Idaho (and other states) are or will be shooting criminals

[rbgarr]

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-w...-firing-squad/

"Firing squad" is such a euphemism. A South Korean roommate in school had been in their military and as a marksman was assigned to that duty. He said it was the worst thing he ever experienced and I was sometimes awakened when he had nightmares about it.

I wonder what victim's families think about different forms of execution.

[Art Haberland]

Blood thirsty ghouls, all of them!

[CWSmith]

Vile. Cowardly. Immoral. Arrogant. Truly about as low as a human being can fall.

[Jim Bow]

it's Idaho, where small community hospitals are closing their delivery rooms, and women near term are moving to Spokane to have their babies. Idaho hospital administrators are worried that any delivery emergency or unforeseen circumstance will lead to governmental litigation.

[Bobcat]

Utah has had firing squad executions for decades. Gary Gilmore was shot in 1977 as capital punishment. Some Morman sects have a doctrine of blood atonement that requires literal blood to be spilled. There are a lot of fundamentalist Mormons ib Idaho

[Tom from Rubicon]

What's the big deal? Lethal injection has been mostly rendered passé by lawyers.
Gas chamber and Electric Chair, complicated. Putting down a condemned criminal in the same way as steers are dropped has been deemed humane. A head shot.

Tom

[wizbang 13]

My Jehovah Witness neighbor has been saying for a few years he is moving to Idaho .
Gawd that would be GREAT!!!!

[WI-Tom]

My dad always said they gave one guy in every firing squad a blank round. That way each man could believe that he fired the blank.

I'm not sure that it would be any less nightmare-inducing to hang someone, or strap them into an electric chair, or to inject them with a lethal does of something while they're strapped to a gurney.

Horrible stuff, really. Morally questionable to say the least.

The U.S.--as is so often the case--is in interesting company for the shining-city-on-the-hill kind of place it believes itself to be:

Most nations, including almost all developed countries, have abolished capital punishment either in law or in practice; notable exceptions are the United States, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea. Additionally, capital punishment is also carried out in China, India, and most Islamic states.

Tom

[skuthorp]

So they are formalising what the police have been doing for decades?

The civil war continues.

[McMike]

What's the big deal? Lethal injection has been mostly rendered passé by lawyers.
Gas chamber and Electric Chair, complicated. Putting down a condemned criminal in the same way as steers are dropped has been deemed humane. A head shot.

Tom

The reality that we are sending innocent people to death because of our flawed enforcement and legal system? But hey, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet; amiright?

[brad9798]

Shockingly to many of you, I'm sure, but I am against death penalty! Too many flaws in the system.

[David W Pratt]

Delisting grizzly bears wasn't enough?

[Osborne Russell]

Blanks? GTFOOH. If you don't have the balls to put the pistol to his temple, feel the kick and blow his brains and skull fragments out the far side of his head onto the clean white paper, watch him fall, watch the remaining blood ooze out, watch the transition, watch life end -- by your hand -- then STFU. You are a greater criminal than he. You're a coward, wanting a result you cannot bring yourself to bring about by your own hand. Because you give your children food with that same hand. You hire it done, you invent trickerations, you rationalize . . . for the love of Jesus, the blood is on your hands, upon your soul, quit F ing around. You're OK with the death penalty, so long as someone else does the deed. FU, you're worthless. You are disposed to avoid the hard questions. You're useless. Worse than useless. The judgment is not upon him, it's upon you.

Hold it to his temple. Put your finger on the trigger. Pull it. Stand back, lest you be sullied. With your children watching. You POS.

[L.W. Baxter]

the really important questions, what caliber is best. or do you favor a slug gun for executions.

magazine capacity. rate of fire. trigger weight.

a movement back to firing squad is a celebration of the fetish. the point is to identify who is part of the right culture and who is sickened by it.

[LeeG]

My dad always said they gave one guy in every firing squad a blank round. That way each man could believe that he fired the blank.

I'm not sure that it would be any less nightmare-inducing to hang someone, or strap them into an electric chair, or to inject them with a lethal does of something while they're strapped to a gurney.

Horrible stuff, really. Morally questionable to say the least.

The U.S.--as is so often the case--is in interesting company for the shining-city-on-the-hill kind of place it believes itself to be:



Tom

that whole idea of developed and developing countries has some flaws.

[Keith Wilson]

If you're going to execute people, this isn't significantly worse than the other methods used. Messier, yes.

[Ted Hoppe]

Idaho and other states that have capital punishment should be even more transparent. Brutal public hangings in their capital mall with the televised event on publicly funded air.

Cowards who write the laws should have to bear witness to them.

[Art Haberland]

Idaho and other states that have capital punishment should be even more transparent. Brutal public hangings in their capital mall with the televised event on publicly funded air.

Cowards who write the laws should have to bear witness to them.

If you are going to do that. Bring back the Guillotine, while brutal seeming, it is considered quite humane for the victim of it's sharp blade.

[Dave Wright]

Utah has had firing squad executions for decades. Gary Gilmore was shot in 1977 as capital punishment. Some Morman sects have a doctrine of blood atonement that requires literal blood to be spilled. There are a lot of fundamentalist Mormons ib Idaho

https://www.nytimes.com/1976/11/11/a...olunteers.html

[Osborne Russell]

Idaho and other states that have capital punishment should be even more transparent. Brutal public hangings in their capital mall with the televised event on publicly funded air.

Cowards who write the laws should have to bear witness to them.

Killing is necessary. Is this killing necessary?

Step up and pull the trigger yourself on TV and in the physical presence of your children, let the blood splatter them, or STFU and GTFOOH. Otherwise do not pretend to act in my name. You are unworthy. You're taking a life on behalf of the state. Your personal considerations are so pathetically small.

[stromborg]

OR has a valid point. Especially in a state like Idaho where the governor has the ultimate authority to decide whether an execution takes place or not. This isn't something the chief executive ought to be able to turf to lower level employees of the state, they should do the deed and own their responsibility.

[Ted Hoppe]

i have been to death row and supermax prisons. our humanity wants to deliver redemption to everyone. it is unfair that criminal murdering sociopaths get to roam the prison system being allowed to prey on fellow inmates who can be rehabilitated. allowing them to be in general circulation in a maximum security prison is also so negligent and ruins the chances of redress and redemption. it is time to open the conversation to make it fair for all and get the results a christian free open democratic society would want.

[Dave Wright]

If the death penalty is to be carried out (I'm not debating the morality of that) then why not do it humanely?

Shooting, hanging, decapitating, electrocution, etc. are barbaric and steeped in an essence of revenge. Complex chemical "cocktail" injections that vary widely from state to state seem ridiculous.

Roughly 60,000 people per day in the US receive general anesthesia for various operations. They feel no pain from the cutting, drilling, sawing, and stitching. They are just a few heartbeats or breaths away from death.

Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of dogs and cats are euthanized every year in the U.S. These procedures are painless unless the injection is improperly administered.

I had a cousin who was an anesthesiologist. He used to scoff at arguments that death could not be wrought painlessly and even eurphorically.

The death penalty exists and so many people seem to favor it. The last survey I read suggested 60% of the U.S. population favored the death penalty for murder, even though 78% acknowledged that an innocent person might be executed. If we're going to do it anyway let's make sure that we try to do it humanely.

[Paul Pless]

^ the pharmaceutical industry has decided to not co-operate in executions

[Ted Hoppe]

If the death penalty is to be carried out (I'm not debating the morality of that) then why not do it humanely?
...
The death penalty exists and so many people seem to favor it. The last survey I read suggested 60% of the U.S. population favored the death penalty for murder, even though 78% acknowledged that an innocent person might be executed. If we're going to do it anyway let's make sure that we try to do it humanely.

given your call for humane treatment - why do you think a convicted murderer should get a humane death when their crime was likely far from humane?

[CWSmith]

given you call for humane treatment - why do you think a convicted murderer get a humane death when their crime was likely far from humane?

Because we are, or should be, better than them?

[Bobcat]

given your call for humane treatment - why do you think a convicted murderer should get a humane death when their crime was likely far from humane?

Eighth Amendment

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

[Ted Hoppe]

Eighth Amendment


Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

an original constructionist can easily point to hanging or guillotine as suitable methods. the barbarity of past legal capital punishments still is less horrifying than most current modern assaults resulting in murder.

[WszystekPoTrochu]

The last convict to die this way wanted to get shot:
Although death by firing squad has been outlawed in Utah since 2004, the law does not apply to those convicted before that date, so Gardner was allowed to choose it as the method of his execution.
https://www.bbc.com/news/10254279

Whatever his real motives were, I personally think that the fact of killing is the problem, not the method - unless we're going full hardcore medieval of course. Injections are as as clean it gets, but take time and expertise. A bullet to the head is the quickest and easiest solution, but somehow didn't see much use outside war crimes. Guillotine is very quick, but apparently killing people must be aesthetically pleasing? A rope ain't that great, but has a humiliation factor to it.
Why not a bullet? We're talking of defiling the sanctity of life, the respect towards integrity of a corpse is orders of magnitude less important.

Weren't there calculations that a life sentence is ultimately cheaper than a death sentence, due to all the extra shenanigans around proving the 'right man' is killed? Besides, I definitely would fear a firing squad less than seeing same few slabs of concrete for 40 years. But then again, I probably am not a psychopath. Maybe they are ok with such non-life, but actually living shorter acts as a deterrent? It probably doesn't either way, because almost no criminal ever thinks they will get caught...

My dad always said they gave one guy in every firing squad a blank round. That way each man could believe that he fired the blank.

Or: lie to themselves. Allegedly the difference in recoil is impossible to miss for anyone qualified enough to execute the convict. In Gardner's case, they tried to mitigate that by using a wax bullet to at least try imitating real recoil.

[Dave Wright]

given your call for humane treatment - why do you think a convicted murderer should get a humane death when their crime was likely far from humane?

Inhumane treatment is only justifiable if you are physically present during the commission of the murder and act instantaneously - then you can get away with whatever you want to prevent the murder, even if you are unsuccessful.

So, using a chainsaw that you have concurrently running is OK against the murderer. Taking 20 minutes to heat up a branding iron white hot is not OK. Do you understand?

[David W Pratt]

OR has a valid point. Especially in a state like Idaho where the governor has the ultimate authority to decide whether an execution takes place or not. This isn't something the chief executive ought to be able to turf to lower level employees of the state, they should do the deed and own their responsibility.

Thus the need for immigrants, to do the jobs American citizens won't do.

[skuthorp]

Meanwhile on another thread children are being executed……again………..

It's all part of the same basic savagery.

[Ralphie Boy]

given your call for humane treatment - why do you think a convicted murderer should get a humane death when their crime was likely far from humane?

The problem is: you may feel justified in ending the life of someone where their guilt is unquestionable. But what about all the people convicted of murder who were later exonerated due to DNA evidence, etc.?

You can’t bring someone back after their execution. If we have the death penalty then innocent people will be executed, that is unfortunately the fact. I am against capital punishment for this reason, and others.

[Ted Hoppe]

The problem is: you may feel justified in ending the life of someone where their guilt is unquestionable. But what about all the people convicted of murder who were later exonerated due to DNA evidence, etc.?

You can’t bring someone back after their execution. If we have the death penalty then innocent people will be executed, that is unfortunately the fact. I am against capital punishment for this reason, and others.

We can surmise based on concerns for wrongful justice you may be amenable letting someone go because of judicial technicality, poor criminal investigation processes or the use of hearsay which is always a concern. Taken on its face, it may be far better to give light sentences for capital crimes because legal justice system is flawed. As many here pointed out if we can not do swift justice at the crime scene - we can do what we can but we are not bringing back the victim nor will we make society whole.

When i was the OJ Simpson trial tech, i saw firsthand how the criminal justice works and how smart defense attorneys could bring doubt to evidence. (i have usually stayed supporting civil cases since). Given the preponderance of police misconduct, racist cops and mishandling of evidence - it was clear that OJ could be found not guilty and released even though we knew he did it. Later in his civil law suit which I also did, we were able to come up with the value of lost lives.

[Dave Wright]

Given the preponderance of police misconduct, racist cops and mishandling of evidence

Is it really a preponderance?? Crime is so widespread and so common in the US that I would suspect misconduct, evidence mishandling, racism, and other travesties are simply not the norm today.