JimmyPage Posted March 19, 2012 Share Posted March 19, 2012 (edited) As an aside I've been suicidal a few times and am only still here because I'm such a useless fuckup that I can't even kill myself. But (and this is my point) even at my most suicidal I wouldn't choose to kill myself the way that they execute people in the states in the USA that have the death penalty. The 'lethal injection' (it's multiple injections) that is used in the USA is a fucking dreadful way of killing, everyone who is killed that way dies in agony and some people simply don't die, they spend tens of minutes in excruciating pain and at the end of it are still alive. Even if you agree with the death penalty the way it is done in the American states that allow it is barbaric. And I don't really understand why - I mean if you want to kill someone just give them a massive overdose of diamorphine - job done. Why they fuck around with the bizarre way they do it is utterly beyond me. I guess they want to 'punish' the person until the bitter end. I can't get my head round that, it's fucking horrible There was a fascinating documentary a couple of years ago, with Michael Portillo (someone who used to support capital punishment, and now doesn't) investigating various methods of execution. After looking at the current faves, it was suggested the best way to kill someone is simply pump the air out of the room. It's totally painless and causes no extra distress. Basically you simply slip into unconciousness, and then die. When he questioned one American politician about why didn't they consider such a method, the answer says it at ... the guy said ... "well, the idea isn't really to spare them any pain, is it?". Now if that isn't barbaric, I don't know what is. e2a: here I believe there's also clips on YT .... Edited March 19, 2012 by JimmyPage 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boojum Posted March 19, 2012 Share Posted March 19, 2012 Aye, simplest way to kill someone is deprive them of oxygen while getting rid of the carbon dioxide - it's a strange thing about our respiration, our bodies don't detect oxygen, they detect carbon dioxide. We can breathe pure nitrogen (or methane, or carbon monoxide, or any other gas) and happily fall into a coma and die as long as we're not breathing in carbon dioxide and breathing it out, but if carbon dioxide builds up in the blood we start to choke. The suffocating thing (the panic and pain) is purely due to a build up of carbon dioxide, not a lack of oxygen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eddiesilence Posted March 19, 2012 Share Posted March 19, 2012 After being railroaded to a clearly unfair trial, Edward Earl Johnson was gassed to death in 1987 by the State of Mississippi for a crime subsequently found to be committed by another person. The BBC sent Paul Hamann to record his last fortnight alive. The resulting documentary 'Fourteen Days in May' should be watched by anyone who supports capital punishment. h ttp://www.alluc.org/documentaries/watch-fourteen-days-in-may-online/49187.html 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boojum Posted March 19, 2012 Share Posted March 19, 2012 (edited) After being railroaded to a clearly unfair trial, Edward Earl Johnson was gassed to death in 1987 by the State of Mississippi for a crime subsequently found to be committed by another person. The BBC sent Paul Hamann to record his last fortnight alive. The resulting documentary 'Fourteen Days in May' should be watched by anyone who supports capital punishment. h ttp://www.alluc.org/documentaries/watch-fourteen-days-in-may-online/49187.html I've done the +1 but I kinda want to do a +2 E2A And of course in this country the most famous (or infamous) cases of state-sanctioned murder of the wrong people were the hangings of Timothy Evans and Derek Bentley. Two people killed wrongly is two people too many (and there were many more). Sorry - Boojum rant on No matter how one feels about the morality of the death penalty, until such time as the law is 100% infallible then it simply cannot be an option, there should be absolutely no risk of killing an innocent person. Period. And the law is far from 100% infallible. Edited March 19, 2012 by Boojum 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eddiesilence Posted March 19, 2012 Share Posted March 19, 2012 Damn straight. I'll add that guilt or innocence is completely irrelevant to universal human rights. The prohibition of torture and capital punishment must be absolute. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boojum Posted March 19, 2012 Share Posted March 19, 2012 Damn straight. I'll add that guilt or innocence is completely irrelevant to universal human rights. The prohibition of torture and capital punishment must be absolute. Aye, that's my feeling on it too. Some of the hard of thinking just don't get that human rights must apply to everybody or else they apply to nobody, there is no middle ground. Once you make an exception to the rule of human rights then you may as well throw the whole thing out of the window. It's all or nothing. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rustledust Posted March 19, 2012 Share Posted March 19, 2012 (edited) I live in the same town Derek Bentley did. His sister fought for years to get his convection quashed but sadly died a year before it happened. He did not have a headstone on his grave until then, he does now and it reads "A Victim of British Justice" and also "The truth will out". It should also be remembered that the Judge who passed sentence on him Lord Goddard basically bullied the jury into finding Bentley guilty by misrepresenting the law and distorting the facts. As a pleasant little footnote to the British Justice system and the people it produces to judge others Lord Goddard had to have his valet bring spare trousers to court for him as he often became over excited shall we say when handing out death sentences and birching, especially to young men. Edited March 19, 2012 by rustledust Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
willowisp Posted March 19, 2012 Share Posted March 19, 2012 Great debate, some good points raised. Been against execution for most of my life, just lately I've been thinking about the subject more and more. I read an article about a pair of very brutal thrill killers who are on death row...the guy who played the chief in the Silence of the Lambs went to Quantico to research his role and looked at their case. He had always been against capital punishment, but his FBI contact there played him a tape, it was recorded by the killers while they tortuted one of their victims...after hearing it, he changed his mind and became pro but in the severest of cases and as a last resort. Some killers are not mad, but neither are they repentent or ever will be. What do we do with them? What if one of these people killed your mother? Or one of your children? Your partner? Would you be content with a life with no parole? What if they received parole? Prison can be hell for certain types of killers, but not all of them (criminal code what a load of bollocks)...sex killers are pretty well protected from what I saw myself. Would you consider meting out justice yourself, after he/she is released? I honestly don't know the answers to these questions myself, I'm confused over this issue now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boojum Posted March 19, 2012 Share Posted March 19, 2012 Some killers are not mad, but neither are they repentent or ever will be. What do we do with them? What if one of these people killed your mother? Or one of your children? Your partner? Would you be content with a life with no parole? What if they received parole? Prison can be hell for certain types of killers, but not all of them (criminal code what a load of bollocks)...sex killers are pretty well protected from what I saw myself. Would you consider meting out justice yourself, after he/she is released? Apologies for chopping up your post but this is the bit I wanna respond to. Thing is that if someone killed someone that I loved how I would feel about it has nothing to do with the law. Emotion has no place in the law, the law must be objective, the law must deal with facts not feelings, that's the only way that the law can work. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest thechosen Posted March 19, 2012 Share Posted March 19, 2012 What is the purpose of the death penalty?.... Vengence. The taking of human life is wrong – whether by execution, abortion, in battle, or any other myriad of situations. The profound moral question is not, "Do they deserve to die?" but "Do we deserve to kill them?" -Helen Prejean 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eddiesilence Posted March 20, 2012 Share Posted March 20, 2012 (edited) Helen Prejean's got the balance right. Killing is much harder than dying. It appears by all accounts that most of us are hardwired to collapse into neurosis when we kill other human beings. More than double the number of GIs who died in Vietnam killed themselves after they returned to the USA. It's surprising that, with only a very few exceptions such as the truly perverted psychopath Oskar Dirlewanger, even the most genocidal fanatics of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen killing squads had psychological breakdowns due to the nature of their 'work'. Edited March 20, 2012 by Eddiesilence 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arnold Layne Posted March 20, 2012 Share Posted March 20, 2012 As an aside I've been suicidal a few times and am only still here because I'm such a useless fuckup that I can't even kill myself. But (and this is my point) even at my most suicidal I wouldn't choose to kill myself the way that they execute people in the states in the USA that have the death penalty. The 'lethal injection' (it's multiple injections) that is used in the USA is a fucking dreadful way of killing, everyone who is killed that way dies in agony and some people simply don't die, they spend tens of minutes in excruciating pain and at the end of it are still alive. Even if you agree with the death penalty the way it is done in the American states that allow it is barbaric. And I don't really understand why - I mean if you want to kill someone just give them a massive overdose of diamorphine - job done. Why they fuck around with the bizarre way they do it is utterly beyond me. I guess they want to 'punish' the person until the bitter end. I can't get my head round that, it's fucking horrible +10 Damn straight. I'll add that guilt or innocence is completely irrelevant to universal human rights. The prohibition of torture and capital punishment must be absolute. And I'll second that! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eddiesilence Posted March 20, 2012 Share Posted March 20, 2012 (edited) As an aside I've been suicidal a few times and am only still here because I'm such a useless fuckup that I can't even kill myself. But (and this is my point) even at my most suicidal I wouldn't choose to kill myself the way that they execute people in the states in the USA that have the death penalty. The 'lethal injection' (it's multiple injections) that is used in the USA is a fucking dreadful way of killing, everyone who is killed that way dies in agony and some people simply don't die, they spend tens of minutes in excruciating pain and at the end of it are still alive. Even if you agree with the death penalty the way it is done in the American states that allow it is barbaric. And I don't really understand why - I mean if you want to kill someone just give them a massive overdose of diamorphine - job done. Why they fuck around with the bizarre way they do it is utterly beyond me. I guess they want to 'punish' the person until the bitter end. I can't get my head round that, it's fucking horrible The lethal injection method used in the United States consists of three drugs: The anaesthetic sodium thiopental is injected first, with the objective of rendering the prisoner unconscious. Pancuronium bromide, a paralytic, is then injected to stop the diaphragm. Finally, potassium choride is injected, which stops the heart. If the anaesthetic is improperly administered, which is eminently possible, the prisoner will be fully conscious while his diaphragm fails, and he will be aware of suffocation. He will then have a cardiac arrest and feel all the associated pain before he dies. (I say 'he' not for sexist reasons, but because it's usually a man on the gurney.) "Because it masks any outward sign of distress, pancuronium bromide creates a risk that the inmate will suffer excruciating pain before death occurs. There is a general understanding among veterinarians that the risk of pain is sufficiently serious that the use of the drug should be proscribed when an animal’s life is being terminated. As a result of this understanding among knowledgeable professionals, several States—including Kentucky — have enacted legislation prohibiting use of the drug in animal euthanasia..."" Justice Stevens, Baze v Rees The most humane way to destroy a life is to use an ultra-short acting barbiturate such as pentobarbitol, which is sold as 'Nembutal'. It's what veterinarians and Dignitas use, because essentially one 'falls asleep'. In 2007, it was put to the Supreme Court that this be the preferred method of lethal execution in the state of Kentucky. In the case of Baze v Rees, Commissioner of Kentucky Dept of Corrections et al 533 US 2008, the United States Supreme Court declared the three-drug protocol was not unconstitutional despite the risk of full awareness. The prisoner's eighth-amendment right not to be subjected to "cruel and unusual punishment" was not breached, and in any case, the prisoner does not have the right to a pain-free execution: such a guarantee cannot be made given that all executions carry a degree of pain. The reasoning is exactingly cynical in its preference for legalese vernacular over human life: "In order to show that a modification of a lethal injection protocol is required by the Eighth Amendment, a prisoner must demonstrate that the modification would 'significantly reduce a substantial risk of severe pain.'" Justice Alito, Baze v Rees In the eyes of the court, This was not demonstrated by the petitioner: "The risks of maladministration they have suggested—such as improper mixing of chemicals and improper setting of IVs by trained and experienced personnel — cannot remotely be characterized as 'objectively intolerable.'" Chief Justice Roberts, Baze v Rees and: "JUSTICE BREYER concluded that there cannot be found, either in the record or in the readily available literature, sufficient grounds to believe that Kentucky’s lethal injection method creates a significant risk of unnecessary suffering." Justice Thomas went even further; in spite of the risk of paralysed agony, the state wasn't intentionally causing pain, even if pain was inflicted. The intention justifies the means, regardless of the means.: "Because Kentucky’s lethal injection protocol is designed to eliminate pain rather than to inflict it, petitioners’ challenge must fail." h ttp://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-5439.pdf Edited March 20, 2012 by Eddiesilence 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arnold Layne Posted March 20, 2012 Share Posted March 20, 2012 Must admit, the USA makes me want to vomit sometimes, when I look at some of the things they do over there on a daily basis. And all those guns. Nope, no way I'd ever want to go there, its too close already and I don't like the ways that the last umpteen UK governments since WW2 have not only tugged forelock towards the USA, but have engaged in the deliberate Americanisation of our country. Right down to the ridiculous and vile yellow school buses. And then followed like so many camp-following whores into illegal war after illegal war, burning, raping and killing millions around the globe in the name of ... what, exactly? Uncle bloody Sam Fester? 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Montana Posted March 21, 2012 Share Posted March 21, 2012 IMO that cunt in France who executed 3 very young children as well as grown adults deserves nothing but the same fate. He chased a 7 year old girl down and executed her in cold blood, this was after his gun jammed and he took the time to use his 2nd weapon whilst all the time recording it. In my mind there is no other suitable punishment other than death. Gunner 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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