Should capital punishment be humane?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

After conviction and no more appeals then ...

 

If you are going to kill a man, does it really matter if it doesn't hurt? 

 

For a painless execution I recommend the Guillotine.  Quick, if terrifying, but probably painless because it is over in an instant.  A bit bloody, but it puts the point of shedding blood rather forcefully as the arterial spray hits the blade.

 

The state doesn't do barbaric things like kill people in Canada.  You'd have to assassinate Her Majesty to be even considered for execution, and not even then, although the U.K. might ask for a kick at the cat.  We have never, to my knowledge, had a case of high treason in this country.

[LexusInfernus 908]

Yes it has to be humane. Pretty sure it says somewhere that cruel and unusual punishments are forbidden. Whats more cruel and usual than a very painful death. 

 

Still, what the law says (and basic human decency) does not necessarily translate to practice. The US still uses the electric chair and if you want an extremely cruel way to kill someone, you can use the electric chair. 

 

 

Besides the guilliotine I suppose that gassing someone is also relatively painless, and hanging, if done correctly is also a quick and relatively painless death as it basically snaps your neck. 

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Lethal injection, if done properly ia pretty quick and entirely painless.

--Ocram

[Duke87 1,070]

It is rather ironic to be concerned with minimizing the amount of suffering involved in punishing a violent criminal. Isn't the entire point of punishment to cause suffering? Seems rather like trying to build a fire that doesn't get hot.

 

As for the idea of capital punishment itself... well, it isn't punishment so much as it's disposal of garbage individuals. The problem is that once done it cannot be undone - plenty of innocent men have hung over the course of history. If they're in prison you can at least let them out. And as expensive as keeping someone in prison is, the arduous appeals process associated with executing someone is even more expensive.

[Larks2242 251]

Lethal injection, if done properly ia pretty quick and entirely painless.

--Ocram

 

Costly though, a firing squad is much more effective.

[blade2k5 1,523]

 

Lethal injection, if done properly ia pretty quick and entirely painless.

--Ocram

 

Costly though, a firing squad is much more effective.

 

 

And cheaper.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I still like the Guillotine.  Fast and very sure.  And probably less terrifying than being strapped down to a gurney in the green execution chamber of some prison with nurses bumbling around.  Hanging has to be "just so" or the victim can be either beheaded or strangled.

 

Of course, all this after very expensive due process.  Access to the law is problematic for people more and more these days.

[AkemiAzula 280]

The idea of killing criminals is the same of uprooting weeds. Why beat about the bush. Choose the simplest method and get on to the next lot of weeds in the lawn. I also vote for the guillotine.

[Joe 90 358]

Surely the method would be irrelevant if the executee was anaesthetised first? If you're unconscious and can't feel being disembowled by cute bunnies with razor blades tied to their paws :bunny: that's still 'humane,' right?

[LexusInfernus 908]

Lethal injection, if done properly ia pretty quick and entirely painless.

--Ocram

Except that quite often, due to a lack of doctors, they screw it up and quick and painless turns into slow and agonizing. And even when they don't miss the artery or whatever, they get the doses wrong because apparently body size, body weight and body type matter and as a result it still goes wrong.

 

Also, firing squads are not that effective. Probably quicker than the chair or lethal injection, but there are no guarantees that after the first volley you are dead. Even bullets to the head are not as effective as one might think. Quite often they don't instantly kill you but put you into a coma. Also, firing squads tend to cause significant amounts of stress with the people doing the shooting. 

 

I agree with Nonny, if you want to execute someone, use a guillotine. Those things never miss, instantly behead you, which from all ways we discussed so far is probably the quickest and least painful way to die. On the plus side, it also allows a relatively intact body to be given to the family of the executed, and it can be done without the need for a doctor or the cause significant stress on the executioners.  

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Wow. Uprooting weeds, human garbage, humane firing squads, the primary purpose of punishment to cause suffering... the proud spearhead of Western civilization shines in all its glory today.

[catty-cb 4,412]

...I agree with Nonny, if you want to execute someone, use a guillotine. Those things never miss, instantly behead you, which from all ways we discussed so far is probably the quickest and least painful way to die. On the plus side, it also allows a relatively intact body to be given to the family of the executed, and it can be done without the need for a doctor or the cause significant stress on the executioners.

 

Give them a sedative before its done and use a automated guillotine so someone doesn't have to act as the executioner and its about as quick and as pain-free as its possible to get, I'm still of the opinion that unless it proven beyond any possibility of mistake then we shouldn't execute people, and if its a punishment I know if someone murdered me and I got a vote I'd want them to have a long and unpleasant life as possible ie locked up for life in prison, rather than a quick death, and if its meant to be a deterrent, well I can only quote what Albert Pierrepoint (Became an assistant Executioner in 1932 in England, Chief Executioner in 1941, and retired in 1956 having executed 435 people) had to say when asked what he thought about it.

 

 

It is said to be a deterrent. I cannot agree. There have been murders since the beginning of time, and we shall go on looking for deterrents until the end of time. If death were a deterrent, I might be expected to know. It is I who have faced them last, young men and girls, working men, grandmothers. I have been amazed to see the courage with which they take that walk into the unknown. It did not deter them then, and it had not deterred them when they committed what they were convicted for. All the men and women whom I have faced at that final moment convince me that in what I have done I have not prevented a single murder.

 

-catty

[paeng 2,521]

After millennia of thinking up ways of killing (punishing), like: Boiling, Decapitation, Electrocution, Firing squad, Gas chamber, Hanging, Lethal injection, Stoning, Blowing from a gun, Breaking wheel, Burning, Crucifixion, Crushing, Disembowelment, Dismemberment, Drawing and quartering, Flaying, Garrote, Immurement, Impalement, Mazzatello, Poena cullei, Premature burial, Sawing, Scaphism, Slow slicing, Suffocation in ash... The "best" you can come up with is the Guillotine?

To even utter the word "humane" in the same breath is beyond me.


Most of the modern world is running an abolishionist course - only 21 countries were known to have had executions carried out (in 2011), with these 'top 10' -

 1 China                   Unknown
 2 Iran                         360
 3 Saudi Arabia            82
 4 Iraq                          68
 5 United States           43
 6 Yemen                     41
 7 North Korea            30
 8 Somalia                  10
 9 Sudan                      7
10 Bangladesh            5

Even in the few retentionist countries left, use of the death penalty has become increasingly restrained, to a point where it can be imposed, but is not carried out any more (pending abolishion).


Albert Pierrepoint had it right (see previous quote by Catty) -
It did not deter them then, and it had not deterred them when they committed what they were convicted for.


"Capital Punishment" is just a base act of revenge.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Paeng has it right, of course.  Now the question is should the state take revenge?

[paeng 2,521]

should the state take revenge?

 

No.

Our first instinct may be to inflict pain on someone who wrongs us, but the standards of a mature society demand a more measured response. Vengeance may be a strong and natural emotion - but it has no place in a justice system.

Giving in to our basest motives of revenge just ends in another killing, extending the chain of violence. Allowing executions does sanction killing as a form of 'pay-back'. The notion of "An eye for an eye", or "A life for a life", is a simplistic one which modern societies do not endorse. We do not allow torturing the torturer, or raping the rapist.

[AkemiAzula 280]

The problem with punishment is if its used as a deterrent we have to be sure we all agree what should be a crime and what should not and nobody ever will agree on that. If its purely for the sake of spite then what is that saying about us. We become our own enemy.

 

I view criminals in a rational manner as weeds and problems and as such the guillotine, administered properly, is the most civilized manner. Give them their last words and let them dictate their will, and their dress at time of death, allow them to be accompanied by those they wish to be. It is not difficult and makes us far worthier men than the animals who torture and imprison for 're-education'

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

Personally I am for the death penalty for very severe crimes, for instance wanton acts of destruction (arson, terrorism, ...) or deeds where numerous lives are either lost or maimed physically and/or mentally. Some criminals are beyond redemption and some people in powerful positions (i.e. government, finance, the military, etc...) have committed crimes which have affected thousands if not millions of people. It could be war crimes, or blatant fraud or gross incompetence.

 

In one sense I'm considering the private banking sector and central banks. They are almost untouchable but they have presided over numerous financial crises and scandals: subprime mortgages, bailouts, LIBOR fixing, providing money to cartels and terrorists, dodgy loans and a whole host of things to horde as much money as possible. They cannot go to prison because they can afford the best lawyers, they have a stranglehold over regulators and they are the most powerful lobbyists of Congress and the Senate.

 

Money is the basis of our civilization, but many bankers are just -- forgive the language -- pissing on this basis. If the system worked all these criminals would have had all their assets confiscated and sentenced to life imprisonment or received the death penalty. But this system seems to have an inverse correlation between the magnitude of a crime and the magnitude of the punishment. Consider a thief could hold up a store, take the money and kill the cashier, and he goes to the slammer for 30 or so years, perhaps even executed. Whereas a bank could invest so recklessly it loses tens of billions of deposits -- other people's money -- and some of those people may really need that money: for a health operation or something very urgent, but they're now totally screwed.

 

Now as we have seen the bank is bailed out, the depositors receive a few cents to the dollar of their savings and a few middle-ranking bank employees are scapegoated. But the bank still exists and those who run it get away scotch free, hell they even get a golden parachute if they decide to leave. The higher up the societal food chain you go the less accountability there is while the options for evading justice only multiply as you become richer. Scum like that -- those individuals who have caused great harm to society and numerous people -- deserve to be executed because to show them leniency, IMO, is in one way condoning their behaviour.

 

On the other end of the spectrum there are those psychopaths: the serial killers, killers who torture people or hunt them down like animals. Whether their actions were meditated or caused by some mental condition is impossible to tell; some of these people are plain crazy and others are pretending to be crazy. But execution is the most effective way to ensure they will never harm others or be a burden to society (because it costs a fortune to place them in a psychiatric secure unit for life). That way the surviving victims may find a means of closure, and what better reassurance than the knowledge that the person who harmed you is dead?

 

As for the means of capital punishment, let it be quick and efficient. Guillotine or a firing squad are the quickest methods, also the public should be able to see such executions if they so wish. Even in far more decent society -- than the one we have now -- the option of capital punishment may be needed for some individuals who are simply too dangerous to exist in a civilised society. There's always going to be some madman or a wolf in sheep's clothing who wishes to cause nothing but harm to other people. And yes there will be mistakes occasionally, an innocent person will be wrongly executed.

 

So the death penalty is not so much an evil, but a pragmatical necessity as a legal punishment for the worst of crimes.

[timmie 988]

I think the guillotine and firing squad were the methods used in Belgium until we stopped using capital punishment (1918 in civilian use, 1950 in war-related cases). Only officially abolished in 1996, we were among the first to stop using it, and among the last to officially end it. Which is of course the right choice.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Unless and until man can create life, it is improper for him to take life away.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I think that Capital Punishment should be reserved for multiple counts of Murder 1. If the killer is proven beyond a doubt, there should be no appeals. Capital Punishment should be as humane as possible. Mistakes happen but murderers gave up their rights by committing heinous crimes. Humane execution is neither cruel or unusual. As Rad Progs take over the governments, execution might become less usual but when the right methods are done properly, it is not in the least bit cruel.

--Ocram

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Of course in Medieval times, the ultimate court could send the miscreant to God for adjudication.  If there was an error it was up to the Divine Judge to rectify it, but it was no longer of earthly concern.  Sometimes in a serious dispute, both parties would be dispatched.

[AkemiAzula 280]

Well given the harshness of debate on all sides in the battle for truth and righteousness in our realm possibly that would be for the best haha

[catty-cb 4,412]

Of course in Medieval times, the ultimate court could send the miscreant to God for adjudication.  If there was an error it was up to the Divine Judge to rectify it, but it was no longer of earthly concern.  Sometimes in a serious dispute, both parties would be dispatched.

 

there was also something called Weregild (had many different names and costs depending on where you lived and what century it was, but it placed a value on each person which you would have to pay if you killed someone) in the 8th century, for example if you killed a duke or archbishop it would be three times the cost of killing a ordinary person (200 shillings), while if you killed a priest it would be 300 shillings up to 400 shillings if you killed them will they were reading mass, in some places it would be double to kill a woman and in other places it would be half the cost of killing a man.

 

-catty

[hym 358]

Vengeance may be a strong and natural emotion - but it has no place in a justice system.

 

That is debatable.  Criminologists across the world generally recognize that one of the functions of a prison system is retribution.

[astronelson 339]

I am very much against capital punishment, but if it must be done may I suggest inert gas asphyxiation? Nitrogen is very easy to come by.

[AkemiAzula 280]

If one of the purposes of the justice system is retribution, that hardly places us in a positive light, now does it. It certainly isn't something we ought to be proud of.

[LexusInfernus 908]

To even utter the word "humane" in the same breath is beyond me.

"Capital Punishment" is just a base act of revenge.

I disagree completely. Indeed, capital punishment as an act of revenge is wrong and the state should never indulge in such behavior. But I disagree that it is an inhumane punishment. If acted out correctly, I find execution an infinitely more humane punishment than for example life in prison, or any kind of prison sentence that exceeds 20 years. Putting people in small cages, restricting their movement to a few square meters, being able to breath in fresh air for only an hour a day, the complete lack of any kind of freedom, of entertainment, the mind numbing boredom of sitting in a cell, and that for decades with no change, thats what I call inhumane. I personally would rather be executed than endure that hellish torture for an extended period of time. 

 

Furthermore, there are also criminals who are simply to dangerous to be left alive, or whose crimes are so mind boggling evil that its for the better of society if these individuals were completely removed. War criminals for example, people who are responsible for genocide, to have them executed does not serve as revenge, its just the easiest and most efficient way to ensure that society is safe from such individuals. Or in the case of certain important people within say a human smuggling ring, people involved in kidnapping, smuggling and then forcing into prostitution of other people. They are part of a network and releasing them ever again into society is dangerous. Of course, life in prison would achieve the same, but like I said, I find that far more inhumane than a quick clean decapitation. 

 

Also, I disagree with the idea that our justice system should be based on retribution. It may be an aspect of it, but it should never be the focus of a justice system. If anything, it should aim at fixing people, ensuring that after the state is through with them, they are reformed members of society who can contribute in a positive way. So in general, punishments should be kept to a minimal and with a focus on rehabilitation and not just punishment. 

[Duke87 1,070]

I am very much against capital punishment, but if it must be done may I suggest inert gas asphyxiation? Nitrogen is very easy to come by.

 

I think something about killing people with gas, even if it isn't the same process as people think of when they hear that, touches a few nerves given a certain item from history.

[Hamish 1,370]

I am against capital punishment, however if your nation or state deems it appropriate then I think every measure should be taken to keep the process as humane as possible. Why should your morals be tainted by the actions of another. 

[paeng 2,521]

I find it too easy to just bring in the Hannibals of the world... But since slavery, prostitution, war-crimes and such were brought in - how about the countless assholes who speculate e.g. on food-prices, causing literally millions to hunger or die (LnX expanded a bit on that earlier)? Their crimes are no less mind-boggling and evil... We gonna kill them all, too?