Alabama condemned for nitrogen gas execution: ‘They intended to torture him’
theguardian.com
Smith’s execution by “nitrogen hypoxia” took around 22 minutes, according to media witnesses, who were led into a viewing room at the William C Holman correctional facility in Atmore shortly before 8 pm local time.
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That's great, and there's nothing wrong with those of us who feel that the death penalty is immoral. But as long as we are still committing some executions, I'd at least rather we try not to torture people while we do it.
There is no way to accomplish that. Execution is inherently cruel and there is no non-tortuous way to carry it out.
There are plenty of ways to die without suffering, the most popular one being a morphine overdose, used in plenty of hospices when they give a patient a button to self-medicate until they pass out/away.
People, even whole families, keep dying in their sleep from CO poisoning every winter all over the world... and there are several other ways, some more accidental, some less.
If they really wanted to kill without torturing, they would've done it.
Self medicate. The inherent difference is execution involves an unwilling participant.
Those people are not strapped down in prison.
That isn't possible. The very act of execution is torture.
I think you're right. If psychological torture is torture - and if things alont the lines of sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, and so on amount to such - then the psychological experience of being condemned to death, then while in prison fighting through appeal after appeal after appeal for years and being condemened again and again but still having that small sliver of hope, then finally (for those who aren't ruled innocent or insane somewhere in that process) being marched to your end, must be torture too. Compared to that, a few moments of pain at the very end seems so small as to be beside the point.
Any improvement is an improvement, but there keep on being these news stories about "aha, we have finally found the way to do this painlessly!" that repeatedly don't end up panning out for one reason or another. Even this relatively small improvement in the lot of death row convicts seems totally illusive.
That got me thinking: If euthanasia was legal, should prisoners be given the option? Or would that lead to them being mistreated to push them into euthanasia to save the taxpayer incarceration costs?
I have no idea how to square the inherent coercion of either capitalism or incarceration (or often both) affecting the choice but everyone has the right to end their own existence whenever they want.
If you look at #RoboDebt in Australia, it could be argued that the unemployed were hooked to death saying as it lead to several suicides.