China executed the head of their FDA for corruption charges, and I will attempt to resist saying things like “Gee- our current administration sure is lucky this isn’t China.”
Whoops, I guess I couldn’t resist. Regardless, as someone who opooses the death penalty, I find it interesting that I can find no discussion of how the execution was carried out. I defy you to find the details.
If a society intends to carry out executions, they should be public and messy so citizens have to deal with the fact that they are accomplices.
Zifnab
When they mail you the bill for the bullet, make sure you get the receipt. You know, for appeals purposes.
ThymeZone
Onion headlines to come?
“FEMA Chief Executed for Emergency Response Snafus”
“Attorney General Hanged for Running Govt Protection Racket at DOJ”
“Karl Rove Executed for Being a Complete Asshole”
“DHS Officials To Gas Chamber for Abject Failure to Protect America”
Well, we can hope.
Prince Roy
keep all your receipts from Walmart. Same thing, really.
Psycheout
Now that’s what I call zero tolerance.
RSA
The last public execution in the U.S. was held in 1936. As someone opposed to the death penalty, I think that public executions would be a good way to change people’s minds about it. Currently it’s too much like letting someone else do the dirty work.
Mr Furious
Nah. I’m perfectly comfortable with not knowing how TZ’s shopping cart is filled…
Rob
FWIW: “As lethal injection becomes more common, debate has intensified over the fairness of relying on lethal injection to execute high officials convicted of corruption while ordinary criminals get executed by firearms. It is public opinion in China that lethal injection is an easier way for the condemned to die.”
From wikipedia & dubious sources.
Gus
You oppose the death penalty? Remind me again why you used to be a Republican.
The Pirate
Generally the Chinese just take people in vans to (empty) soccer stadiums and then shoot them in the back of the head. They also have a charming custom of billing the families of the deceased for the price of the bullet.
They’ve also added these new roving “execution buses” which are basically buses chock-full of lethal injections that roam the country dispensing liquid justice.
tBone
I don’t know about that. Every time there’s an execution in my state, a crowd gathers outside the state pen at the scheduled time of execution. A small portion of them are protestors, heavily outnumbered by a mob of inbred slopebrows who hoot and holler about how cool it is that we’re going to fry a dirty damn criminal. I think they’d get off on it even more if they could actually watch the deed being done.
Bill Arnold
Wikipedia: China currently uses two methods of execution. The most common is execution by firearms, which uses an assault rifle to fire a single shot of a hollow point bullet designed to expand upon impact, resulting in the disintegration of the upper portion of the brain. Lethal injection was introduced in 1997. It differs from its application in the U.S. in that it is carried out in fixed locations as well as in specially modified mobile vans built by Iveco. As lethal injection becomes more common, debate has intensified over the fairness of relying on lethal injection to execute high officials convicted of corruption while ordinary criminals get executed by firearms. It is public opinion in China that lethal injection is an easier way for the condemned to die.
So one guess lethal injection in this case.
MobiusKlein
So China executes the bribe taker, but not the bribe giver?
Seems that in this case, where unsafe medicines were allowed, that justice should be symetrical.
And for Conservatives opposing the death penalty – the best line I heard from one was “Do you really trust the GOVERNMENT that much?”
semper fubar
Well at least in China when they’re looking for scapegoats, they start at the top of the food chain, not at the bottom like we do here.
I’m waiting for all of our law’n’order Republicans to embrace the death penalty for public officials found guilty of wrongdoing.
Tick tock tick tock….
grumpy realist
One of the reasons one finds extremely graphic portrayals in medieval/Renaissance art of punishments (like getting skinned alive–standard punishment for a corrupt judge) is that said paintings were usually hung in the halls of justice as a warning….
And yeah, I can see why one might want to get into the death penalty for really friggingly obvious cases of corruption or incompetence.
The Other Steve
The Democrats are worse.
scats
How are “citizens” of totalitarian regimes accomplices? The argument makes sense for democracies, but I don’t see how it applies to China.
Tax Analyst
Just got here, but he’s right on this one. “Society” in this context is the “Ruling Party”. The citizens have little say in the punishment policies of China. Occasionally great public uproar will lead to a Government official or wealthy man being executed in a corruption case when in most similar instances they might have been sent to prison instead. The imposition of punishment is quite often a very arbitrary thing in dictatorship.
Not like things here in the U.S. where the Rule of Law dictates that all are treated equally…the “High and Mighty” serve their 30-months just like the “Common Criminal” Er…don’t they?
RSA
Call me an optimist. More pragmatically, the anti-abortion protesters seem to think that picketing with pictures of bloody fetuses is effective (though one wonders why no one is protesting against, say, the hip replacement surgeries we can see in gory detail on the Discovery Channel–totally gross). Public spectacles might encourage the rabble, but I think they’d also cause more reasonable people to rethink. I could be wrong. Very wrong.
SPIIDERWEB™
Two things come to mind. Well, in my mind.
1. If people saw executions it might well turn them off from wanting more.
2. Public executions didn’t seen to stop peoples’ blood lust in the past.
We need a study.
Meanwhile I’m with you about the death penalty.
Jon H
I’m surprised they use lethal injection – that must make it hard to harvest the organs for transplant.
tBone
Hey, I protest them vehemently. My wife refuses to give me the remote.
They’re still not as disturbing as Extreme Home Makeover or American Idol, though.
jake
When you consider the vast majority of abortions are performed first trimester, picketing with signs of fetuses aborted in the third trimester … call it one more example of how well the Fetus Fetishists think. Either that or they know a blow up photo of a zygote will just make people think “EeeW! Get it off me! Get it off meeee!!”
Jessica
Actually, I think WE are lucky our current administration isn’t taking its cues from the Chinese. Imagine what a horror this country would be if Bush could just KILL those who tried to fight or expose his incompetence, rather than just firing and/or discrediting them.
Tax Analyst
Well, yeah…I HOPE no one is seriously advocating the Chinese procedures – one would hope we would recognize how much this administration is attempting to push things in that direction (withg regard to “Executive Privilege outweighing “The Rule of Law”)and recoil and speak up against it. Right now the issue seems “extreme leniency for the well-connected”, but the flip side of that coin is the under-handed attempts (successful) to punish those who resist…i.e., the Federal prosecutor’s who wouldn’t play ball with the politicizing of their office serving as but one of many examples.
BIRDZILLA
Gosh if we exicuted all those in this country that were guilty of coruption 85% of the politicians in Washington D.C. would be on the gallows