Kenneth Smith ‘struggled for life’ for 22 minutes in Alabama nitrogen gas execution: Updates
independent.co.uk
“Kenny just began to gasp for air repeatedly and the execution took about 25 minutes total.”
Pretty compassionate way to kill a person.
Once again, the Law in the south is brutal.
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I once saw a slogan on a button at a street vendor in Washington D.C. "Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?" It's stuck with me after two decades.
I don't know that we do it to make any such statement to the guilty party. I personally think we do it to 1. deter others from going down that path for fear of the consequences, and 2. remove an individual from society who has shown themselves incapable (in the most malicious and extreme way) of properly functioning in society. They are a danger to society, therefore they need to be removed. Obviously you could make the argument that we could simply banish them somewhere or lock them up for the remainder of their lives, but in my personal opinion that's not definitive enough. They could escape, be let out early, and harm someone else.
Or they could be innocent.
That's entirely possible, no system is perfect, but rather than countering my statement with something that happens the least, perhaps you could offer up an idea on how to handle what happens the most. How do you think we should handle maliciously evil (for lack of a better word) people who commit heinous crimes?
Lock them up, as I said