Die like a dog...

[Scooter]

I for one certainly would not mind if he suffered. If it was decided that he needed to be dead because he killed someone I doubt very much if he was concerned with his victims well being.

In Iran they bury people up to their neck and hurl rocks at their head. Perhaps you should move there, since they allow audience participation.

[rubato]

It was obviously incredibly gruesome, but...

The French were looking for a method of execution that would be as quick and painless as possible, and I don't think any method conjured up since even comes close on that score.

Methods like lethal injection were meant to make execution look civilized. It isn't. It's barbaric. So why not use a method that demonstrates that if it also happens to be the most humane.

My sentiments exactly.

yrs,
rubato

[Andrew D]

It was obviously incredibly gruesome, but...

The French were looking for a method of execution that would be as quick and painless as possible, and I don't think any method conjured up since even comes close on that score.

There appears to be some doubt as to whether death by guillotine was actually instantaneous. How about we substitute a steam hammer for the blade? It seems to me that if one's head is, in a matter of milliseconds, crushed flat as a pancake, that's about as instantaneous as it gets.

[Scooter]

If it were me I think I'd bet on the guillotine rather than risk being barbequed alive

[Crackpot]

Nothing beats hanging when done right.

[Scooter]

Except that it was botched often enough for it to be largely abandoned.

"Until the 1890s, hanging was the primary method of execution used in the United States... For execution by this method, the inmate may be weighed the day before the execution, and a rehearsal is done using a sandbag of the same weight as the prisoner. This is to determine the length of 'drop' necessary to ensure a quick death. If the rope is too long, the inmate could be decapitated, and if it is too short, the strangulation could take as long as 45 minutes...

Immediately before the execution, the prisoner's hands and legs are secured, he or she is blindfolded, and the noose is placed around the neck, with the knot behind the left ear. The execution takes place when a trap-door is opened and the prisoner falls through. The prisoner's weight should cause a rapid fracture-dislocation of the neck. However, instantaneous death rarely occurs. If the inmate has strong neck muscles, is very light, if the 'drop' is too short, or the noose has been wrongly positioned, the fracture-dislocation is not rapid and death results from slow asphyxiation. If this occurs the face becomes engorged, the tongue protrudes, the eyes pop, the body defecates, and violent movements of the limbs occur."

link

[rubato]

Nothing beats hanging when done right.

Hanging is more difficult than you think. Mon pere bought a book called "a new handbook of hanging" at a book and record auction back in the 1960s. It was an anti-death penalty book from about 1923 (IIR correctly) and according to the author getting the 'drop' right (the distance the body falls before the rope comes up short) was a far from exact science. Too short and they strangle slowly (or someone comes out and pulls on their legs to kill them quicker) too far and the head pops off spraying blood everywhere. Its not just a weight vs distance equation either, you have to include the musculature of the neck and some other factors.

yrs,
rubato

[Miles]

I for one certainly would not mind if he suffered. If it was decided that he needed to be dead because he killed someone I doubt very much if he was concerned with his victims well being.

In Iran they bury people up to their neck and hurl rocks at their head. Perhaps you should move there, since they allow audience participation.

All sarcasim aside Scooter, have you ever had a loved one or someone who you cared for murdered? If not perhaps you should talk to others who have and get a perspective on your holier than thow attitude.

[rubato]

I for one certainly would not mind if he suffered. If it was decided that he needed to be dead because he killed someone I doubt very much if he was concerned with his victims well being.

In Iran they bury people up to their neck and hurl rocks at their head. Perhaps you should move there, since they allow audience participation.

All sarcasim aside Scooter, have you ever had a loved one or someone who you cared for murdered? If not perhaps you should talk to others who have and get a perspective on your holier than thow attitude.

No matter how savage we would feel if a loved one were brutally treated we can still say that the rules for society ought not to be maximized for the satisfaction of blood lust but for the promotion of civility. The satisfaction of revenge is fleeting but the injury to society of promoting brutality is more lasting.


yrs,
rubato

[Scooter]

All sarcasim aside Scooter, have you ever had a loved one or someone who you cared for murdered? If not perhaps you should talk to others who have and get a perspective on your holier than thow attitude.

No, but I was one severely beaten in a gay bashing incident involving 4 or 5 perpetrators, where for the first 24 hours or so afterwords it was questionable whether or not I would survive.

When a few of them were caught, my first thought was that I wished, when these 20-somethings went to prison, that they would be "taken under the wing" of a few older inmates who would turn their assholes into the Holland Tunnel through repeated rapes. Which, given the fact that each of them individually was a chicken shit, was probably what happened, but eventually that knowledge no longer gave me satisfaction.

[BoSoxGal]

I think that each of us when personally wronged is capable of feeling an immense desire for vengeance - I think it is the very rare person who immediately cultivates forgiveness in his/her heart.

That is exactly why justice MUST be up to the people as a whole - the state - and not left to individuals to exact, because it would be vengeance, not justice, that would most often be sought by the victim or victim's loved ones.

I know if someone I loved were brutally murdered, I would want to murder the person who did it with my own bare hands.

Yet I am wholeheartedly against the death penalty.

[dgs49]

I've posted these thoughts before in another forum, but as a conservative, I feel very strongly that the death penalty should be abolished by Constitutional Amendment.

(1) The survival of OJSimpson is an indictment of the entire American justice system; he is walking proof (even though he is no longer golfing) that you can buy your way out of a capital crime. How can you execute anyone with him still breathing?

(2) Mistakes happen, and the appeals process is, shall we say, "imperfect" at getting at the ultimate facts as regards guilt or innocence. Very few innocent people are convicted, but until it is zero, the death penalty should be removed from list of possible sanctions.

(3) If punishment is the goal, there is nothing worse than sentencing someone to live the rest of their life in a maximum-security prison. Execution is an easy way out, relatively speaking.

(4) Removing the death penalty would be a major financial blow to the ACLU.

(5) Defending and pursuing appeals through the court system is a horrific waste of time for government resources. "Lock 'em up and throw away the key" is, I would wager, cheaper than going through all the nonsense necessary to actually execute someone (except in Texas, where it is a sport).

(6) On this issue, the U.S. is out of step with the community of nations of which we would like to be a part; we are now right in step with many nations with whom we would rather not be associated.

(7) It is nauseating in the extreme to see our fellow human beings conducting candle-lit vigils for these most horrific of criminals. Let these self-righteous idiots find something more worthwhile to occupy their free time.

And did I mention? This would require a Constitutional Amendment.