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‘I’m not ready, brother’: US man to be put to death months after botched execution attempt
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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I think i said i don't support the entire execution in itself, i just said the method is used and approved as medical care.
This is similar to the forced feeding situation when there were hunger strikes at Guantanamo Bay. A clip was circulating around of a young boy happily demonstrating inserting his own feeding tube and a lot of people were using the clip to demonstrate that inserting a feeding tube wasn't that bad. The use of force on an unwilling participant is the difference. It is very different being held down while a tube is shoved into your head unwillingly than it is to calmly set yourself up for something you need to do.
The context of choosing to die in this method is very different than being forced into it. The man himself said he will be struggling. He will die panicked and afraid. I'm sure this method is perfectly fine when someone chooses euthanasia. I can't assume someone who is being forced into it is going to have a peaceful or painless death.
There is no execution method in the world that will be given to a willing participant, almost by definition. The specific point and debate in this thread isn't about whether or not execution is right. Most people on this forum certainly are at least skeptical of capital punishment. I certainly am against it.
The debate instead is, "given that capital punishment will occur because Southern states are the way they are, which we can agree is horrible in and of itself, what is the least bad way to do it?" The discussion around which execution is least bad is valuable from the standpoint of harm reduction. Currently, choices are what exactly? A multistage cocktail of euthanasia drugs that paralyze the executee before stopping their heart? The electric chair? Firing squad? Hanging? Beheading? Everything you pointed out and more are applicable to these methods as well.
You might argue that this makes any execution method unethical, and you're right! Congratulations. You agree with pretty much everyone in this thread.
I don't give that. I don't give it a bit. Especially if holes can be poked in every new method as these ghouls come up with it
There is no reason to acquiesce to an inevitability that it will occur just because shitstains keep trying to execute people. I remember it was decades wasn't a single execution in The United States.
There isn't one, and every single method should be objected to as it comes up.
I wasn't aware you were living in a reality where executions aren't currently happening several times a year.
Here in this timeline, even though there are still executions, thankfully they are on the downswing and hopefully on the way out for good. But at least over the short term, even though every execution deserves to be robustly challenged, activists cannot be expected to win every battle. We also need to plan for what happens if we lose.
States like South Carolina and Idaho have already begun pivoting back to the electric chair and firing squads, and while no anti-capital punishment activist is to blame for it, speaking personally it certainly would not sit right by me to know that I played a part in denying the use of an execution method like nitrogen hypoxia, and the inmate, on whose behalf I was fighting for, wound up dying via electrocution in severe, debilitating pain over the course of 2-15+ minutes instead.
Maybe ultimately convincing judges to ban nitrogen hypoxia is a good thing over the long run, even if it results in short term harm. But that is not a calculus I feel comfortable solving on behalf of others who will suffer while I remain insulated from the consequences of this decision.