this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
219 points (93.6% liked)

News

23304 readers
4563 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Alabama, unless stopped by the courts, intends to strap Kenneth Eugene Smith to a gurney Thursday and use a gas mask to replace breathable air with nitrogen, depriving him of oxygen, in the nation’s first execution attempt with the method.

The Alabama attorney general’s office told federal appeals court judges last week that nitrogen hypoxia is “the most painless and humane method of execution known to man.” But what exactly Smith, 58, will feel after the warden switches on the gas is unknown, some doctors and critics say.

“What effect the condemned person will feel from the nitrogen gas itself, no one knows,” Dr. Jeffrey Keller, president of the American College of Correctional Physicians, wrote in an email. “This has never been done before. It is an experimental procedure.”

Keller, who was not involved in developing the Alabama protocol, said the plan is to “eliminate all of the oxygen from the air” that Smith is breathing by replacing it with nitrogen.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] platypus_plumba 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (5 children)

I don't know man, some people really, really deserve to be removed from existence:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Garavito

How can you reform someone who raped, tortured, killed and then raped again (while dead) more than 100 minors?

Put yourself in the position of a father who knows this guy raped his kid, then tortured him with mutilation, and then raped the corpse.

Imagine knowing that this person is in jail, probably getting decent food and watching TV... Probably jerking off to the memories of the mutilated body parts of your child... while you have to live knowing he is still there.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago

Revenge is not a good motive though. It doesn't bring those children back. Removing people like him from society while not forgetting our humanity is all we can do.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I get that there are horrible people out there. No doubt. But the first thing societies like the US (and Colombia in this case) should do is to reform society to produce fewer of these people.

Much of Europe seems to have found a good recipe. Remove the desperation, especially economic desperation. Create equality. Promote health and community and less selfishness and greed. Focus on rehabilitation and productivity instead of punishment and passivity in prison systems.

Unfortunately, a lot of American leaders and voters see revenge as justice, many in the name of Christianity. Not exactly the Christian way from where I'm sitting, but that's reality.

[–] platypus_plumba 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I don't see it as revenge but instead as a means to let families move on. I think it is a burden to them knowing this person is still somewhere out there, even if they are locked.

These are pretty special cases. I think countries with capital punishment take those sentences very seriously, it's not like they go around killing people for funsies.

I think that particular individual that I sent really should be killed. It's just too much, his case is just too extreme. This is just an evil person... Raping, TORTURING, killing and raping again 300+ innocent minors in the span of 7 years.

He raped, tortured and killed one minor per week in average, for 7 years. Doing that a single time is INSANE. Doing that 300+ times just deserves death.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

I get what you're saying. I disagree, because I just find the concept of capital punishment ethically and morally wrong. Just because someone killed, no matter how and how many, doesn't give us the right to kill. Not as individuals and not as a society. We have to be better than that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

You lock em up and just leave them there. Current estimates put the faction of innocent death row inmates at about 2%. That's completely unacceptable. Is killing a bad person out of revenge worth innocent lives when you can just lock them up for life instead?

For most of human history we didn't have the option of keeping someone imprisoned for life, so killing evil people was really the only permanent solution. It's understandable that that desire would be engrained in us. But if we don't have to kill them, shouldn't we avoid doing so so that we don't get innocent people killed?

[–] FlyingSquid 2 points 9 months ago

That's what supermax prisons are for. Do you think they're pleasant places to spend the rest of your life?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Put yourself in the position of...

That is not how the law works. if the law worked based on how you would feel if you put yourself in the place of a person, you'd get "it would feel bad to be stolen from, but it would feel good to steal, therefore they are the same." If you could only place yourself in the place of the victim, no one would be innocent because it would feel bad, and thus they must be guilty. It's a ridiculous concept. What if I imagine myself as the father and I also imagine I don't care, should murder be legal?

He killed and raped x many people

So did the US army. Rape isn't punishable by death, for good reason. It's only added here as an appeal to emotion with no reflection on how it would impact legal process. Rape is very hard to prove, and also way more common than murder. Based on the average number of rape cases and the average length of a death penalty case you'd have half a million 20-year-long cases a year every year forever in the US alone.

Then when it comes to killing lots of people - obviously I'm not defending it, but lots of people kill lots of people. Tobacco manufacturers, car manufacturers, armies, secret services, the police, doctors when things go wrong - or even when things go right but the person can't be saved...

It's all well and good to look at one guy and say "this person should die," but the problem is the law has to be administered fairly and for everyone or there'll be no law, so when you look at 16,000 people per year every year, it looks very different .