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.
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.
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.