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Comment by jabl | Hacker News Reader

I think the death penalty shouldn't exist, but I find this fascination with all these Rube Goldberg style execution methods strange. Gas chambers, lethal injections, electrocution, and whatnot.

If you're going to execute somebody, just put them up against a wall and shoot them, FFS. A firing squad has the benefit of being quite certain (accounts of botched executions are quite horrifying, IMHO), and cheap (prison guards already have guns and ammo, no need to procure and maintain some special execution apparatus).

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An amount of people regularly die during sleep because of CO poisoning (for example because they used a broken stove for heating the room). Wouldn't a similar approach work for a death penalty? It seems so simple that probably I am missing something

I remember hearing somewhere that a reason this isn't done is because it doesn't provide closure to victims and their families–which is supposedly something that the death penalty is supposed to achieve. You just see them go to sleep and die.

By the way, I'd think that using something like Nitrogen is probably a better choice, being as it is inert and nontoxic, but just as good as an asphyxiant.

Yes. The problem with CO poisoning (or, Nitrogen) is that it is painless, and people actively resist that. Some people want it to be about retribution rather than justice.

And that, I think, is one of the best arguments one can make against the death penalty: it’s about revenge. The point of having a judicial process and the rule of law is (also) to prevent the aggrieved from acting out as their emotions dictate, because that’s generally against the interests of broader society (and amongst other things is how blood feuds start).

Interestingly enough, that's also a strong argument for the death penalty. We cede the right of private retribution and the state assumes that responsibility, carrying it out in a more structured and ostensibly fair way than mob justice. Historically, the state assuming the responsibility of giving citizens justice (including for capital crimes) was one of the key turning points in the rise of centralized rule and in Europe, the transition from the Middle Ages to early modern Europe. A great book that explores this topic is, 'The Faithful Executioner,' about a 16th century executioner in what is now Germany. I imagine people today may disagree about how important that still is.

Do you really want prison guards to get used to firing (to kill) on inmates? Besides, I imagine/hope that most of them wouldn't want to. Let's take inspiration from George R.R. Martin and have the judge who imposed the death penalty be on that squad.

... or the jury.

> Do you really want prison guards to get used to firing (to kill) on inmates?

If not, why do they have guns in the first place then? Besides, I imagine a firing squad situation is quite different from an escape attempt, violent riot, or whatever situation that might otherwise warrant the use of firearms.

> Besides, I imagine/hope that most of them wouldn't want to.

I imagine that as well. But, I don't think making it comfortable on the executioner should be particularly high on the list of priorities. If nobody wants to be the person who pulls the trigger, presses the button, or whatever, then maybe it suggests we shouldn't have capital punishment in the first place?

> Let's take inspiration from George R.R. Martin and have the judge who imposed the death penalty be on that squad.

Awesome, I fully support that.

I'm against following George R.R. Martin's lead, because I suspect it would cause different judges to sentence different punishments for similar trials given their own person aversion or attraction to killing. This would be equivalent of people being treated unequally by the law, which is against the equal protection clause of the fourteen amendment.

-I think your point is a valid (and good!) one, but I like - that is hardly an appropriate verb in this context - the concept.

Perhaps any prosecutor seeking the death penalty in a case would have to join a pool of executioner's assistants? (Same for jurors and judges - unless you are willing to follow through on actually killing someone, you are barred from deciding on the matters of life and death?)

In this way, their verdict on any particular case wouldn't make any difference (to them!) - they could be called upon to take part in the dirty details of an actual execution in any other case but the one they sat in on.

The only problem I have with such a system, is that there's probably people out there who'd basically ask 'Cool, where do I sign up?', which is somewhat scary.

The civilized thing, of course, would be to abolish it altogether. Capital punishment basically ensures that The System(tm) WILL murder innocents on occasion.

As I like to ask proponents of the death penalty - what false positive rate is acceptable?

An interesting thing to ask about the false positive rate: What is the false positive rate on determining that there was a false positive? That is, we may decide that someone was wrongly convicted, but we may be wrong in that determination.

It is also interesting to note that a "wrong" conviction seldom means that the person was a fine upstanding citizen. Often it means something like "convicted of the killing, but only provided the weapon" or "convicted of the killing, but was only trying to help a fellow gang member by disposing of the body". This sort of false positive isn't anywhere near as bad as what we commonly imagine to be the case, with a 100% innocent person being wrongly convicted.

-IMHO even a tiny minority of actual, true, false positives are enough to warrant getting rid of capital punishment (for that reason alone; there are other arguments, too!)

To phrase my question differently - if we take your concerns about false positives into account, and accept that trying to help dispose of the body or providing a weapon makes you fair game, capital punishment-wise - how large a remaining false positive rate is acceptable to maintain that fine institution, capital punishment?

1 in 100 fine, upstanding citizens being wrongfully convicted and executed? 1 in 1,000? At which point is the collateral damage, if you like, acceptable?

The matter was discussed here on HN recently, in the case of Kevin Cooper[0].

That's but one instance of what seems like a case where there's definitely reasonable doubt - to put it mildly - regarding the convict's guilt.

Whether the person was a 'fine, upstanding citizen' IMHO is largely irrelevant, unless one wants to set the bar for being sentenced to death lower - like, for being an accessory to murder, for instance.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17098059

Probability for people on trial, or total lifetime probability? It's very different. I think the total lifetime probability matters more.

We consider it acceptable to drive cars. This kills 1% to 2% of the population. This seems like the baseline for acceptability. Not even 1% of the population gets put on trial with the possibility of the death penalty, so we could just go straight to execution without a trial and still be more acceptable than letting people drive cars.

Or shall we ban cars?

Only 1 in 119,012 die from execution.

Another baseline for acceptability is drowning. Homes all across America have pools. A person is about 100x more likely to die of drowning than an execution, yet pools are still legal.

...but surely it is reasonable to maintain there's a distinction between having people die from what we can call accidents or mishaps - falling into a pool, being run over by a truck, getting electrocuted or choking on a peanut &c on one side...

...and on the other being locked up for years by the system we - as a collective - have created to protect us from just that kind of arbitrary violence, before that same system murders you -ahem- for the Greater Good(tm)?

The fact that the murder of an innocent is highly unlikely doesn't (IMHO) make it any more acceptable. Government is supposed to protect you; not kill you in the very textbook definition of premeditated murder.

(Besides, cars and swimming pools have verifiable upsides. The 'benefits' -if any- of the death penalty are highly debatable.)

Would it cause them to get used it? I see no reason you couldn't have an executioner, who isn't responsible for the day-to-day guarding, and in any case are there enough executions to get used to it?

Utah has used firing squads for executions, the most recent was in 2010. Previous law allowed the inmate to choose the execution method, but now I think a firing squad is specified to be used if the lethal injection drugs are unavailable.

> "There were five marksmen: They're all volunteers and they're police officer trained."

> Of the five rifles, one is loaded with blanks so that no one knows for sure who fired the bullets.

https://www.npr.org/2015/04/05/397672199/utah-brings-back-fi...

Many dont realise this - in a firing squad only a few guys have live ammo, the rest are blanks. This is so that no one soldier knows for certain if he was the one responsible (and probably so that they actually aim for the victim).

100% agree with your sentiment.

I never even held a gun, but, is the lack of recoil not obvious?

Yes, and no. If you fire a live round, and immediately after a blank (or vice versa) from the same gun, the difference is very easy to notice. But if there's more time between, or if you're not very familiar with the gun, it's more difficult. And, if you're standing there tasked with killing another person, an objective analysis of the recoil is perhaps easier said than done.

In the end, I think it's more about plausible deniability on a psychological level than something you couldn't figure out if you wanted to.

From what I've read, it's usually one person that has a blank, all others have live.

When someone trains to be a Veterinarian, one of things they learn is how to put an animal down humanely.

That same body of knowledge should exist for humans.

Not knowing the difference between KCL and CH3CO2K - a vet would have their license revoked for this.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/10/08/446862121...

I also find it odd that these freaky methods are used ... if anything they seem more cruel and unusual than other alternatives.

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