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South Carolina Supreme Court rules state death penalty including firing squad is legal.
(www.voanews.com)
this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2024
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Lethal injection has serious downsides. It turns out the drugs simply keep you from moving about as you slowly asphyxiate.
The electric chair it truly cruel. Yes, it fries your system, but it does it relatively slowly.
The firing squad has the issue of the marksman's aim. If it's off, you die slowly. Even if it's dead on, pun intended, you realize what's happening.
I've always wondered if, perhaps, the fastest method would be the guillotine.
Many years ago, in OMNI magazine, there was a story about a future where it was deemed inhumane to even let someone know they were going to be executed. They were kept in a small apartment awaiting the verdict. When the verdict was announced, no matter what it was, they were told they were free to go. Upon grabbing the doorknob, a neurotoxin was injected into the guilty with almost instantaneous effect.
As to discussions of the death penalty itself, I feel if someone was in their right mind, understood the consequences of their actions, and, if placed in the same situation, would commit the crime again, yes, they need to be removed from society permanently. Those who are deemed mentally fit, but bent like serial killers, should lose all their freedom and be placed at the disposal of mental health professionals to study.
What are your thoughts on ways of killing that would be humane?
I say the death penalty is itself inhumane, focusing on the technical problem misses the point. Killing people you have a high degree of confidence committed murder means on a long enough time span, you're virtually guaranteed to kill innocents. The process required to minimize these false positive killings makes the death penalty more expensive than life in prison, on average. As far as I can tell, there's no upside to the death penalty, unless you're firmly convinced that the criminal justice system needs to focus on retribution.
The only humane option I see is to let them live out their lives in a context where they won't reoffend.
Most of us agree, but the discussion is about methods vs. morality.
But that's kind of my point, the only humane method is not to kill people. Asking "but how do we do it" is like asking how to square a circle; there may be a couple of interesting things to learn along the way, but you won't find any satisfying answers to the question.