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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”?
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.
As someone who has been opposed to the death penalty for a long time, I can assure you that people opposed to the death penalty aren't making any arguments that are overly concerned with the specific method. The usual case is that proponents try to sanitize the process as much as possible to avoid bad PR. Capital punishment is a much easier sell if it looks more like putting down a dog rather than a violent, public action. Opponents simply point out that these methods aren't as "humane" as their proponents like to make it seem. I don't know of anyone who has ever argued that they'd be in favor of capital punishment if only we could eliminate the suffering involved. To the contrary, I and several of my friends of the same disposition are of the opinion that if we're going to have capital punishment we should stop pussyfooting around and just do it. Firing squad and hanging are still viable methods of execution in the US, but the authorities in places like Alabama that like to thump their chests about capital punishment are too squeamish to actually implement them, and instead turn to half-assed measures like nitrogen hypoxia in a vain attempt to make people think that the business of killing someone against his will is a perfectly cromulent practice.
I remember back in the 90s Phil Donahue or some other left-leaning talk-show host wanting to show an execution on television in the hopes that it would end public support for capital punishment. I also remember, a few years later, news reports that public opinion for the practice dipped to an all-time low following the heavily publicized execution of Timothy McVeigh (before shooting back up after 9/11). If all of these southern governors so adamant about the necessity of the death penalty are serious, they should have no problem 1.) Using execution by firing squad, 2.) Personally attending an execution, and 3.) Either showing it on TV or livestreaming it. The fact that this is the one part of the penal system that's kept under wraps says a lot. PRisons have no problem bringing in TV crews for reality shows and allowing access to various do-gooders who want to help prisoners. Fines are pretty self-explanatory. Community service is done within the community, and even the oft-criticized "forced labor" of chan gangs is usually done right along a public highway. But when it comes to executions, they don't want to even record the process let alone broadcast it, and we rely on descriptions from a select group of journalists and other witnesses to even know what happens. All I ask is that if death penalty proponents are serious, they stop half-assing the process and let people see it. Public executions were the norm throughout most of human history, and I haven't heard any compelling reasons why, if we're going to keep the death penalty, we have to hide it from the public.
This is usually justified by death penalty proponents as giving privacy to a dying man as the only mercy available. The punishment is death, it isn't suffering, it isn't humiliation.
On an additional practical note, public executions in this day and age would be attended by dueling sets of activists and maintaining security can present a potential problem. In the 19th century it was also noted that public executions were sometimes used by deranged condemned to put on a spectacle.
I think deranged it a bit much. Part o& the reason for a public execution is the lack of mass media that is widespread enough to get the message out as the state needs it out there.
The message would be essentially three things: person is found guilty of a crime, the state is able to catch try, and punish people, and the state has decided that the crime is serious enough that a harsh sentence is warranted. In our era, coverage of the crime is pretty solid, and at the time of trial, most of the details are known. You know they’ve been arrested, you hear about the crime, and you hear the sentence. There’s really no need to publicly execute the person on top of that because we have news to tell us. Go back 150 years or more and it might take time to get news to all of the surrounding communities that someone had committed a crime worthy of death. Go back 250 years and getting the same news out gets harder still. But people would gather for the execution and of course talk about it (and the more of a spectacle you make, the better) which makes a public execution a way to leverage a sort of virality to make sure that people don’t do the kinds of crimes that get them executed.
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