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Notes -
Over a decade ago, the BBC came out with a documentary titled How to Kill a Human Being that went into what the director believed to be the most humane and painless way to execute someone if you really wish to do so. Towards the end of the documentary, they interview someone who believes that death row criminals don’t deserve the most humane death possible because those criminals hardly offered their own victims a humane death. The documentary gives it an air of “Look, we’ve found a humane way to actually do executions, and these barbaric Americans don’t want to do that because to them, bloodthirsty cruelty is the point.”
Well, what do you know, Alabama has now actually implemented this “most humane” form of execution for the first time, and news coverage from the BBC and others have been almost exclusively negative. There’s little to no nuance, just statements that the UN and EU condemns this “particularly cruel and unusual punishment.” Where now is the context that the US is merely doing what it was previously criticized for not doing?
To be sure, the scene of thrashing does seem to be more violent than the documentary insinuated such an execution would be, but that itself appears to be because the inmate tried to forcibly hold their breath for as long as possible instead of allowing themselves to pass out from hypoxia. I wouldn’t pin the blame for voluntary thrashing on the method of execution.
What do you think? Am I wrong in reading this as just another case of “Americans can do nothing right”?
As ever, there is absolutely no reason to treat objections to specific methods of the death penalty as good-faith disagreements. The overlap between people that insist that another method be used and people that don't want anyone executed is almost complete. For those of us that think there should be at least an order of magnitude more executions, most of us don't actually care about the method; if I thought updating from firing squad to some fake and lame "humane death" would be a compromise that gets people to stop trying to save the lives of vile murderers, I would take the compromise. I do think execution should be done by methods where the executor can't avoid the fact that they're ending a life, but whatever, I'm not that insistent on the point.
While the United States is slow about it and doesn't execute enough people, that it still does it to some of the worst people in the world is a great example of it retaining civilizational superiority over countries that take pride in their weakness.
I dunno. some of the worst civilizations/ societies also executed a ton of people. Saudi Arabia, for example, of more executions not leading to a better society. But I think the scope should be expanded to include pedos and the like.
Correct, the death penalty is so historically common and normal that pretty much every society will have had it. Killing the worst criminals is no guarantee of a quality civilization, but not killing them is an indication that the civilization has pathological empathy.
or being indicator of being functional enough to keep them in prisons
The continued life of Anders Breivik isn't an indicator of being functional.
I would not optimise for edge cases.
Though if Breivik would be executed I would be fine with it.
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Up until 2008 there were people on death row in the United States for pedophilia and several death penalty states maintain laws allowing them to do so, but the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional during an election cycle. This is an interesting example of the usual dynamic where elite opinion is sharply negative towards the death penalty even as it retains popular support.
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