Utah proposing to bring back firing squad executions

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Re: Utah proposing to bring back firing squad executions

Post by Grumman »

Broomstick wrote:A clean hang is as quick and merciful as beheading, possibly more so given there is some evidence that decapitated heads can retain consciousness for a brief period.
I'm inclined to think it's a physical impossibility for the clean hang to be more quick and merciful than beheading. If a decapitated head can retain consciousness for a brief period after decapitation, by what mechanism would you imagine merely damaging the neck prevent the same thing happening during a hanging?
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Re: Utah proposing to bring back firing squad executions

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As it turns out Utah may have already brought back firing squad executions: killings by Utah police now outpace gang, drug and child-abuse homicides.
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Re: Utah proposing to bring back firing squad executions

Post by Napoleon the Clown »

Grumman wrote:
Broomstick wrote:A clean hang is as quick and merciful as beheading, possibly more so given there is some evidence that decapitated heads can retain consciousness for a brief period.
I'm inclined to think it's a physical impossibility for the clean hang to be more quick and merciful than beheading. If a decapitated head can retain consciousness for a brief period after decapitation, by what mechanism would you imagine merely damaging the neck prevent the same thing happening during a hanging?
It's how hanging works, when done right. The sudden tightening of the rope causes blood pressure to spike then drop off very suddenly. This is, in essence, an off-switch for consciousness. If you've ever been choked out properly, it happens really damn fast and leaves little time to realize what's going on. This is even more extreme. So, bam. You're unconscious pretty much instantly. Decapitation, however, does not cause the initial spike in blood pressure. So it doesn't cause unconsciousness as fast. In theory. Really hard to test that one, what with it having a 100% fatality rate so far. And I really doubt someone will have the presence of mind to blink any sort of message in that ten to fifteen seconds that a head seems to be responsive.
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Re: Utah proposing to bring back firing squad executions

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Napoleon the Clown wrote:And I really doubt someone will have the presence of mind to blink any sort of message in that ten to fifteen seconds that a head seems to be responsive.
During the Terror in France, with literally thousands of people being fed through the guillotine, there were some attempts at researching that. It's hard to draw a solid conclusion, but there were sufficient instances of detached heads appearing to send intelligible signals to at least leave the question open for debate. It's possible, even if not definitively proven.

Granted, as you note, the time of useful consciousness is measured in seconds, subjectively those might be pretty horrific for the condemned.

That is, of course, assuming a "clean chop", so to speak. There are plenty of instances of botched decapitations or multiple hacks at a person to remove the head. That would be fully as horrible as slowly strangling at the end of a rope.
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Re: Utah proposing to bring back firing squad executions

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Napoleon the Clown wrote:It's how hanging works, when done right. The sudden tightening of the rope causes blood pressure to spike then drop off very suddenly. This is, in essence, an off-switch for consciousness. If you've ever been choked out properly, it happens really damn fast and leaves little time to realize what's going on.
No, that is bullshit. I have seen people on the receiving end of a properly applied blood choke, and it still takes them time to lose consciousness. It's not an off switch, and they are not losing consciousness faster than the victims of the guillotine were reported to do.
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Re: Utah proposing to bring back firing squad executions

Post by Napoleon the Clown »

Getting choked out? That isn't as extreme as a hanging. It's a base comparison, and someone can be choked out fast enough to not have much chance at proper struggle.

When someone is hanged, the blood pressure spike and drop are remarkably extreme. That's what causes unconsciousness. A point of comparison could be explaining that if you shoot a bullet into water it makes a big splash and sends force throughout the water by demonstrating it happening on a much smaller scale by dropping a rock into a body of water.
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Re: Utah proposing to bring back firing squad executions

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The Grim Squeaker wrote:There's another major element in favor of the squad - namely that it decentralizes blame/guilt. Thus, each squad member can think that maybe his rifle has a blank in it, and that it's not just him executing the man - as opposed to it being a single man, injecting poison into someone from up close.
(Poor executioners :( ).
Or you end up with 5 terminally depressed executioners.

Look, if we are going to execute people, and I am honestly on the fence about it, lets make them fucking useful. If you are put on death row, let's shoot them into space and do experiments or give them to medical science and try out vaccines or something.
I mean really, does anyone honestly think that the few minutes of pain a lethal injection MAY cause is any worse or terrifying or torturous than the time spent counting down to the day and minute of your death? How about the last meal, the walk with the priest, having a fucking audience? Death row is torture itself.

We as a society should either have the balls to say 'no more' or 'fuck them'.
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Re: Utah proposing to bring back firing squad executions

Post by bilateralrope »

California is willing to say, in court, that it doesn't want to release prisoners from overcrowded prisons because it doesn't want to lose the cheap prison labour.

In light of that, I don't think the state benefiting from executions is a good idea as there will be temptation to execute people for that benefit.
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Re: Utah proposing to bring back firing squad executions

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Havok wrote:Look, if we are going to execute people, and I am honestly on the fence about it, lets make them fucking useful. If you are put on death row, let's shoot them into space and do experiments or give them to medical science and try out vaccines or something.
Sure, that's a great idea: after we spend millions of dollars getting your experiment into space, lets hand it to a violent thug with a wrench and nothing to live for.
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Re: Utah proposing to bring back firing squad executions

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Are you an idiot? Do experiments ON THEM. Geezuz.
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But hey, I was being totally serious and completely literal. :roll:
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Re: Utah proposing to bring back firing squad executions

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Havok wrote:Are you an idiot? Do experiments ON THEM. Geezuz.
"Hey Manson, connect that diode... damnit stop soldering swastikas on the circuit boards!" :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

But hey, I was being totally serious and completely literal. :roll:
I'm not even sure how you could keep prisoners useful beyond maintaining themselves and their facilities. No time to dig up better links, but this one isn't bad. Prison labour is already criticized for cheapening the free market labour force, a trend that could easily accelerate under the present prison-industrial complex.
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Re: Utah proposing to bring back firing squad executions

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Jub wrote:
What?!? I've already stated I'm opposed to the death penalty in general, my thought is that if you must do it make it clean and don't let the condemned make a scene of it.
That doesn't actually have anything to do with "dehumanization", does it?
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Re: Utah proposing to bring back firing squad executions

Post by Havok »

General Brock wrote:
Havok wrote:Are you an idiot? Do experiments ON THEM. Geezuz.
"Hey Manson, connect that diode... damnit stop soldering swastikas on the circuit boards!" :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

But hey, I was being totally serious and completely literal. :roll:
I'm not even sure how you could keep prisoners useful beyond maintaining themselves and their facilities. No time to dig up better links, but this one isn't bad. Prison labour is already criticized for cheapening the free market labour force, a trend that could easily accelerate under the present prison-industrial complex.
I have no problem with prison labor. Just call it that. Make prisons full on work camps and industrial facilities. I mean, lets not forget prison IS a punishment.

I suppose my biggest issue is the honesty and presentation of the situations.
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Re: Utah proposing to bring back firing squad executions

Post by The Romulan Republic »

A problem with prison labour is that it creates an incentive to incarcerate more people, as illustrated recently by California saying that they don't want to release a bunch of inmates because they need the labour. An incentive for more incarceration for dubious reasons is not something the US needs.
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Re: Utah proposing to bring back firing squad executions

Post by Alyrium Denryle »

Note: I completely oppose the death penalty. But if we as a society are to do it, we have to do it right.
Siege wrote:Why does it matter that this method is also used to kill other species? Besides, guns are used to kill animals too, and I wager than on average people who take their dying pet to the vet to be euthanized would prefer it be done with a syringe instead of a bullet. But when killing humans the gun is preferable? Why?
Jub wrote:The execution dehumanizes people no matter how you do it. Your rights don't get much more stripped than having the right to life taken from you and a corpse can't exactly enjoy the freedoms of a human no matter how it was treated in the final pre-death moments. I'm not in support of some torturous sideshow execution, my feeling is that if people must die we should kill them swiftly and with a minimum of trauma to the condemned, the execution, the victims, those that knew the condemned, and everybody else involved. Of course the end goal should be to get to a place where we aren't killing people at all, but I doubt that the method of execution plays very much into that.
This goes to both of you.

You... failed or never took a single course in psychology or anthropology... didnt you?

We have certain long-standing notions in our culture about what is and is not a dignified death. Some of these are the result of really basic human social psychology, others are the result of our cultural history.

As a general rule, people want to die on something that loosely resembles their own terms. People do not want to die stripped of their agency (think about the terminally ill and voluntary euthanasia for example). Strapping someone to a table and being killed by a faceless mechanism is effective and physically painless (potentially, depending on the mechanism), but it also strips the condemned of the very thing that makes them a person. Their agency. They are completely helpless. They cannot even confront their killers, scream, or anything else.

The ritual of their death (and an execution MUST be a ritual process for a variety of reasons. More on that in a second) is not something the condemned can participate in. It it something Done To Them.

We have rituals for everything. Birth, naming, the aging process, education, marriage, death, mourning. Every major milestone in a person's life is governed by societal rituals that hold our social groups together. Group identity through shared experience. They help us as individuals to make sense of our lives and structure the world we live in. They are also calming. Take the catholic Last Rites. They dont do anything rational (there is no god listening). But the ritual of the Last Rites and Extreme Unction help someone cope with their own death, and help those in the community to cope with their death. High School Graduation is another ritual, one that marks the passage from one stage in someones life to the next. This transition is inherently uncertain and stressful, and the ritual of Graduation helps us deal with it. And it helps Everyone Else deal with it too. Once you graduate in our culture, you are an Adult (more or less), or have at least entered the world of adults.

In the same way, an execution ritual helps the participants and our society at large deal with the fact that we have just decided to kill one of our own citizens in a cold and calculated manner.

On the level of individuals, an execution MUST be another ritual. As much for those doing the executing as for the condemned. Killing someone is stressful. Horrifying, even. The ritual of killing does not just diffuse responsibility across multiple participants, but it helps relieve the stress directly precisely because it is a ritual. There is no Why here, save for lengthy discussions about the evolution of the human brain. It simply Is. If the killing is ritualized (not in the Human Sacrifice way, but the fixed-sequence multiple participant sort of way), it helps the executioner(s) maintain their own sanity. It helps them not to conclude they are monsters, basically.

A participatory ritual also helps the condemned deal with the fact of their own death, precisely so it is not a torturous anxiety ridden thing. It is why there is pre-execution isolation, a last meal etc. All of that is part of the ritual of execution. But in a lethal injection--in addition to being prone to fuckups--the condemned cannot participate actively in their own death after they enter the execution chamber. They are, at that point, excluded from the ritual. They become things. Not people. Objects. It helps the executioner, but it is Horrible. Both for the condemned, and, frankly, for us as a society. We should never treat other human beings as things.

Take a firing squad, or even for that matter a traditional beheading (French style, with a sword or later guillotine), or a well-done hanging. It is a completely different process.

The condemned faces death on their own two feet, standing like a person. Even if they cannot see their killers, they know they are not dying in isolation, and can speak to their killers, who can apologize for the necessity in ritual fashion. They can cross themselves, say a prayer, do whatever it is they need to do in the moments prior to their own death to help them cope with the reality of it.

Hell, if we use nitrogen asphyxia, we can STILL ritualize the execution in such a way that the condemned might actively participate in it.
Havok wrote:Look, if we are going to execute people, and I am honestly on the fence about it, lets make them fucking useful. If you are put on death row, let's shoot them into space and do experiments or give them to medical science and try out vaccines or something.
I mean really, does anyone honestly think that the few minutes of pain a lethal injection MAY cause is any worse or terrifying or torturous than the time spent counting down to the day and minute of your death? How about the last meal, the walk with the priest, having a fucking audience? Death row is torture itself.
Does the name Josef Mengele mean anything to you? Perhaps the Stanford Prison Experiment? Abu Ghraib maybe?

Medical and research ethics preclude that sort of rank barbarism for a god damn reason. Every Time it has been done, it has lead to the sort of abuse that would make Ivan the Terrible blanch in horror (okay, maybe not Ivan, but you get the point). Every time you give Group A power over Group B, dehumanize Group B, and then give a goal-oriented mandate to Group A or even just fail to supervise them, Group B is treated in a barbaric and awful fashion. Every. Single. Time.
General Brock wrote:Um, well, some of these death row folks don't really deserve that much consideration.
They are human beings and members of our society. That we have to remove them from the mortal coil because they have committed acts beyond that which we might collectively tolerate does not change that fact, and we should still treat them like human beings. To do otherwise makes us barbarians.
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Re: Utah proposing to bring back firing squad executions

Post by Alyrium Denryle »

Thanas wrote:
PKRudeBoy wrote:I really don't see a way to botch nitrogen asphyxiation, considering that while it's happening, you don't even notice the fact that you are suffocating to death.
Slaughterhouses regularly botch nitrogen and CO2 asphyxiation for cattle and also regularly botch bolt gun shots. So yes, it seems to be possible to botch it.
That is more of a product of cutting corners in device acquisition, personnel training, and pure volume of slaughter, I should think. If you are trying to captive bolt a few dozen cattle in an 8 hour shift and the cow is moving about it is pretty easy to botch. Not that we should use captive bolt guns with people. Dear God.

CO2 asphyxiation is fraught with problems (get the partial pressure wrong and the pain and anxiety are tremendous), but chemically the same issue does not exist with nitrogen. Fuck up nitrogen hypoxia (different from asphyxiation), and the worse that happens is disorientation, drowsiness, and euphoria followed by a slower but still painless death if it continues.
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Re: Utah proposing to bring back firing squad executions

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Alyrium Denryle wrote:Medical and research ethics preclude that sort of rank barbarism for a god damn reason. Every Time it has been done, it has lead to the sort of abuse that would make Ivan the Terrible blanch in horror (okay, maybe not Ivan, but you get the point).
Well, Ivan in his early years before the crazy kicked into high gear, maybe?

Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for spelling this out. I was having trouble explaining exactly why, as a matter of social and cultural values, it is necessary and proper for executions to be dignified and ritualized. For me, most of this stuff is a matter of customs that (in my opinion) succeed and endure because the internalize the psychological truths you have just articulated.
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Re: Utah proposing to bring back firing squad executions

Post by Shinn Langley Soryu »

Havok wrote:Look, if we are going to execute people, and I am honestly on the fence about it, lets make them fucking useful. If you are put on death row, let's shoot them into space and do experiments or give them to medical science and try out vaccines or something.
Speaking of utility and medical science (this might be worth splitting into its own thread):
Reuters wrote:China to end use of prisoners' organs for transplants next month

BEIJING Thu Dec 4, 2014 10:59pm EST

(Reuters) - China, the only country that still systematically takes organs from executed prisoners for use in transplant operations, plans to end the controversial practice from next month, a state-run newspaper said on Friday.

The government has over the last year flagged plans to end the practice, which has drawn criticism from rights groups, who have accused authorities of taking many organs without consent from prisoners or their families, a claim Beijing has denied.

The official China Daily said that human organ transplants will from Jan. 1 rely on voluntary public donations and on donations from living relatives.

"Harvesting organs from executed prisoners for transplants is controversial, despite written consent being required from donors and their relatives," Huang Jiefu, head of the China Organ Donation Committee, was quoted as saying.

"The Chinese government has always been resolute in making efforts to end such a practice," added Huang, a former vice health minister. "Donations by the public should be the only source of organs for transplants."

Supply of human organs falls far short of demand in China, due in part to a traditional belief that bodies should be buried or cremated intact. An estimated 300,000 patients are wait-listed every year for organ transplants, and only about one in 30 ultimately receives a transplant.

That shortage has fueled the illegal trade in organs, and in 2007 the government banned transplants from living donors, except for spouses, blood relatives and step- or adopted family members.

"The most severely ill get donations under the system, regardless of their social status and wealth," Huang said. "Judicial departments are not entitled to decide where the organ donations go."

China does not publish the numbers of people it executes, though the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, a grouping of more than 150 non-government bodies, bar associations and other groups, estimates it was about 3,000 last year.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
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Re: Utah proposing to bring back firing squad executions

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Alyrium, as far as I can tell none of what you just wrote explains why it matters that a specific method of execution is also used on other species. Which is what you replied to. So I fail to see how any of this pertains to my point. Ritualize the needle all you damn please if that makes everyone involved feel better, how does that make the firing squad inherently less dehumanizing than a lethal injection?

I reject the notion that there's inherently a significant 'ritual difference' between the two. If people become things during a lethal injection by being strapped to a table then they also become things when they are strapped to a pole in front of a wall to be shot to bits. And 'dying on your feet', 'speak to your killers' - it sounds like some of you harbor ridiculously romantic notions of what it means to be shot to death. More to the point, would death by lethal injection suddenly become less dehumanizing when we stick a person in the room to listen to whatever the executee has to say, and make them stand up instead of lie down?
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Re: Utah proposing to bring back firing squad executions

Post by Alyrium Denryle »

Alyrium, as far as I can tell none of what you just wrote explains why it matters that a specific method of execution is also used on other species.
It does if you pay attention. Killing a person in the same way we kill food animals (say, with an industrial method like captive bolt stunning) is to treat that person as a food animal. Proximally (as in, in the conscious minds of individuals), that sort of thing is considered unclean. We separate deaths that are fitting for humans from deaths that are fitting for animals, in the same way we treat the corpses of people differently from the way we treat other sorts of corpses.

Bring it out a level of abstraction. A food animal we kill is rendered helpless. It becomes an object to be acted upon, rather than a being of its own who--even though they are going to be killed--has some agency in the process. Any form of execution that resembles common methods of animal slaughter is generally not going to be considered acceptable.
And 'dying on your feet', 'speak to your killers' - it sounds like some of you harbor ridiculously romantic notions of what it means to be shot to death.
People are not perfectly rational, and the ways in which we are not rational are rooted in our history as social apes, take specific form due to our cultural history, and matter to people as individuals. If you cannot comprehend that, you have no place discussing anything related to end of life issues, be they medical or legal.
More to the point, would death by lethal injection suddenly become less dehumanizing when we stick a person in the room to listen to whatever the executee has to say, and make them stand up instead of lie down?
Other than lethal injection being considered an unclean death in itself (unless it is a suicide. Then it kinda becomes self-administered poisoning, which is seen as clean in western cultures....) because it is how we kill ailing pets, it might, actually. Having a person rather than a machine do the injection might help too.

Of course, then we run into the obvious medical issues with lethal injection.
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Re: Utah proposing to bring back firing squad executions

Post by Siege »

Alyrium Denryle wrote:A food animal we kill is rendered helpless. It becomes an object to be acted upon, rather than a being of its own who--even though they are going to be killed--has some agency in the process.
A person strapped to a pole about to be shot to death by a bunch of people with rifles is also helpless and an object to be acted upon, a target more precisely. They have zero agency over what is about to happen to them. So while I fully agree that bolt stunning is not a suitable method of human execution, I fail to see how this makes an injection inherently more dehumanizing than a half dozen bullets.
People are not perfectly rational, and the ways in which we are not rational are rooted in our history as social apes, take specific form due to our cultural history, and matter to people as individuals. If you cannot comprehend that, you have no place discussing anything related to end of life issues, be they medical or legal.
I'll be the judge of my place, thanks. If people make the rather authoritative claim that a lethal injection is more dehumanizing than a firing squad I am perfectly within my rights to ask them to explain their reasoning.
Other than lethal injection being considered an unclean death in itself (unless it is a suicide. Then it kinda becomes self-administered poisoning, which is seen as clean in western cultures....) because it is how we kill ailing pets, it might, actually. Having a person rather than a machine do the injection might help too.
So my point of view that lethal injection is not inherently more dehumanizing than a firing squad is correct, then? Look, I'm quite willing to believe the US method of execution via lethal injection is fucked up. From all accounts death row in the USA is a long line of fuckups, so that's hardly a stretch. It's statements like there's human dignity in having one's head blown off with a rifle that raise my hackles.
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Re: Utah proposing to bring back firing squad executions

Post by Alyrium Denryle »

A person strapped to a pole about to be shot to death by a bunch of people with rifles is also helpless and an object to be acted upon, a target more precisely. They have zero agency over what is about to happen to them. So while I fully agree that bolt stunning is not a suitable method of human execution, I fail to see how this makes an injection inherently more dehumanizing than a half dozen bullets.
It is the difference between putting someone on their knees and shooting them in the back of the head, and looking into their eyes when you shoot them in the front of the head.

Are they still shot? Yes. Is something being done to them against their will? Yes. Is one considered cleaner than the other? Also yes. There is a level of debasement and humiliation on display when you kill someone when on their knees.

It is idiosyncratic, and decidedly non-rational when it comes to the actual difference in condition. What matters however is not the actual differences. Rather, in what is perceived to be different.
If people make the rather authoritative claim that a lethal injection is more dehumanizing than a firing squad I am perfectly within my rights to ask them to explain their reasoning.
The problem is that it is like asking someone to explain why marriage proposals are romantic, and why giving someone a multifaceted chunk of crystallized carbon atoms is better than handing them a set of far more useful carving knives. Or why it is worse to shoot a caged lion to get that lion head trophy than it is to go out and hunt down said lion. The lion is still dead, but it is generally considered to be worse to shoot them while caged.
So my point of view that lethal injection is not inherently more dehumanizing than a firing squad is correct, then?
No. It just ameliorates it somewhat. The ritual elements have been added to soften it, but they are still being killed like an animal.

Of course, that gets into what you mean by "inherent". Does the universe give a shit? No. People do. The perceptions of people are the only arbiter, and in our culture, being killed in the same way we put down our pets is considered dehumanizing precisely because it is how we put down our ailing pets. We have certain ideas about what does and does not constitute a death fitting for a human being. Anything else is debasing. Some of the distinctions are very idiosyncratic and an outside alien observer would probably think them completely insane.

Might it be different in other cultural groups? Probably.
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Siege
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Re: Utah proposing to bring back firing squad executions

Post by Siege »

It must be for my cultural group, because frankly that strikes me as an utterly insane principle to use to determine the manner in which the state is allowed to execute people.

Thanks for taking the effort to explain though. I'm bowing out of the conversation.
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General Brock
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Re: Utah proposing to bring back firing squad executions

Post by General Brock »

Alyrium Denryle wrote:Note: I completely oppose the death penalty. But if we as a society are to do it, we have to do it right.

General Brock wrote:Um, well, some of these death row folks don't really deserve that much consideration.
They are human beings and members of our society. That we have to remove them from the mortal coil because they have committed acts beyond that which we might collectively tolerate does not change that fact, and we should still treat them like human beings. To do otherwise makes us barbarians.
Yes, very true. Just recognizing the emotional reality.

Whether incarceration or execution, the treatment of those beyond the pale must be humane. Long-term humane incarceration being preferred over having someone kill in cold blood in the name of justice.
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