The tabloid press- excuse me- the legacy media has made sure we all know about this psychopathic woman in Tennessee who savagely murdered her classmate thirty years ago, then pocketed a piece of the victim's skull to show off at school.

Well, they finally got around to trying to execute her, and couldn't manage it. My understanding is that since she's female, they had an all-female execution team. Good gravy

So, it turned into the equivalent of missy trying to parallel park the station wagon.

Ask yourself, why do we do this stupid shit? I'm not talking about taking half a lifetime to end the life of someone who forfeited their right to be a member of the human race. I'm talking about this idiotic kill-them-gently horse shit.

Perhaps you know the story of Tom Ketchum. Well, the unlucky outlaw gained weight while awaiting hanging, and the executioner used too long of a rope, so that when ol' Tom hit its limit, it separated his head from his body.

But, Hell, them boys recovered quickly from the trauma of it (except for ol' Black Jack, of course). They took a picture of Two-Piece Tommy and made a postcard out of it!

This is the problem, you see- the integrity of the corpus.

We want to kill them, but God forbid that the condemned end up in more than one piece. Freakin' ridiculous.

So, we plug them into high voltage and roast them thoroughly, or we suffocate them with poison gas, or inject them with substances of various kinds which, not infrequently, don't work, and cause the very suffering society has decided we must avoid for the poor murderer.

It's simple:

We can put people to sleep so effectively, that their body can be cut open and surgeons can go frolicking through a patient's internal organs, yes?

OK, strap the condemned to a gurney and put them to sleep like you're going to remove their appendix. Can we manage that? Good

Now, flip the gurney so that the condemned is face down. Still with me? Fabulous.

Load a 12 gauge shotgun. With what, you ask? Well, anything. Anything from birdshot on up to a magnum slug.

Place the shotgun at the back of the skull and pull the trigger.

VOILA!

Instantaneous death. Gone, so gone. Very, very gone. The gone-est. The most gone since gone got going.

But, oh my, what a mess, huh. What do we do with all these little pieces parts that should be attached to the poor, poor murderer?

Well, shit. Get the shop vac. Scoop 'em, bag 'em, soak up the gooey parts with the Quicker Picker Upper, whatever. Toss that stuff in the casket. Cremate all of it.

This is the issue, really, it is- the integrity of the corpus. The State has decided they want to hit the off switch for someone but doing it effectively would make the bureaucrats feel all icky, and so we have the macabre circus we had last night.

And, y'know, if no one wants to be the one to pull the trigger on the H&R Topper, have a robot do it, although, come to think of it, that might be a slippery slope...

quote:

Well, the unlucky outlaw gained weight while awaiting hanging, and the executioner used too long of a rope, so that when ol' Tom hit its limit, it separated his head from his body.

Not a botched execution, to me. He got executed real quick, right? So, what's the problem?

As Rudyard Kipling said:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you...



.

I don't get why they can't "put down" a human. Vets do it successfully for animals all the time.

They should have gotten a vet instead. They have vast experience putting down animals.

I'd argue that spending decades on death row, getting last-minute delays and raising a glimmer of hope only to be executed anyway, let alone botching the actual execution, are cruel in themselves, the very thing they were supposedly trying to avoid.

Do you suppose the execution team swabbed the injection site with alcohol first?

If you are convicted of murder or any other death penalty crime, set the incarceration time as 3 years maximum with all appeals to be reviewed in that time frame. If conviction is upheld, then death by firing squad. Cheap and effective.

I think 12 gauge slug to the back of the head will work every time. If that is too messy how about just hooking them to 35000 volts AC? I have killed plenty of animals in my life, it is not rocket science. Or just take them down to the stockyard.

quote:

Originally posted by 229DAK:

quote:

Well, the unlucky outlaw gained weight while awaiting hanging, and the executioner used too long of a rope, so that when ol' Tom hit its limit, it separated his head from his body.

Not a botched execution, to me. He got executed real quick, right? So, what's the problem?

That was in Union County New Mexico, My wife's great grandfather, Salome Garcia, was the Sheriff at that time. He told his son (wife's grandfather) not to watch the hanging. But you know small boys, he snuck around and watched through a hole in the fence which was right near the gallows.He was right there when the head came off.
Lots of speculation, but grandfather said Black Jack had gained a lot of weight and when arrested had been shot in the arm which got infected and was removed. That made him lopsided and they had left a sand bag hanging on the rope overnight taking all the stretch out of the rope.

Build a chamber to hold the condemned, hook them to monitoring equipment, leave them in the chamber, exchange the oxygen for hydrogen gas at whatever rate you choose until the monitoring equipment shows flat lines on all functions. Heck, the chamber doesn’t even need to be hermetically sealed, so any witnesses sitting in a viewing room won’t be affected.

Captive bolt gun. Society has no stomach for the death penalty. It's not actually hard to kill a human. I'm offended at the idea that these miscreants are deserving of a painless passage into oblivion just because their actions have made the state responsible. I'm not advocating torture, but why do these individuals deserve a better death than billions of other humans through the ages,

Lil Kimmy the hmfic of NORK had a few good ideas.
30mm Anti-Aircraft does a pretty good job, so do hungry dogs.

quote:

Originally posted by bdylan:
Captive bolt gun.

Yep. I have no idea why it's perfect for pigs and cattle, but no one uses it on death row.

A length of hemp rope. Lasts forever, can be flipped end for end to alleviate stretching, oil it, and it’s “organic”.
A short walk and a long drop. Done

Or like the Russians, a bullet behind the ear

Missed the IV. Two choices: 1) incompetence, or 2) missed on purpose. It will be educational to read how the investigation plays out.

quote:

Or like the Russians, a bullet behind the ear

no need for a big ole mess, a .22 behind the ear, it goes in, scrambles the brains bouncing off the interior of the skull, one little hole, small mess

Back before the energy conservation push, most states had a device often referred to as "Old Sparky"..

quote:

Originally posted by Doc H.:
Missed the IV. Two choices: 1) incompetence, or 2) missed on purpose. It will be educational to read how the investigation plays out.

IIRC drug companies were refusing to sell some or all of the drugs for the injection, and states were looking at alternatives. I wonder if this was inferior products.

"When that noose tightens around your neck, you can feel the Devil bite your ass!"

- Tuco Ramirez, "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly"

I wonder if this evil witch has bite marks on hers.

quote:

Originally posted by Doc H.:
Missed the IV. Two choices: 1) incompetence, or 2) missed on purpose. It will be educational to read how the investigation plays out.

Her defense team had claimed even ahead of time that she had "difficult vein access".

And witnesses reported that as the drugs began to be administered she complained out loud that "it felt like her arm was about to burst open".

Definitely sounds like a missed IV, with the drugs going into the tissue of her arm instead of her vein.

One of many positive aspects of nitrogen executions... No chance of a botched IV, expired drugs, lack of access to the drugs, etc. Basically foolproof, painless, and freely available. Yet has so far only been adopted by a few states.