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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”?
I'm pretty sure it's 100% outgroup-hatred along standard culture war lines. Executing convicted murderers is a red tribe value, therefore to all blue tribe civilized society, it's savage, uncivilized, and wrong no matter how it's done, and every weapon in the culture war will be brought to bear to oppose it. That explains why a genuine attempt to do it in a more "humane" way has absolutely no effect on the media position. It was never about that, it was about crushing red tribe.
Meanwhile, if somebody wanted to execute Jan 6 convicts, even in the most pointlessly brutal way you could possibly imagine, the same sources would likely cheer on how they were getting exactly what they deserved and lament that the punishment wasn't harsh enough.
I'm blue tribe and nobody I know would cheer on execution of Jan 6 convicts.
I'm against the death penalty for all cases except very rare individuals who are responsible for something on the magnitude of genocide, or if there was somehow someone too dangerous to keep alive (ie, the Joker from Batman fiction). I'm against it for multiple reasons, but prime among them is the terrifyingly high conviction rate if innocents.
Was everyone who died during the Iraq War a terrorist? likely not, some innocents died and it was an acceptable loss. Edge cases does not invalidate the cost/benefit analysis. If a death penalty (or life on death row) is an effective deferent, which I think it is, then it's worth it even if some innocents are caught in the net.
I think war makes for an awkward analogy to the death penalty, but I take your point that cost/benefit analysis is applicable.
However, when I google, all the results I see say that there's no evidence death penalty works as a deterrent.
But on the other hand, all the sources are biased. Murder rates are higher in capital punishment states but I could easily see that being correlation, not causation. I really can't find any good stats here.
I'm changing my stance to "I believe the death penalty is likely bad, but with low confidence, and more research needs to be done on the matter."
The primary purpose of the death penalty is retributive justice, not deterrence. If it also functions as a deterrent, that's a fantastic bonus, but whether it has a deterrent effect or not, some people simply deserve to die and it's a miscarriage of justice to allow them to live.
CS Lewis wrote a great article about penalties. This was his general take. The only morally appropriate theory of punishment is just desserts. Any deterrence (or incapacitation) is a nice cherry on top.
But then, "give every man his deserts, and who should 'scape whipping?"
I think there are murderers who are violent, sick, and dangerous, who have no remorse or no conception of human life (other than their own) being valuable, and who have inflicted horrific suffering on their victims.
It's natural to want to 'pay them back' in the same way, to make them suffer. But that achieves nothing other than satisfying revenge, and handing over the power of vengeance to the state instead of taking private revenge should put us past that. Indulging in sadistic impulses, even if 'justified', doesn't help anyone in the end and is worse for society in the long run, because if we all get to let our baser impulses out in certain circumstances, then I do think that has an effect which ends up with a society that is crueller and harsher and less desirable to live in, in the long run. For instance, people like to complain about bureaucracy and unhelpful government employees and the like, but imagine if someone in the Department of Certificates deliberately screws you around for the laughs, because they'll go back to their desk and joke with their colleagues about "what an idiot, he's going to lose his house because he was too dumb to check that I gave him form 4-A instead of form 4-B which is the one needed, some people are too stupid to live" and everyone laughs because "oh hey, you going to the drawing and quartering on Tuesday, it should be a good one, Executioner Brownley is doing it and he can drag it out for hours".
Ehh I haven’t murdered, raped, assaulted, or materially injured someone. Hell, I haven’t even done boring things like steal with mens rea (I almost certainly have accidentally taken things that aren’t mine).
Am I perfect? No. I’ve done some bad things. But I’m quite sure that this is not a “there but for the Grace of God goes me” situation.
With all of that said, what do you think is the proper role of the state?
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