OK's Double Execution

[Tom Sawyer]

It seems to me to be a fairly trivial worry. We want to kill you ... but we want to be nice to you about it.

Oh, come on - Canadians are the nicest people in the world! You're trying to tell me you wouldn't say "please" and "thank you" while bashing someone's head in? I ain't buying it.

Of course we wouldn't say that. The polite thing to say when bashing someone's head in is "Pardon me".

 

[Derec]

Of course we wouldn't say that. The polite thing to say when bashing someone's head in is "Pardon me".

Or this:

Then go to the boyfriend and say "Sorry for your loss".

 

[Tom Sawyer]

What a lovely young man. I always liked that guy.

 

[bilby]

I don't get it either. It would be absurdly simple to devise a machine that simultaneously fires multiple bolts into a person's head. Death would be instantaneous. Or we could simply drop a 16-ton weight on the condemned man. Hell, hanging and the guillotine were more humane than any of the newer methods devised.

I oppose the death penalty, but if we're going to do it we should at least do it right.

This is why I did see Kim-something-something North Korea shooting a artillery shell into a his uncle to be all that bad for an execution. Pretty instantaneous.

That's all very well for minimising the suffering of the convict, but I bet the janitor who has to clean up afterwards would find the experience both cruel and unusual.

 

[travc]

I don't get it either. It would be absurdly simple to devise a machine that simultaneously fires multiple bolts into a person's head. Death would be instantaneous. Or we could simply drop a 16-ton weight on the condemned man. Hell, hanging and the guillotine were more humane than any of the newer methods devised.

I oppose the death penalty, but if we're going to do it we should at least do it right.

I'm with you on that. Executions in the West (really just the US in practice) are designed to be "peaceful" (for the viewers) and clean.
There is some history dating back to around the time of the Civil War when an odd notion of "dying well" and "dying at peace" took hold. It is somewhat understandable with so many people dying far from home, but with communications and transport good enough that accounts (and bodies in cases) were relayed loved ones and families.

Anyways, I'm for the 16-ton weight (large concrete or steel block in my old proposal on this topic). An execution which is as quick and painless as possible for the condemned should be the goal... otherwise it is even worse than torture (at least torture presumably has the goal of extracting important information or a confession). In my book, it being graphic and messy is a plus, but really how hard is it to hose down the execution chamber.

One real, though IMO stupid, objection: The family/community of the condemned often want an intact and 'presentable' corpse.

PS: Even the "bullet(s) to the back of the head" method is rather messy, which is my theory of why we don't use it. Your "multiple bolt gun" idea is even better IMO, but suffers the same (again, stupid IMO) issues.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

If you're going to kill someone, just kill him. Trying to sanitize the action to try and present it as less terrible than it actually is just makes the notion of killing people less terrible.

 

[maxparrish]

How is it that none of the stories about this planned execution see fit to mention that both of the condemned men "just happen" to be black?

Why is that relevant? Would it have been better if they had been white?

34% of convicted murderers executed are black. (source) The majority of homicide victims are black. (source)

The US justice system disproportionately convicts black men in homicide cases. And even though most murder victims are black, people who kill black victims are FAR less likely to be sentenced to death than people who kill white victims.

You are giving non-germane answer to your own rhetorical question, as well as dodging Derec's very relevant follow-up. You asked why press stories on the botched execution does not also report that the most recently scheduled for execution "happened to be black". Your "answer" is odd tangential hair-pulling over the fact that blacks are 'disproportionately' given capital punishment. That may be true, but it is also not answering you own rhetorical question about the press.

There are many possible reasons the press, unlike you, does not find that 'they happened to be black" worthy of sensationalizing and wailing over, among them:

- The press seems to think the story is on the inhumanity of a botched execution, regardless of who the condemned are. Does color-blind moral outrage offend you?

- Or maybe the press is not color-blind, and they are intentionally suppressing the public perception of blacks as among the death row murderers. Perhaps that is what offends you?

- Or is it just that you don't find botched executions a worthy story UNLESS a black is a victim of the mishap?

What you should have asked is: "Why is the first question of Davka over a botched execution a tangential and irrelevant foray into capital punishment racial imbalance, without the slightest curiosity of what the convicted actually did to earn that death penalty"?

Best I can tell, you don't give a hoot about the torment of pain in this execution, nor the torment and pain of the murdered victims. Nope - if a story has a 'black' in it, it is all about race.

Sad.


PS - Perhaps you and Mr. Bundy have more in common than you know?

 

[Keith&Co.]

PS - Perhaps you and Mr. Bundy have more in common than you know?

Yeah....
If he believes that the judicial system is racially biased against blacks, and this man would have gotten life or something less than 'tortured to death' if he were white, that's justlike wondering if maybe there'd be fewer blacks on Death Row if they were still picking cotton.
That's so unlike his 'wailing' and 'sensationalizing' posts.

 

[Davka]

How is it that none of the stories about this planned execution see fit to mention that both of the condemned men "just happen" to be black?

Why is that relevant? Would it have been better if they had been white?

34% of convicted murderers executed are black. (source) The majority of homicide victims are black. (source)

The US justice system disproportionately convicts black men in homicide cases. And even though most murder victims are black, people who kill black victims are FAR less likely to be sentenced to death than people who kill white victims.

You are giving non-germane answer to your own rhetorical question, as well as dodging Derec's very relevant follow-up. You asked why press stories on the botched execution does not also report that the most recently scheduled for execution "happened to be black". Your "answer" is odd tangential hair-pulling over the fact that blacks are 'disproportionately' given capital punishment. That may be true, but it is also not answering you own rhetorical question about the press.

There are many possible reasons the press, unlike you, does not find that 'they happened to be black" worthy of sensationalizing and wailing over, among them:

- The press seems to think the story is on the inhumanity of a botched execution, regardless of who the condemned are. Does color-blind moral outrage offend you?

- Or maybe the press is not color-blind, and they are intentionally suppressing the public perception of blacks as among the death row murderers. Perhaps that is what offends you?

- Or is it just that you don't find botched executions a worthy story UNLESS a black is a victim of the mishap?

What you should have asked is: "Why is the first question of Davka over a botched execution a tangential and irrelevant foray into capital punishment racial imbalance, without the slightest curiosity of what the convicted actually did to earn that death penalty"?

Best I can tell, you don't give a hoot about the torment of pain in this execution, nor the torment and pain of the murdered victims. Nope - if a story has a 'black' in it, it is all about race.

Sad.


PS - Perhaps you and Mr. Bundy have more in common than you know?

Could you please work harder at misrepresenting my posts next time, Max? You very nearly approached the actual point I was making.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

If you're going to kill someone, just kill him. Trying to sanitize the action to try and present it as less terrible than it actually is just makes the notion of killing people less terrible.

Actually we have the Bill of Rights that doesn't let us overlook it.

 

[Davka]

If you're going to kill someone, just kill him. Trying to sanitize the action to try and present it as less terrible than it actually is just makes the notion of killing people less terrible.

Actually we have the Bill of Rights that doesn't let us overlook it.

Yes, and the Bill of Rights has been a bulwark of protection against cruel and unusual punishment, such as solitary confinement, killing via slow strangulation (hanging without a sudden drop to break the neck), chopping off the foot of a runaway slave, whipping in the public square, confinement in stocks, tarring-and-feathering, and similar un-American methods of punishment.

Let's face it: shooting someone in the head is a foolproof, non-cruel method of execution that has been around since our nation was founded. So why don't we use it? Simple: It's messy, and looks a whole lot like killing someone.

 

[SimpleDon]

This seems to be a case of a botched IV that was inserted into the muscle rather than a vein. Either the needle missed the vein or more probably it was inserted all of the way through the vein and out of the backside of it into the muscle.

Incredibly they routinely put IV's into both arms and pump the poison into both arms. This means that both IV's were screwed up,

I suppose you could blame the AMA. They don't allow physicians to actively participate in executions. There was one there to declare the patient dead but he apparently wasn't able to figure out the problem.

 

[SimpleDon]

I do have an interest in this beyond the obvious ghoulish nature of it.

I too will eventually want to kill myself. I have no desire to witness first hand the later stages of this disease.

Of course, I would prefer a painless death. The one that I am facing otherwise is pretty bad, most likely pneumonia. or literally drowning in my own saliva or choking on a piece of food, which I have nearly done twice already.

Everyone seems to agree that an over dose of anesthesia is the preferred method. This is what Kevorkian used. But why wouldn't they just do this for executions if this is true? Why do they go the complicated three drug route?

 

[doubtingt]

If you're going to kill someone, just kill him. Trying to sanitize the action to try and present it as less terrible than it actually is just makes the notion of killing people less terrible.

Actually we have the Bill of Rights that doesn't let us overlook it.

Yes, and the Bill of Rights has been a bulwark of protection against cruel and unusual punishment, such as solitary confinement, killing via slow strangulation (hanging without a sudden drop to break the neck), chopping off the foot of a runaway slave, whipping in the public square, confinement in stocks, tarring-and-feathering, and similar un-American methods of punishment.

Let's face it: shooting someone in the head is a foolproof, non-cruel method of execution that has been around since our nation was founded. So why don't we use it? Simple: It's messy, and looks a whole lot like killing someone.

Agreed. Lethal injection isn't done b/c its less cruel, but because it allows us to psychological distance ourselves from what we are doing.
"Aww, the lil' guy is going to sleep. Nighty-night bad guy, nighty-night."

BTW, I have no problem with capitial punishment for some crimes, outside of the problem of false positives in guilty verdicts. But, I think the method should be quick and painless, but bloody and ugly, to force us to keep the reality of what we are doing in mind and thus keep our willingness to do it in check.

 

[maxparrish]

How is it that none of the stories about this planned execution see fit to mention that both of the condemned men "just happen" to be black?

Why is that relevant? Would it have been better if they had been white?

34% of convicted murderers executed are black. (source) The majority of homicide victims are black. (source)

The US justice system disproportionately convicts black men in homicide cases. And even though most murder victims are black, people who kill black victims are FAR less likely to be sentenced to death than people who kill white victims.

You are giving non-germane answer to your own rhetorical question, as well as dodging Derec's very relevant follow-up. You asked why press stories on the botched execution does not also report that the most recently scheduled for execution "happened to be black". Your "answer" is odd tangential hair-pulling over the fact that blacks are 'disproportionately' given capital punishment. That may be true, but it is also not answering you own rhetorical question about the press...

PS - Perhaps you and Mr. Bundy have more in common than you know?

Could you please work harder at misrepresenting my posts next time, Max? You very nearly approached the actual point I was making.

Your point was a clear but had little to do with the OP question you proffered. That said, given the distress over the unfortunate mishap, here is something besides race that was studiously left out of most press accounts:

...This is Stephanie Neiman. Clayton Lockett murdered her over her truck. He laughed as he killed her.

Stephanie Neiman was proud of her shiny new Chevy truck with the Tasmanian Devil sticker on it and a matching “Tazz” license plate. Her parents had taught the teenager to stand up for “what was her right and for what she believed in.”

Neiman was dropping off a friend at a Perry residence on June 3, 1999, the same evening Clayton Lockett and two accomplices decided to pull a home invasion robbery there. Neiman fought Lockett when he tried to take the keys to her truck.

The men beat her and used duct tape to bind her hands and cover her mouth. Even after being kidnapped and driven to a dusty country road, Neiman didn’t back down when Lockett asked if she planned to contact police.

The men had also beaten and kidnapped Neiman’s friend along with Bobby Bornt, who lived in the residence, and Bornt’s 9-month-old baby.

Steve and Susie Neiman asked jurors to give Lockett the death penalty for taking the life of their only child, who had graduated from Perry High School two weeks before her death.

Lockett later told police “he decided to kill Stephanie because she would not agree to keep quiet,” court records state.

Neiman was forced to watch as Lockett’s accomplice, Shawn Mathis, spent 20 minutes digging a shallow grave in a ditch beside the road. Her friends saw Neiman standing in the ditch and heard a single shot.

Lockett returned to the truck because the gun had jammed. He later said he could hear Neiman pleading, “Oh God, please, please” as he fixed the shotgun.

The men could be heard “laughing about how tough Stephanie was” before Lockett shot Neiman a second time.

“He ordered Mathis to bury her, despite the fact that Mathis informed him Stephanie was still alive.”​

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dg...n-lockett-murdered-this-is-why-he-had-to-die/

Lockett's suffering was unfortunate, but its not worth losing sleep over.

 

[Davka]

I do have an interest in this beyond the obvious ghoulish nature of it.

I too will eventually want to kill myself. I have no desire to witness first hand the later stages of this disease.

Of course, I would prefer a painless death. The one that I am facing otherwise is pretty bad, most likely pneumonia. or literally drowning in my own saliva or choking on a piece of food, which I have nearly done twice already.

Everyone seems to agree that an over dose of anesthesia is the preferred method. This is what Kevorkian used. But why wouldn't they just do this for executions if this is true? Why do they go the complicated three drug route?

I wondered this myself, and did some research into it a while back. The answer seems to be that execution via an overdose of barbiturates is how we end the lives of our beloved pets when they are suffering from incurable disease, and legislators argued that we should not be treating convicted killers the way we treat our pets, because it offends their precious sensibilities. It's a purely emotional argument, devoid of any logic whatsoever.

I am completely in agreement with your decision to take your own life rather than suffer needlessly through the final stages of a debilitating disease. I have determined the same for myself: if, towards the end of my life, I am facing a slow, painful decline and an ugly death, I intend to get hold of a bucketful of Oxycontin or some similar opioid or opiate, and drift away on clouds of fuzzy bliss. The only reason we don't allow this in America is because the religious fascists are scared that Aunt Martha might go to Hell if she isn't forced to suffer needlessly on her deathbed.

- - - Updated - - -

Your point was a clear but had little to do with the OP question you proffered.

Apparently my point was anything but clear, since you missed it completely.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There is a slight here. A white person convicted of killing a white person also has an elevated chance of the death penalty. You kill a white woman and you might as well give up. The race of the victim matters much more than the race of the perpetrator.

And a white who kills a black person is more likely to get executed also.


What's going on here isn't a matter of race, but rather a matter of why the crime was committed. Kill scum and it's unlikely you'll be executed unless you did it in some heinous manner. Kill an innocent, especially a child, and you're far more likely to get executed.

Most murders are scum killing scum and most of of those are associates--and thus generally of the same race.

Murders of innocents are generally of a random race--and thus most likely white.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

This seems to be a case of a botched IV that was inserted into the muscle rather than a vein. Either the needle missed the vein or more probably it was inserted all of the way through the vein and out of the backside of it into the muscle.

Incredibly they routinely put IV's into both arms and pump the poison into both arms. This means that both IV's were screwed up,

I suppose you could blame the AMA. They don't allow physicians to actively participate in executions. There was one there to declare the patient dead but he apparently wasn't able to figure out the problem.

I wouldn't want a physician in the US doing an IV on me anyway, they'll probably botch it. While they technically know how they rarely actually do it and thus are badly out of practice. It's the nurses who normally actually do the IVs and there's a long distance between simply knowing how and doing a good job of it--and the only way to bridge that is with practice, practice, practice.

That being said, he probably was like my wife--hard to stick. I doubt the tension of the situation helps one bit, either.



The whole idea of lethal injection is stupid, anyway. We have a simpler means--anoxic environment. Painless, messless, leaves an intact corpse and no fiddly things to go wrong.

Just pump the execution chamber full of nitrogen. It's not toxic so when you're done you can just vent it outside.

 

[travc]

The whole idea of lethal injection is stupid, anyway. We have a simpler means--anoxic environment. Painless, messless, leaves an intact corpse and no fiddly things to go wrong.

Just pump the execution chamber full of nitrogen. It's not toxic so when you're done you can just vent it outside.

Um, suffocation may be painless in the strictly physical sense, but it is far from it in the practical sense.
There are some gasses (CO is one IIRC) which fuck with your brain enough that you don't realize you're suffocating... those might be an option.

However, running a gas-chamber isn't actually that easy. There are quite a few things which can go wrong, most obviously not getting the concentration high enough for long enough. Making a "quick suffocation" environment is more complicated that just sealing a room and pumping in another gas... the air in the room has to go somewhere (or somehow be rapidly depleted of of O2). That is why adding highly toxic gasses/vapors to the air in a sealed gas chamber is the 'traditional' method. (BTW: Gas chamber has a lot in common with lethal injection actually... and a lot of the same problems.)

Pretty much every execution method (at least if the goal is to minimize cruelty) other than massive trauma actually gets complicated when you get into the details.

ETA: I'm opposed to the death penalty... very little or no upside and quite a bit of downside, but here is my proposal for a fool-proof method if you really want it.
The goal should be to render the brain incapable of thought quicker than the condemned could perceive the execution happening. It couldn't be any more painless.
The most reliable way of doing that is to physically destroy the brain very quickly. And the most reliable way of doing that is to simply smash it into goo with a high-velocity impact. Bullets/bolts (or lots of other contrivances) could do that, but they are more complicated and less reliable than ideal...

The execution device is simply a heavy weight (a 3'x3' steel block is good) on a long cable and an immovable object (a 'target' attached to a reinforced wall). The pivot/attachment of the pendulum is directly above the execution chair, and the chair faces perpendicular to the way the pendulum swings, since there no reason the condemned has to watch the pendulum coming at them and heads squish slightly more easily from the side.
The pendulum is hoisted and held.
The condemned is strapped into a chair with one side of their head resting against the target. The chair includes a blinder on the opposite side (the one facing the pendulum). A hood or blindfold may be provided, or refused. I'd also have the condemned facing the viewers.
Any secondary hoist/hold cables on the pendulum are detached so that it is being held with a single cable which has a release... perhaps an explosive bolt to be really fool-proof.
If something like an explosive bolt is used as the release, the mechanism to actually trigger it can be as complicated as you want. You could have something like the classic firing squad with multiple buttons, only some of which actually trigger it, or single simple button (which I'd prefer the governor to have to come down and trigger from the viewing room looking at the condemned.)
Post execution, you'd need a body bag, a hose, and a bunch of bleach.

PS: An even more humane method (and simpler in a way) is a hat made of high-velocity explosive. But I can't figure out how to do that indoors. If we ever go back to public executions though...

 

[Keith&Co.]

An even more humane method (and simpler in a way) is a hat made of high-velocity explosive. But I can't figure out how to do that indoors. If we ever go back to public executions though...

Shaped charges placed in a collar around the guy's neck. Perform the execution at the bttom of a chimney, so the concussion and such is expended upwards. A canopy over the top, to limit rain and to keep tabloid photographers from trying to get a pic of the first microsecond of the explosion...