny guy, an old dude, a hot chick, some annoying robots, and a furry growling thing, I hit this same obstacle.)
slickdpdx
So Vlad –
1. Is driving safely the same as driving to avoid a ticket? No.
2. What evidence do you have that life imprisonment is an equally effective deterrent?
3. There are some obvious problems with drawing conclusions from correlations between death penalty and murder rate. Which I’m sure the brilliant like yourself can figure out.
4. You all too easily dismiss the importance of retribution.
5. Have kidnappings increased because the state locks people in cages?
Par R
Notorious cry baby, ppGaz writes:
ppGaz, the perpetual whiner and momma’s boy, perfectly summarizes the case against assholes/fools/no-nothings, such as himself.
ppGaz
And once and for all, can we shut down the spoofs?
Obviously Brian and Par are just annoying spoofs.
If numbskulls like Bush and Rumsfeld can cook up a “war on terror” surely the blogs can figure out a way to keep out the rank spoofs?
Can we fight the spoofs over there so that we don’t have to fight them over here?
Jeezuz.
Par R
ppGaz – Keep it up, cry baby! I’ll bet your momma still has to help you with your buttons in the morning, you dumb ass loser.
Jack Roy
Peeps (that’s how I’m pronouncing ppGaz), it’s an admirable sentiment that’s ultimately unworkable. Where do you draw the line? GOP4Me is an apparent spoof, also, but sometimes funny and sometimes it’s hard to tell for sure. But goofy faux conservatism isn’t limited to them, but also includes Ann Coulter, John Hinderaker and Michelle Malkin et alia (et alia et alia ad nauseum), yet presumably we wouldn’t want to treat them as mere spoofs. So making some distinctions would be necessary, but we couldn’t justify it on principle. At the end of the day folks like Par are simply necessary consequences of the internet. Oh well.
On topic: John, by what moral principle could you justify increasing the suffering of the condemned simply to make a dramatic point? I’m against the death penalty myself, but given that it exists, and even given that it’s practiced in a distressingly anaesthetic / sanitized way, still it seems like concern for any individual person on death row controls over some larger abstract case against the death penalty.
Vladi G
1. What the fuck are you talking about? You made the assumption that without the fear of avoiding a ticket, people would drive like maniacs.
2. Irrelevant. The point is to keep killers off the streets. Regardless, for every study you can show that says capital punishmen is a deterrent, I can doubtlessly produce one that says it isn’t.
3. No study is perfect.
4. You all too easily dismiss the importance of acting like a civilized human being. Not surprising, really. But if we really want to base the legal system on emotion, why bother with trials? Public opinion polls ought to suffice.
5. More incoherent blather. Are you trying to say I’m claiming that the death penalty increases murder rates? I think what you’re trying to get at (and I’ll forgive you for being too much of a moron to get it straight) is that death penalty opponents reject “eye for an eye” in capital punishment, but don’t have a problem with it for kidnappers. Of course, people with a functioning brain can see that this argument is completely moronic. In any system of criminal punishment, there will without fail be a crime that is similar in nature to the punishment given for its commission. It doesn’t necessarily follow that every punishment that is similar in nature to the crime committed must thereby be rendered morally unacceptable.
ppGaz
Jack, drop me a line at the email address implied by the first text you see on my URL.
thx,
PG
slickdpdx
Vladi G: Like many bleeding hearts, you are a terminally angry person. So are a lot of gun nuts, but you don’t seem to be on of those.
If ’emotion’ doesn’t matter, what in the theory of deterrence prevents us from imposing draconian penalties for less serious crimes – assuming they deter and have an overall positive benefit on general society. (For instance you could argue against hand-chopping thieves without appealing to whether it is excessive in a retributive sense by arguing that having a bunch of one handed folks is even worse, but isn’t it really the EXCESSIVENESS of the punishment what makes it offensive to us?)
Try to express yourself without cursing.
Vladi G
I’m quite often very happy. I just have no tolerance for jackasses like yourself. In fact, I’m smiling as I type this. :)
Jack Roy
Done, and done, Peeps. Although I do hope you’re not just going to say you’re a 13-year-old girl looking for anonymous sex with someone from the internet. I mean, if me calling you “Peeps” bugs you that much you could just ask me to stop, not get me picked up by the FBI.
BIRDZILLA
Frankly those judges should be removed from the bench they have proven they have no buisness dictating anything to us its time to remove these idiots