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'Astonishingly cruel': Alabama seeks to test execution method on death row 'guinea pig'
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
88 points (90.7% liked)
THE POLICE PROBLEM
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The police problem is that police are policed by the police. Cops are accountable only to other cops, which is no accountability at all.
99.9999% of police brutality, corruption, and misconduct is never investigated, never punished, never makes the news, so it's not on this page.
When cops are caught breaking the law, they're investigated by other cops. Details are kept quiet, the officers' names are withheld from public knowledge, and what info is eventually released is only what police choose to release — often nothing at all.
When police are fired — which is all too rare — they leave with 'law enforcement experience' and can easily find work in another police department nearby. It's called "Wandering Cops."
When police testify under oath, they lie so frequently that cops themselves have a joking term for it: "testilying." Yet it's almost unheard of for police to be punished or prosecuted for perjury.
Cops can and do get away with lawlessness, because cops protect other cops. If they don't, they aren't cops for long.
The legal doctrine of "qualified immunity" renders police officers invulnerable to lawsuits for almost anything they do. In practice, getting past 'qualified immunity' is so unlikely, it makes headlines when it happens.
All this is a path to a police state.
In a free society, police must always be under serious and skeptical public oversight, with non-cops and non-cronies in charge, issuing genuine punishment when warranted.
Police who break the law must be prosecuted like anyone else, promptly fired if guilty, and barred from ever working in law-enforcement again.
That's the solution.
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I'm not so much concerned that it's 'worse', as that people will say it's 'better', as in, "Ain't it swell that we've figured out a kind and courteous way to execute people, so why not use it more often?"
Err...I hate the death penalty too but you literally just argued we must never make it more humane..
Yup. I'm against even the warmest and fuzziest killing as punishment for a crime someone's already in prison for.
So...keep it inhumane? That's what you want. They must suffer so the public is more opposed to the death penalty.
No. Stop fucking doing it.
That's not the discussion right now and more importantly it's not happening anytime soon. As I said I am completely opposed to the death penalty as well. I will admit I think people out there simply deserve to die but I don't trust the state to make that call with 100% accuracy.
But right now we are talking about the humanity of nitrogen versus the electric chair. When I asked how nitrogen is worse then the electric chair is response is that if we make the death penalty more humane it will be used more.
So...again... somehow this discussion has turned into how the death penalty must remain inhumane as a deterrent to using it. We must make them suffer in death so that the general public feels bad that they died. That is the current argument that I am questioning. Because, personally, I find that to be pretty disgusting.
"Don't" is an implicit option that can and should be promoted anytime "how" we execute people is brought up. I'm not interested in splitting moral hairs about something that is always morally wrong.
Ok so....basically just putting your fingers in your ears and screaming that the current world doesn't exist. Got ya. Also..I love that you say choosing between making a man die in extreme pain or allowing him to die peacefully is 'splitting moral hairs'.
That is literally how you view human life.
Capital punishment is a thorny issue, but your arguments are loaded with misunderstandings and fallacies.
OP wasn't calling for harsher methods; they're concerned about making a bad act seem "better."
Yes, abolishing the death penalty is relevant. It doesn't directly answer your question, but it pushes the conversation toward action, not just analysis.
I think you twisted Chetzemoka's words. Whether "extreme pain" or "peacefully," we're still talking about killing someone, not just "allowing" them to die, so let's not phrase it that way.
Let's focus on constructive debate, not misinterpretations and logical dead-ends.
To directly answer your question, nitrogen shouldn't be worse, and as a matter of fact should be loads better. But we don't know with certainty, so the argument is that makes it automatically inhumane.