"I taste it in my throat" said of lethal injection

[spacejunk]

I don't really know why people feel so bad about someone who killed someone else brutally experiencing some pain himself in dying.

Being shot to death is MUCH more inhumane than a drug overdose, so why does someone who does that deserve a more "humane" death??

I mean I go back and forth on the death penalty.

At times I've thought it's wrong, but why should someone who kills an innocent person have the right to live?

I would assume this guy he shot to death experienced a lot more pain than this guy did just dying from an induced drug overdose.

Depending on who the person is and what they have done, if they have caused immense pain and suffering, then I don't feel about them suffering a painful death as well.

What if somehow we found someone who was a serial killer or intended to be a suicide bomber or something like that?

You guys against the death penalty would feel it's wrong to kill a serial murderer or serial rapist??

So instead we should pay for them to live in prison??

I mean in some ways prison could be a worse penalty, but if you do horrible things to people, something horrible needs to happen to you, whether it's the death penalty or at least rotting in a small cell for the rest of your life.

I don't feel sorry for murderers.

do you feel sorry for people that are falsely accused of murder, found guilty, then executed? it's not rare. at all.

there are lots of reasons people are against capital punishment, and why much of the developed world has outlawed it. personally i think it is utterly barbaric, and i don't have enough faith in the justice system to think they wouldn't execute innocent people (because - again - it's been proven time and time again to be common for people to be executed for crimes they didn't commit). the risk of executing innocent people is too great to ever justify the state putting people to death.

sympathy for murderers is really beside the point. i'm glad we stopped capital punishment over here in the 1960s. too many innocent people were hanged, which is just sickening to me, and to a lot of people.

 

[Transcendence]

When you look at the list of nations that allow for executions currently, it's really not good company. Not a good look for the United States at all. 4% of all people on death row are fully exonarated by DNA evidence since the 1980s. And I personally have a problem with the idea of giving the state full power over life and death of the individual.

 

[JessFR]

Why cant they put them under surgical level anesthesia. Like the level where youd do open heart surgery. Then give them a fatal overdose of something. Just giving them a fatal dose of barbiturates seems lazy and crude

Barbiturates ARE one of the types of drugs used for general anesthesia. Granted in modern days propofol has taken the place of barbs in most settings. But until recently barbiturates were what you used for general anesthesia.

Just on a side note, yes, you can taste most drugs injected IV. Depends on the drug, but most will have some taste.

do you feel sorry for people that are falsely accused of murder, found guilty, then executed? it's not rare. at all.

there are lots of reasons people are against capital punishment, and why much of the developed world has outlawed it. personally i think it is utterly barbaric, and i don't have enough faith in the justice system to think they wouldn't execute innocent people (because - again - it's been proven time and time again to be common for people to be executed for crimes they didn't commit). the risk of executing innocent people is too great to ever justify the state putting people to death.

sympathy for murderers is really beside the point. i'm glad we stopped capital punishment over here in the 1960s. too many innocent people were hanged, which is just sickening to me, and to a lot of people.

You got some evidence for this? Look man ultimately I'm on your side here, I don't trust the system enough to believe we should continue capital punishment. If it were up to me, we'd abolish it for the foreseeable future.

But that's still not the same as accepting that wrongful executions are remotely common. I've looked into it before, and had this argument before. And I've still yet to have someone show me an example of a definite, confirmed execution of someone innocent of the crime they were executed for in the United States. Virtually without exception, every time I ask for evidence, the person changes the parameters of the question. Provide examples of near misses. People who "might" have been executed "if" DNA evidence hadn't cleared them. Which isn't what I asked for or what was suggested.

If you can find a single example of someone who was executed in the US, who was definitely innocent (or definitely shouldn't have been found guilty according to the law in hindsight). A single example within these parameters, and I'll be very impressed and say I was wrong. But youd be the first.

Again I'm gonna reemphasize, because as I said, invariably when I argue this the person changes the parameters after they start having trouble finding proof. I'm looking for a wrongful execution, where they WERE executed. In the USA, not elsewhere.

Not in the UK, not where they might have been innocent, not where they might have deserved a new trial. An actual, definite, American, wrongful execution. I'm not aware of a single example. Which is far from it being "not rare".

 

[spacejunk]

Evidence for what? That wrongfully convicted people have been executed? It depends how you define "rare".

I wasn't really talking about the USA - but Ronald Ryan, the last man hanged in australia - was convicted and sentenced to death on very shaky evidence and is widely believed to have been innocent.
In regards to statistics, i would have to do some digging. I dont consider a single innocent person's execution to be insignificant, but i don't think wrongful convictions leading to death row are especially uncommon. Maybe not definitively proven innocence - but i think any doubt is seriously problematic - which is why i consider capital punishment to be morally bankrupt.

 

[JessFR]

I gave a definition of rarity. Which was "ever".

And yes, I know it's happened once or twice in some countries. But you can't act like it's not rare in an American context when there's no real evidence it's ever happened at all.

Yes, it may have happened, and I agree with you that even that doubt should be sufficient to justify abolishing the death penalty. We don't disagree on that. What I disagree with is the suggestion that innocent people being executed isn't rare. Even if we say 3 people have been executed wrongly in the UK, and Australia, each. Which is far higher than the max number I know which is "maybe" 2 combined. I'd say that absolutely qualifies as rare.

Still unacceptable, I agree. But it's still a big exaggeration. Especially when this article originates in Texas, which executes more people that probably the rest of the US, Aus, and UK put together. And still I'm not aware of a single confirmed instance of a wrongful execution there.

That it might have happened and we don't know isn't confirmation that it has happened in even one of those instance.