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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Buzzfeed surprise aside, since the states are really in a bind on getting these drugs, it is in their interest to ask few questions and not look too closely at the answers. Which is pretty sad, the folks who have tried to prevent executions are at risk for making executions more gruesome by the state using drugs that aren't up to the task. I don't know if they can make this situation any worse.

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Another solution: the states can stop killing people.

If the states can barely afford killing people, what makes you think they can afford to keep them in jail forever?

For one thing, capital punishment is more expensive than life imprisonment (which isn't keeping them in jail forever, because mortality.)

That's surprising to me. Bullets are cheap. What makes chemical executions so expensive?

The execution itself is not that expensive; what is expensive are the legal costs associated with the heightened scrutiny of capital cases.

Oh, I see. Thanks!

They seem to manage just fine jailing large amounts of people for pot possession and other non-violent crimes. If they were worried about costs, they wouldn't have been imprisoning like crazy for decades.

Are you talking about the richest nation on Earth?

Also, do you mean that it is Ok to kill a prisoner because it is too expensive to keep him alive?

Then that decision should be made in public by the elected representatives or by referendum in accordance with the state's laws, not by a tiny group of activists making it practically impossible via backdoor methods.

It's my understanding that the drug companies themselves, operating outside the US, are the ones making these drugs unavailable for death penalty use. They are engaging in a straightforward boycott.

Consider this: http://www.csg.org/pubs/capitolideas/enews/issue65_4.aspx

It really is creative activists trying things against the will of the people in those states that support capital punishment. I've got a complicated relationship with the death penalty, but that aside I recognize that the only way to change it is through the institutions we have which are empowered to make those changes.

If the "will of the people" is to have sodium thiopental injected into people, why don't the states in question build a plant of their own to manufacture the substance?

It's more a question of having a method codified into law than being stuck with that method. Instead of producing the drugs the states in question will probably just switch to another method of execution.

It really is, but why shouldn't they? The people who express a preference in favor of the death penalty are entitled to their attitudes, but not to freedom from political opposition.

Drug companies are boycotting the death penalty process because of their deep-seated moral convictions? I don't think so.

Corporations are amoral. The activists found a weak point in the death penalty system -- namely, the companies which make the drugs (which is a small market to start with) and are terrified of even the remotest smidgen of public criticism.

But that would be a miscarriage of justice. To leave the men responsible for, say, robbing and stabbing to death five people at a quiet bar is grotesque.

(Yes, it's also a miscarriage of justice to wrongly execute the innocent—and to wrongly imprison the innocent, and to fail to execute those guilty of certain crimes)

Many of us believe that killing is never justice, whether it's committed by the state or not.

> To leave the men responsible for, say, robbing and stabbing to death five people at a quiet bar is grotesque.

And how would killing again unstab those 5 and bring them back from the dead?

How would caging the murderers like animals for the next fifty years unstab those 5 and bring them back from the dead? I don't see how yours is a relevant objection.

Not killing a killer would be miscarriage of revenge, not a miscarriage of justice.

Punitive justice is petty.

Assuming we're okay with killing our prisoners, I don't see what's so wrong with death by firing squad. It's cheap, fast, painless, and can be carried out by people who have little training. If you don't want to see the condemned person's discomfort, you could still sedate them just as they do with lethal injection. Maybe death by firing squad doesn't make for as exciting theatrics as the complex and methodical procedures of lethal injection, but I'm sure we could come up with something for the audience. And if that's unpalatable for lawmakers... Maybe we should reconsider the whole thing.

Is gunshot-induced heart failure, along with a dozen gunshot wounds in the chest area, really painless?

> Maybe death by firing squad doesn't make for as exciting theatrics as the complex and methodical procedures of lethal injection, but I'm sure we could come up with something for the audience.

It would be more theatrical than lethal injection, which I think it part of the reason its avoided. Lethal injection medicalizes the death penalty and makes it seem less like actually killing someone.

My thought was that the whole procedure of it, with the needles and the sheet and the doctors and everything was what made it "theatrical." I feel like the ordeal is a lot more honest when a bunch of people with rifles shoot somebody in the chest. Nobody gets to feel like it's anything other than a killing.

A sentiment echoed by Federal Appeals Court judge Alex Kozinski[1].

"If we as a society want to carry out executions, we should be willing to face the fact that the state is committing a horrendous brutality on our behalf."

[1] http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-na-nn-arizona-executio...

Even the current way is just terrifying. Being strapped down and injected? I'd prefer getting loaded with something like quetiapine over the preceding week to sorta numb me out. Perhaps some opiates, too. Then fill the cell with inert gas or something.

Actually, they should give prisoners the option to self-inflict, via overdose or something.

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