I'll take this even further: I believe all executions should be VERY public. Like hanging at high noon in the town square. Really. I believe in the DP although I do have reservations about it. But, if we as a people, thru our elected representatives wish to execute people for certain crimes, we should see what we are doing and face up to it. Hiding the process away in some facility with limited viewing is cowardly. If we are gonna kill people, it should be out in the open.
I also would favor large poster size or bigger pictures of the victims of whatever crime led to the punishment. And maybe a reading of the description of their crime. Sort of a this is what he did and now this is what he gets. Then you get the real deterrent effect.
Still, it all smacks of shooting fish in a barrel to me. This is one of those cases where I find myself holding two conflicting opinions.

Thanks!

I disagree. Watching executions for entertainment seems pretty craven to me.

Frankly, I doubt that's the only thing that makes them vile. Non vile people don't just wake up one morning and feeling bored, decide to go out and have a fun murder. I have no moral qualms about killing. Murder is wrong and should not be tolerated under any circumstances. In case you're wondering, killing in self defense is not murder. Intentional killing in non-self defense is. If someone murders another they should be murdered in turn. I don't give a damm what religious cults have to say about it.

- Peter.

I think America has passed that point -- I suspect that if the death penalty meant a firing squad or hanging on the courthouse lawn a month post conviction, support for the death penalty would dissipate very quickly. Bonus points if the jury members and court officials were required to attend and could be seen puking their guts out.

A major reason why so much support exists in 2013 is that it's a lot easier to "put someone to sleep" or electrocute them 10 years after conviction than if the penalty were immediate and public. The "putting someone to sleep" aspect is particularly abhorrent to me -- the Nazis used "euthanasia programs" and medical terminology as a way of justifying what were for all intents and purposes executions.

If you're going to kill someone, at least be honest about it; don't make any pretense to hide the fact that you're killing.

I agree. My interpretation of "Thou shalt not kill" really means "Thou shalt not wrongfully kill."Right. That's why our government shouldn't be doing it. I'm assuming here that by "murder" we mean wrongful killing, not just illegal killing. The death penalty is legal in this country, but it is still murder in every other meaningful sense of the word.

Don't really see the logical necessity of that. Why not a week? or two days. Whats the significance of a month?

Agree.

Why?

That's an interesting idea.

I really can't see what's unpalatable about shooting some murdering scumbag. Are we really so degenerately removed from reality as a society that we simply cannot handle it any longer?

- Peter.

I don't care. If you murder, you should get murdered right back.

- Peter.

Because right now, the "death penalty" in the US is code for "life imprisonment with some non-zero chance of execution." As opposed to "if you vote unanimously for death, this person is highly likely to die within a month, so think it through damn well."

Because government officials (including involuntary officials such as jury members) should see the consequences of their actions. Do you think that ICBM officers would be so willing to "turn their keys" if they had taken a leisurely stroll through Hiroshima on 7 Aug 1945?

For me, theoretically, in a perfect world, I may support it. Practically:
(a) too much risk of wrongful conviction due to incompetence or wilfull misconduct
(b) it's too much of a lottery as opposed to a penalty, making it unfair. people with money seldom fry.

I'm old. And during my lifetime I have run across several ways of taking out guilty perps.

In Saudi Arabia they behead the subject. These are always public and there is a bit of a ritual involved in which the point of the blade is poked through the side of the subject between two ribs which makes them tighten up their entire body. Then with one strong swing their head is chopped off. Rather gruesome to witness, but it stays with you and if you ever consider committing a capital crime it would make you think twice.

I know a guy who used to be a reliable witness when the electric chair was in use. I say reliable because there have to be witnesses and sometimes nobody wants to show up. He describes flames and smoke and all sorts of terrible things.

I actually knew the guy who came up with Lethal Injection. He was a witness at several electric chair sessions and figured there had to be a better way. He was an Episcopal Priest who understood the law is the law, but he thought being drawn and quartered would be less painful than the chair.

And then there is the firing squad. I spoke to someone who had been to one of these in what most folks would consider a third world country. It is over quick and, I would guess, painless. It all depends on if the squad members take proper aim, but no one is forced to join the squad. And yes, one of the six rifles was loaded with a blank, but having fired blanks and live rounds more than once I should think that anyone would be able to figure out if they had fired the blank.

One thing the Priest noticed was that after someone had been killed in the chair then someone had to deal with the remains. Sometimes he was involved in this and he described it as gruesome and tough on the prison staff. With the injection method there are human remains, but they are far easier to deal with and the burning smell is not present. Therefore the injection method is thought to be easier on the prisoner, but it is known to be easier on those charged with disposing of the body.

Killing someone should NEVER be easy, especially if you're one of the "good guys." If it wasn't easy for the people using the Chair, perhaps they should have thought whether what they were doing was good or moral.

Yes, but they are instruments of the State and therefore must do the State's bidding.

The change to lethal injection did not take place overnight, and Lawmakers had to be convinced it was the best method for everyone involved. If the State is dictating to its' employees what must be done the State needs to take into consideration what they are asking their employees to do.

Unless they're under military law, no one is requiring them to stay at their jobs under duress, or to engage in activities they see as abhorrent as part of their work.

"Give him a break, he's just doing his job" doesn't fly when the job involves doing things that are WRONG. Not for cops, soldiers, jailers, corporate middle managers, or hangmen.

Choose to be an executioner? F--k you. Hope you have nightmares every f--king night of the rest of your life. Maybe you'll actually do some good when you come out against the death penalty, as a lot of former executioners did.

And.....

My understanding of history leads me to think that when the chair was invented it was thought to be a more humane way of dealing with the situation than hanging. Hanging can sometimes go wrong, the chair would never fail.

High tech stuff is always thought to be better by some folks, and with the chair first came into use there were still big parts of the US that did not have electrical service. Therefore a state was thought to be modern if they employed the latest technical gadgets.

By the way.... That's a whole lot of opinion there. There may be real facts that don't agree with what I just said, but having talked to some old timers about this back in the 50's I would say that the man on the street took the views that I just laid out.

Quite true, but then reality sinks in......

A lot of government jobs back then depended on who you knew and not what you knew. This is not my opinion; this is just the way it was.

If you knew you were going to get a job where the work was 99% of the time pushing papers and drawing a good sized paycheck and 1% of the time doing something that most folks would recoil at..... Where do I sign up?

And if the choice was between that and needing to find a real job where you were expected to do real work and you could get fired for not doing your job... Where's that government job?

It's not like these people were technical experts or anything. I was asked to do things at the oil works that were unethical by VP's wanting to pick up a bonus and I would always refuse. But I was in a position where all I had to do was pick up the phone and I would be hired by another oil company the next day and they knew it. If you know your job was secure only because old so and so was in the Ledge and you really had no skill set you would be under a great deal of pressure to do what you were told because you knew if you did not they would find someone who would.