Lethal Injection or Firing Squd

[SheWolf]

I was just finishing a true crime book. The assailant is found guilty and condemned to die, and the judge gives him the option to die by either lethal injection or firing squad. He picked firing squad.

At that point, I thought I started wondering which option I would pick. I think I would rather get a firing squad than a lethal injection. A firing squad seems quicker and actually more humane. With a lethal injection, you will get a IV in the arm and wait to die while the drugs take effect.

Public opinion seems to be that a firing squad is less humane, but if you put yourself in the condemned person's shoes do you see it differently?

What are your thoughts?

 

[Fishking]

Going with injection though I don't know they just don't put someone in a chamber and hook up exhaust from an combustion engine to it.

 

[SCitizen]

Horrible situation.

Many people are going to suffer thousands of years, but as a Jew I believe less then on in thousand people will suffer eternally.

 

[Hawkeye10]

Sean: My father was an alcoholic. Mean ****in' drunk. Used to come home hammered, looking to whale on someone. So I had to provoke him, so he wouldn't go after my mother and little brother. Interesting nights were when he wore his rings...
Will: He used to just put a belt, a stick, and a wrench on the kitchen table and say, "Choose."
Sean: Well, I gotta go with the belt there.
Will: I used to go with the wrench.
Sean: Why?
Will: Cause **** him, that' why.

View Quote ... Good Will Hunting ... Movie Quotes Database

If it is me we will not be pretending that this is a medical procedure.

 

[EMNofSeattle]

I was just finishing a true crime book. The assailant is found guilty and condemned to die, and the judge gives him the option to die by either lethal injection or firing squad. He picked firing squad.

At that point, I thought I started wondering which option I would pick. I think I would rather get a firing squad than a lethal injection. A firing squad seems quicker and actually more humane. With a lethal injection, you will get a IV in the arm and wait to die while the drugs take effect.

Public opinion seems to be that a firing squad is less humane, but if you put yourself in the condemned person's shoes do you see it differently?

What are your thoughts?

I'll throw in that in Washington a condemned prisoner will be executed by lethal injection unless they opt for hanging. In that case I would choose hanging because everything I have read indicates hanging is usually instant.

in your scenario I would choose firing squad, I don't want the delay of seeing the drugs injected in my arm and knowing I'm going to die and waiting for it to happen. I'd rather just hear the shot and have it all be over.

of course there is a third option here, do not commit capital murder and this is a moot discussion

 

[Phys251]

Given how F'ed up some of these lethal injection cocktails have become in recent times, I think I'd prefer to die by the gernz.

 

[Hawkeye10]

Given how F'ed up some of these lethal injection cocktails have become in recent times, I think I'd prefer to die by the gernz.

Yep, this is on the vary long list "Things America used to be able to manage but no longer can".

We just had a guy take something like 30 minutes to die, what barbarity, and what little notice it get from these people in America who feel so smug about their priorities.

 

[Fishking]

in your scenario I would choose firing squad, I don't want the delay of seeing the drugs injected in my arm and knowing I'm going to die and waiting for it to happen. I'd rather just hear the shot and have it all be over.

You wouldn't get a chance to hear anything. Bullets + head = dead before anything processes.

 

[Cephus]

Firing squad is faster and more humane, assuming they actually try to kill you. That's why they got rid of it, because the riflemen would "miss" and hit something non-vital. It could take a very long time to actually kill someone that way.

 

[dirtpoorchris]

Why cant they just sedate them. Then put them in a room with the same type of gas from the stove so they sleep till they die.

 

[Carjosse]

Why cant they just sedate them. Then put them in a room with the same type of gas from the stove so they sleep till they die.

Half the problem with lethal injection is the sedation not begin effective causing an inhumane execution. The problem with that is that it can be deemed cruel and unusual punishment and has been in California, it is also slow. Read more here.

 

[Carjosse]

Going with injection though I don't know they just don't put someone in a chamber and hook up exhaust from an combustion engine to it.

Gas chambers are still a thing but present their own issues. But as the Nazis had problems with, it is slow and unreliable.

 

[Carjosse]

Why did hanging fall out of favour in the United States? It remained popular in other countries especially the UK and the Commonwealth. It seems like a far more humane and reliable option than any of the methods the US has used in the last century and a bit.

There is also the easiest and most sensible solution and just abolish the death penalty.

 

[Hawkeye10]

In the four decades since he composed the lethal injection protocol he’s been increasingly distressed by a succession of botched procedures. “Unconscionable things have occurred, like the needle being applied in the wrong direction or drugs being injected not into the vein but into tissue,” he said.

Chapman believes these gruesome incidents have highlighted problems not with the lethal injection itself, but with “the people administering it who lack the skills they need.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ethal-injection-inventor-death-penalty-doubts


In other words is is that theme which is ever so common in modern America...."The people running this show SUCK!".

 

[EMNofSeattle]

Firing squad is faster and more humane, assuming they actually try to kill you. That's why they got rid of it, because the riflemen would "miss" and hit something non-vital. It could take a very long time to actually kill someone that way.

Really? can you name a time that's happened? It was phased out for the same reason hanging and the gas chamber and 'ol sparky were. because the percieved PR problem of "messy" executions versus a civilized medical procedure. a trained marksman with a rifle hits the target he's ordered to hit.

 

[dirtpoorchris]

Gas chambers are still a thing but present their own issues. But as the Nazis had problems with, it is slow and unreliable.

Think there is a difference between mass gas chambers meant to look like showers, with a locked door. And someone sentenced to death for murder in a tiny little airtight coffin being pumped with exhaust after they take sleep pills.

They dont even have to know what day is sleepy pill day, if its a vitamin or a sleepy.

Hell they could even vacuum all the air out for 20 minutes after 5 minutes of exhaust.

If they refuse sleepy pill.... then they can have one of the "other" forms of execution.

 

[EMNofSeattle]

Why did hanging fall out of favour in the United States? It remained popular in other countries especially the UK and the Commonwealth. It seems like a far more humane and reliable option than any of the methods the US has used in the last century and a bit.


There is also the easiest and most sensible solution and just abolish the death penalty.

I don't think it is the easiest or the most sensible. the vast majority of Americans want the death penalty, even in California, hands down the most liberal state in the country it was overwhelmingly supported in a recent referendum.

the real issue is people are allowed to file decades of bogus appeals that have no legal basis and have them heard. you should get one appeal, and every appeal after that should not stay the execution date. if the courts can't resolve whether or not the state is violating your religious rights by hanging you for murdering two women and an 8 year old girl (I **** you not that was an actual appeal a court entertained for 10 years ) in time that should be tough stuff.

 

[joG]

I was just finishing a true crime book. The assailant is found guilty and condemned to die, and the judge gives him the option to die by either lethal injection or firing squad. He picked firing squad.

At that point, I thought I started wondering which option I would pick. I think I would rather get a firing squad than a lethal injection. A firing squad seems quicker and actually more humane. With a lethal injection, you will get a IV in the arm and wait to die while the drugs take effect.

Public opinion seems to be that a firing squad is less humane, but if you put yourself in the condemned person's shoes do you see it differently?

What are your thoughts?

Maybe the judges should have to choke the perps to death with their hands.

 

[Moot]

Firing squad is faster and more humane, assuming they actually try to kill you. That's why they got rid of it, because the riflemen would "miss" and hit something non-vital. It could take a very long time to actually kill someone that way.

Gary Gilmore had five volunteer off duty cops that were marksmen. Allegedly, only two had real bullets in their guns and the rest had blanks...but when his brother went to claim the body he counted five bullet wounds...and all were in the chest near the heart.

 

[Hawkeye10]

Gary Gilmore had five volunteer off duty cops that were marksmen. Allegedly, only two had real bullets in their guns and the rest had blanks...but when his brother went to claim the body he counted five bullet wounds...and all were in the chest near the heart.

Which sounds ideal right but then we have this:

Gilmore’s execution sparked a debate that fanned out to other states including Oklahoma where Chapman was asked by a legislator to come up with a more humane method than either the firing squad – which Gilmore had opted for – or the electric chair used previously in Oklahoma. “We had discussed what happened to Gary Gilmore,” Chapman recalls. “At that time we put animals to death more humanely than we did human beings – so the idea of using medical drugs seemed a much better alternative.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ethal-injection-inventor-death-penalty-doubts

 

[EMNofSeattle]

Gary Gilmore had five volunteer off duty cops that were marksmen. Allegedly, only two had real bullets in their guns and the rest had blanks...but when his brother went to claim the body he counted five bullet wounds...and all were in the chest near the heart.

Which shouldn't be a problem.

 

[Hawkeye10]

Which shouldn't be a problem.

But it was, see post #20.

 

[Moot]

Maybe the judges should have to choke the perps to death with their hands.

Now there's a thought.

 

[Moot]

Which sounds ideal right but then we have this:


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ethal-injection-inventor-death-penalty-doubts

Yeah..but look at Oklahoma now....they don't give a damn about a more humane method. Now they can't wait to execute thirteen people because the expiration on the lethal drugs is due to expire...even though those drugs have failed several times in prior executions and caused writhing agony in the prisoners....not to mention that some of those prisoners slated for execution may have been wrongly convicted.

So what I'm saying is...Oklahoma probably isn't the best judge on what constitutes a humane execution.

 

[Hawkeye10]

Yeah..but look at Oklahoma now....they don't give a damn about a more humane method. Now they can't wait to execute thirteen people because the expiration on the lethal drugs is due to expire...even though those drugs have failed several times in prior executions and caused writhing agony in the prisoners....not to mention that some of those prisoners slated for execution may have been wrongly convicted.

So what I'm saying is...Oklahoma probably isn't the best judge on what constitutes a humane execution.

I dont know if you believe in mass mental illness, as in societal mental illness, but this seemed to be a case of it. We did not want the noise and the knowledge of bullets tearing into flesh to end a life...that we did that.... and remember too that this was before America became so sadistic....someone came up with a plan to avoid that and we said yes immediately "and please dont make us think about this for even two minutes more".

Whether it was a good idea?

No one cared.