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The Electric Chair That Might Soon Be Used in Tennessee

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22 pointsdanso71 comments

All this complication around methods of execution baffles me.

Why don’t we use a massive dose of fentanyl or some other opioid? I’ve got to be missing something, because that seems like a simple, one-step process that doesn’t risk the pain of paralytics and potassium chloride.

I think the death penalty is a useless relic, but if we’re going to do it, why make it so bizarre?

I'd say use carbon monoxide. No taste or odor, no sense of suffocation, just a quiet loss of consciousness and then death.

How long would that need to be?

There are symptoms. It's only a nice, calm death if you're sleeping - so you'd want to do the usual suicide technique of sleeping pills + carbon monoxide.

Nitrogen gas appears to be what states* are looking into [1] [2].

[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudenc...

[2] http://time.com/3749879/nitrogen-gas-execution-oklahoma-leth...

*Edit: Changed "statesn" to "states".

Nitrogen would be a lot safer for everyone else around. You can release lots of N2 in a reasonably ventilated room without harm but that's not the case with CO.

Helium would likely be even safer, since any that leaked would rise towards the ceiling/ventilation.

Then it would be funny if the convicted would speak. I'm not sure you want that in an execution.

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRKVQcbIByo

Everything I’ve heard about hypoxia indicates that it’s a neutral or pleasant experience. You lose your higher mental functions first so you don’t panic or worry about what’s going on. You feel fine until you keel over. The fact that this isn’t the standard way to do it is a clear sign to me that the people making these decisions aren’t interested in making it quick and simple.

Gas chambers herewecome!

That would require either the state finding a legal source of fentanyl that is willing to sell them the drug for that purpose (challenging, given most pharma companies refuse due to some mix of principles and not wanting their product to be associated with death) or the state contracting with black market suppliers.

Given the state imprisons low level illicit drug suppliers, I'm guessing the hypocrisy of granting legit contracts to illicit drug manufacturers is enough to make the black market route a non-starter.

It's not just principles that causes the issue for pharma companies (although the principles are, I think, real and truly held by the senior executives of those companies) - the EU has also banned export of any drugs for use in executions which makes it legally problematic for them too.

That already have that problem with the drugs currently used, so it doesn’t seem to be an additional roadblock to using a simpler cocktail.

Also, aren’t there Chinese suppliers who wouldn’t add those troublesome stipulations?

> That would require either the state finding a legal source of fentanyl that is willing to sell them the drug for that purpose (challenging, given most pharma companies refuse due to some mix of principles and not wanting their product to be associated with death) or the state contracting with black market suppliers.

Or simply open a small gouvernmental lab that produces the drug in the small amounts necessary.

I’m very surprised that someone hasn’t opened a company explicitly to manufacture execution drugs.

I understand the desire to make it humane. But killing someone is not particularly humane in the first place.

You also have to wonder about whether it’s worth making killing someone super humane since, you know, they’re gonna die anyway. So they have an unpleasant few seconds, or perhaps minutes, and then they’re dead.

I mean, they just suffered some 10 years or more of imprisonment, often solitary, which is extremely inhumane in general. What’s 2 more minutes?

That said, we have plenty of fast and humane execution methods that are hard to botch. Most involve a swift disabling of the brain stem.

Like a bullet to the back of the neck, hanging, guillotine, that long nail thing they use for cows.

All those seem easier, cheaper, more reliable, and faster than these lethal injection and electric chair contraptions.

But surely I must be missing something important.

It always struck me as odd that for lethal injection, the medical staff sterilized the needle site before hooking up the line.

The governor might issue a pardon before you actually inject the drug.

It has nothing to do with being humane and everything to do with appearing humane and, even more importantly, avoiding association with otherwise extremely similar killing. Shooting prisoners in the head would be humane, but it would invite comparison to terrorists, revolutionaries, and other unsavories. However warranted the comparisons are, dressing up executions in medical nonsense avoids them, so our government does it.

Agreed. Yet they somehow manage to over-complicate the medical dressing up.

The whole point of death penalties is to kill someone gruesomely as a warning to everyone else. Electric chairs do that, opioids not so much.

Yet 'getting the needle' is also used as a threat.

Citation needed. From what I understand, 1) that theory is incorrect and the death penalty is not seen as a deterrent by potential future criminals (rather it may be the opposite) [citation coming]; and 2) Policymakers who say it is a deterrent are either lying or disinformed.

My understanding of the death penalty is that it is intended as violent punishment and is done gruesomely for the purposes of revenge. Read any thread online about a bad crime and you will see mobs of people calling for violent, public murders of the accused. It's human nature for a lot of people and something I think a civilized nation would immediately outlaw, especially ones that pride themselves on not doing "cruel and unusual punishment". I remember reading that the death penalty in the US doesn't fall under that category merely because of the 'and' clause and the relatively common nature of gruesome murders by the State in the US.

[citations]. It seems that states without the death penalty have lower murder rates, suggesting the opposite forces are true compared to your post (edit: i.e, it might even mean that a place with state-sanctioned/performed murder is more likely to have murders).

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/deterrence-states-without-death...

Agreed. But the death penalty still has the property that it avoids recidivism completely. Which is a deterrent of sorts.

Life imprisonment avoids recidivism completely too. At least on the civilian population.

So does a life sentence.

That's what I was saying. The death penalty is about making a violent example of someone (regardless of whether it is effective). A compassionate execution is a failed execution because it fails to make the statement that was the point of the exercise.

That just doesn’t align with modern legal thinking.

That's only one of the possible takes on death penalty. Another one is that it permanently removes a threat from society (life sentence doesn't, because the prisoner can still escape).

In practice, though, it seems that most people who support death penalty do see it as a punishment intended mainly for deterrence, and what they refer to as "justice" (i.e. cathartic vengeance - "torturing someone who made me feel bad makes me feel good").

It also serves as a form of expression about your values.

The electric chair was originally adopted as a "humane" execution method as well.

But that’s definitely not the point of lethal injection. It was adopted as a “humane” way of executing the condemned. So, for those who truly want a painless and non-messy death, it really isn’t as hard as they’re making it on themselves.

A handful of sleeping pills and a solid dose of Fentanyl will do it.

I wouldn't say "definitely". There is some evidence that the complexity around lethal injection is to leave room for "accidents" that can cause the executed to suffer before they die.

That may have been true in the past, it is definitely not true at this point in time. The current understanding of the law is that executions must result in death with the least possible pain for the subject.

The battles in the courts over the past 5 years have been around challenges to various execution protocols based on their cruelty and pain - and those have been largely successful.

Yes, it is mindbogglingly barbaric. What's weirdest is that we seemed to have regressed from even historical levels. A simple long drop hanging or guillotining would probably be more humane than most of the methods in use today - and with administration of a strong sedative beforehand even more so.

I thought question: what a more severe form of execution be a deterrent? Let’s say the guillotine is brought back. Would that act as a deterrent?

I don't think so.

Most crimes that would qualify for the death penalty are the result of psycopaths (serial killers, and such), or wanton criminals - if someone is comitting armed robbery armed an heavy firepower, they're prepared to die - by either the bullet or the government.

Opioid overdose is not as reliably deadly as people think. Yes, it CAN kill, but it doesn’t always, and not in a defined time period, and not always cleanly - respiratory arrest vs. cardiac arrest vs. brain death. The goal of the protocol is to have a process that has a very high likelihood of causing death within a fairly short period.

Why not just dose continually until death occurs?

“Crewel and unusual”

Assuming no pain is felt, what's the cruel part?

Death penalty is barbaric but these methods are just cruel.

Why not use preferred methods for euthanasia, like exit bag? It's fast, painless and cheap.

No one ever mentions it, but the answer is simple. There are a siginficant number of people who don't want executions to be painless.

Cruel methods are used because the intent is to terminally punish, not to merely kill.

There's a fantastic documentary called 'How to kill a human being', with Michael Portillo (former UK politician), made back in 2008.

It covers this quite nicely - Includes an interview with a death penalty advocate and asks about a 'theoretical painless execution method' and the advocate agrees that if such thing were available it would be ideal.

Then later, after Portillo has done a bunch of investigation, hypoxia (I think) is landed on as an ideal solution. It's put to the advocate, who then squirms and insists that it's not a suitable 'punishment'.

My memory is hazy since I haven't seen it in a decade, but it's a fantastic doco and probably freely available now.

So is your thought that the death penalty advocate really doesn't want to do away with the inmate, but instead to punish them?

There's a gap between what's acceptable to talk about in terms of motivation for the death penalty (removal of the offender for society, full closure for victims/family) and some of the underlying motivations of people who believe in it (punishment, revenge).

As a result it's hard to have a conversation when the two sides are ostensibly in agreement, but in reality have a fundamental point of contention. If you can't get everyone on board with 'capital punishment should not be about punishment or revenge', in terms of what they fundamentally believe and not just what they'll openly state, you're not going to be able to make headway.

The documentary illustrated that problem very well, I thought.

What is a doco?

Slang for documentary.

Apologies, looks like it's a local saying: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/doco

I'm being an egg (https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Egg).

There is a similar case (Bucklew v. Precythe) that will be tried before the supreme court this year.[0] In that case the plaintiff claims that his eighth amendment rights would be violated if he were to be lethally injected, as it may cause him significant pain due to a unique medical condition.

[0]: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2018/17-8151

"practicing engineering without a license." is a new one to me, didn't realise they had that in the U.S.

In the UK you can call yourself an engineer and nobody is going to charge you for that. However, if you want to do any serious engineering then you do need a few letters after your name for some professions. I am glad Isambard Kingdom Brunel and other 'engineers' were able to work without having to be qualified in some official way.

I don't see this chair or any of the other U.S. methods as being particularly humane. There is a lack of instant-ness which then becomes 'cruel and unusual punishment'. Firing squad places burden on the firing squad, even if results are instant and therefore not 'cruel and unusual'. How come blunt force trauma and a 'dead man's switch' hasn't been tried? Evil-wrong-doer is given a switch that he/she can let go of 'when they are ready', then extremely heavy object and the magic of gravity could solve the matter of instant resolution.

Regardless of one's view on the death penalty, I've always found allowing people to view an execution to be incredibly disturbing.

I feel the same way, but I guess allowing people to view the execution is a way to show the public that the person is in fact executed and the state didn't just say that the person was executed.

Wouldn't viewing the deceased body have the same effect?

No. A visit to any decent wax museum will show why.

Right. My concern is mainly that there is a common unspoken view that executions aren't more humane because it's a mix of being a public spectacle and the victim's family wanting the person to suffer.

Surely, if you think your state is going to disappear citizens in place of executing them after sentence, the publicity of execution is the least of your worries?

To me it seems incredibly anachronistic, even more than the US the odd one out in the First world for retaining the death penalty at all.

Over in England they felt that viewing an execution could encourage spectacle rather than sentence. After some changes in public opinion and an enquiry public execution ended sometime in the mid 1800s, before they even ended beheading and quartering for treason! The death penalty itself lasted another century.

IMHO seeing the death of someone who may have tortured or killed many others is far from disturbing.

Agree, feels like the middle ages when we used to have a pillory [0]. So out of time.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillory

OK, USA has the death penalty. Good or bad that's another story. Meanwhile, just use a firing squad. Efficient and humane.

If I had to pick a method, this would probably be my choice.

What's to say a particularly notorious criminal doesn't get the firing squad aiming a bit too far to the left (victim's right) to miss the heart and deliberately inflict additional suffering? I know there's more than one of them but still...

I mean... we could use a tank. Take the entire head off...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowing_from_a_gun

Firing squads are for show. States that do use bullets to execute people, do it with a single bullet to the head.

In China, where this is still occasionally practiced, and was standard until a few years ago, they actually use an AK round fired with the barrel aimed at the back of the head very close up, with the condemned held restrained and unable to move. This is very messy (it basically blows the top of the skull off), but there's basically zero possibility of mangling it.

With nearly unlimited appeals, I have no problem with the death penalty, but I do wish that DNA testing was made de facto and free for inmates. That said, I say bring back the firing squad.

Wow!

Buzz Feed has a poor rep, but the headline is not a hyperbole.

Buzz Feed News has a stellar rep.

But “Buzz Feed” does indeed have a terrible rep for peddling the most cynical mindless clickbait type of content the web has to offer, and it is literally 2/3 of the “Buzz Feed News” brand for better or (obviously) worse.

Zagorski kills 2 people, then sues the state so they can't use an alternative and must use the electric chair?

More power to him.

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