Bring back hanging

[dales]

Where's Dr. Kevorkian when we need him?

[Crackpot]

Dead.

[Burning Petard]

I have really wondered about the abhorrence in America when the bad guys in the mid-east show a beheading. Public hangings (and floggings) were conducted in my lifetime here in Delaware. Cutting off the head seems IMNSHO more merciful than the drugs administered for executions in the USA today. I think the more common emotional reaction I describe in this post is a reflection of a general desire to provide 'separation' from the act of killing.

snailgate

[Big RR]

I think you're right to a certain point, but cutting off a head with one blow takes a good tool (sword, likely) and someone wh knows how to wield it. The drugs administered are reported to be painless (if used correctly) and are far less dependent on the skill of the executioner than a beheading.

as for executions being conducted in public, I am of two minds--one is that I do think the citizens of a state should see what's being done in their name, but then I hesitate to think how the actual execution might just turn into a three ring circus as apparently happened with the last public execution in the US in 1936 (in Kentucky) http://www.nhregister.com/news/article/ ... 578786.php --I tried to find information on Delaware, but while it appears that public whippings were performed there until the 1960s, I could find nothing of public executions.

[Jarlaxle]

I would think you're probably right, and if kept in good condition would be pretty painless and foolproof. As I recall, France used the guillotine through the early 1960s--although it's a bit messy, nothing I've read makes me think it wuld be a worse method of execution than the others currently in use.

personally, I would think a firing squad would be the best way to execute, so long as we could rig up some sort of a way to not have to rely on a marksman (possibly a premounted and aimed rifle which fires automatically and always through the condemned person's heart. Not that a markman wouldn't suffice, but it would be preferable not to have human effort as a drawback.

Use a canister round from a 105mm tank cannon. (The Army is retiring them by the hundreds.)