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?
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.
[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".
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.
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.
Also, aren’t there Chinese suppliers who wouldn’t add those troublesome stipulations?
Or simply open a small gouvernmental lab that produces the drug in the small amounts necessary.
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...
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").
A handful of sleeping pills and a solid dose of Fentanyl will do it.
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.