Can't we just use convicted death row inmates for medical experimentation instead?, at least we can get some use out of them.

there's this little thing in our constitution about cruel and unusual punishments. It's supposed to keep us from going to their level

I could not resist the black humor.

Well, if there's anything I've learned in my time here on Earth, it's this:

The constitution's just a piece of paper.

The Bible and Quran are just books.

Human rights? Religion? Government? Right and wrong? Inventions by a scared and selfish animal (with an inflated ego) in order to cope with a harsh and uncaring universe.

I'm not saying I like this, or that we should abandon all of it (hell, our survival depends on believing in the lie), but when it all comes down to it, there's only one law that ultimately reigns supreme:

And that, is the law of the jungle.

I think written law is one of human kind's greatest achievements for exactly that reason.

The US only has 4% of the worlds population but over 25% of the worlds prison population due to privately run prisons making money off having more prisoners. Do you really want to create an incentive to conduct human experimentation without consent?

Like I said, Black Humor.

The problem is that too many on death row are later (after the execution) aquitted. Many would survive the medical experiments. If they are later aquitted, the state would have to take care of all the crippled and sick survivors until they finally die. It would cost much morethat whatever is paid if an innocent has been executed.

No big deal, once the lab rats can't be used anymore, we'll slit their throats feed them to the pigs.

(I kid, I kid.)

but who do we feed the pigs to, full of poison and untested medicine?

No one, we just butcher them and use their corpses against Islamic radicals.

I'm sure they won't expect that.

If I'm ever on Death Row, I want to go by cheeseburger poisoning.

Why not use confiscated heroin? Plenty of addicts successfully OD on the stuff all the time and it is plentiful.

That heroin is not used for lethal injection just proves that part of the intent is to inflict pain. This is not a surprise, given that the punishment goal primarily served by execution is vengeance.

Maybe that's the purpose of the Arizona policy, then. Not that I have any plans to walk down death row, but I wonder if they'd let me use nitrogen. And if I could return my tank once it's over.

Nope: You still have to use the drugs in the state defined lethal cocktail.

Importing them for your own execution also doesn't solve the availability problem: The usage restrictions don't make an exception if you are the guy being put to death.

Well that's pretty strange, then; and there goes any bit of sense it made.

You say that like the death penalty makes sense at all beyond fulfilling the desire for vengeance.

It has no particular increase in the ability to deter over incarceration, (and can actually have a counter-deterrent effect).
It doesn't bring restitution to the victims.
It has no ability to rehabilitate.
It does serve to isolate, but the standard of proof required to justly use it[1] results in it being more expensive than long term incarceration.


[1] To the extent that such is possible with capital punishment.

It doesn't bring any restitution, but for crimes in which it's appropriate, there is no restitution, as jailing that person for life wouldn't provide anything more.
It does provide some level of closure for many, though, and it's not trying to rehabilitate, it ought to be reserved only for those that have no place in society.

The kind of "closure" one gets from the death penalty is no more than a different term for vengeance.

The problem with using capital punishment for isolation isn't that it doesn't work, but that simply imposing an indefinite sentence of incarceration is cheaper while having less detrimental side effects[1]. If you want to use the death penalty, you have to make a trade-off between killing innocent people and having much more involved investigation and court procedures for every case where the death penalty might be sought. As it works out in the US, this trade-off increases the costs per death sentence imposed by more than it costs to keep someone in maximum security for at least 50 years while still having something like 2-3% being false convictions.


[1] The big one being that: If you convict the wrong guy and throw him in jail you can at the least release him and take efforts to make amends for the harm when you find out. If you convict the wrong guy and kill him, you're kind of stuck.

Much of the cost of the death penalty, as we have it now, is from ongoing appeals and increased costs of keeping death row inmates segregated. But I'd also rather it be reserved for the more serious crimes and repeat offenders, given the extra scrutiny such a ruling deserves, and only for instances where it's very clear that they're guilty.

_With_ those appeals the US is killing innocent men.

And you can't have it restricted to cases where it's very clear that they're guilty without going to the extra expense on all the cases where you think it will be that clear, (even when you are wrong). What really makes the death penalty so expensive is that the lengths you need to go to to reach a sufficient level of proof[1] have to be gone to on every case the prosecution even wants to try for the death penalty.

Remember, people were that certain about Donald Marshall Jr., David Milgaard and Steven Truscott. All of whom were innocent[2].


[1] Which the US does not, and it still costs more than an indefinite term of imprisonment.

[2] Of murder at least, Marshall didn't exactly have the cleanest of records, one of the reasons for the certainty at the time. That Marshall was Mi’kmaq and Roy Ebsary, (who actually killed Sandy Seale), white also had quite a bit to do with it.

You're assuming I mean the thing that we have now when I'm saying I don't agree with what we have and should have something a little more selective. Someone proposed an idea that, in cases where the death penalty is decided on, a group of investigators should take a year, look through all the evidence, and see if there's any way that person might be innocent, and that's only after they've already been convicted by a jury. And of course, if there's someone knowingly submitting fake evidence or testimony in order to get that person killed, they should be treated to the justifiable consequences of doing so, be it just falsifying testimony or evidence, or attempted murder.

The thing about the three cases you're citing is that they seem to have been based solely on witness testimony. Were there penalties for knowingly falsifying testimony it would deter such cases, and relying solely on witness testimony wouldn't pass as "very clear" without forensic evidence.

IOW, you want the same level of expense, or more. Remember, what makes it so expensive is that that expense applies not only when you apply to death penalty but also in cases where whatever extra vetting you do comes back "no."

If it comes back as a "no", then they become the same cost as if they would have a life sentence.

That's just it _IT DOESN'T_! You have already gone to all the extra effort to try for the death penalty. All the extra investigation and court time happens whichever answer you get.

The reason the death penalty is so expensive isn't the things that happen after everything is settled, it's the need to do that settling. Reducing that cost means relaxing the already too loose standards used.

Well, there's always this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLctf4o6feQ

Whatever happened to the firing squad?

If it were me, I'd rather be strapped to a post in the nice outdoors for a quick end than to a gurney in a dungeon that takes almost 5 minutes.

And everyone in this country has a gun, right?

Jeezuz, "humane method" my ass.

Why waste 100 if not thousands of dollars on chemicals for executions when you can spend $0.50 and put a bullet through the skull, instant death.

Question:

Are you still concerned about your guns now that Trump is president rather then Hillary? I dont know how much he is pro or against on guns really.

There's very little practical difference. With the millions of guns already in circulation, it almost doesn't matter what laws the ruling class passes - anybody who wants to be armed, will be. And I haven't even brought up home-milled guns, 3D-printed guns, etc, etc. The gunpowder genie is not going back in the bottle.

So it was never a real concern?

Nope. Regardless of what was noised about, nobody was coming after guns.

Now we have to work on Lasers and Plasma Rifles.

He's endorsed by the NRA and is quite pro-gun and pro-2nd Amendment. He carries too.

I know, this is like a global Mandela Effect. Things are so tweaked and nonsensical in the five weeks .... ONLY FIVE WEEKS!?!?!?!?!? .... since the Republican Trump Regime took power, I find myself looking up Berenstain Bears books on Amazon to see if their now Berenstein Bears.

We all seem to have slipped a cosmic brane or something and ended up on Earth-B.

God, I´m glad I´m not the only one! Its like a transporter acident transported me into the mirror universe!

I could've sworn it was spelled Berenstein, but I went to double check first. I'm not convinced I'm necessarily wrong: https://www.avclub.com/article/how-.....of-para-223615

The Mandela Effect stems from this trope; it hypothesizes that fake memories are in fact glimpses into alternate universes. Its name is derived from a blog post where the OP said that she thought she remembered Nelson Mandela dying in prison, and shared that memory with several people at Dragoncon 2005, when in fact he was still alive at the time (he died in 2013). From tvtropes.com entry on Fake Memories:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p.....n/FakeMemories

The way Trump contradicts himself, sometimes mid-sentence, he is a walking example of false memories constantly being rewritten by new input. The "Last night in Sweden" comment, for example, is because he saw a a spot on Faux News about old events in Sweden the night before he made the comment.

I also checked your source, and The A.V. Club, using that exact logo, has long been part of The Onion, a famous parody newspaper.

You might want to double check the veracity of your sources before you link to them.

Oops. That comment was mostly in jest, I thought that'd be clear.

My apologies, sometimes satire doesn't translate through forums. Your post was so short and succinct, it looked like it was intended to be taken straight.

Make a factory on an island. Make the island inescapable. Work the condemned like standard factory workers until they die. Profit. Papillon.a

Trump Sells California to Mexico!
http://forums.bowsite.com/TF/bgforums/thread.cfm?forum=1&threadid=461196

I would LOVE to see how well that'd go over, I've several friends and family over there and they're accused of being redneck for being gun lovers

I remember when we used to scorn the Soviets as people who would shoot a dissident dead and bill the family for the ammunition. Or was that the Communist Chinese?

Your reminder that South Park announced they will not be parodying POTUS Trump because they already consider him parody.

Dont say "Onion" parody.
Say fake news.

Period.

+1

There are a whole host of natural venoms that kill a person almost instantly in small droplet sized doses. Get some black mamba venom, or some from one of those super lethal jellyfish and inject it into them; they'll be dead before they can feel anything. And I'm sure it's not copyrighted by anyone yet, so there's no restrictions on its use.

Since Trump won the election? You kidding? It's been that way at least since Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize.

the only difference between fake news in the 1900s and now is that now people can easily verify and prove most fake news wrong with a simple internet search, and sometimes, a more complex internet search.

kinda late to the party K.

Okay, I'm going through my backlog of stuff I haven't looked at yet, and ran across this almost two weeks later.

For what it's worth, the chemicals they use for lethal injections aren't made exclusively for such things, they just happen to be very effective when used for that.

The companies that make the stuff earn much more money off the other uses for the chemicals. Protestors, petitions, and threatened boycotts have convinced them that they should refuse to sell to any state when the purpose is to kill a prisoner (but other sales for the originally intended uses are just fine).

The result is that states that have the death penalty can't use the most effective means, and have to use alternate compounds to enforce capital punishments. That is how it takes 15 shots and two hours to kill a man when it should take a few minutes.

The twit who decided to require the prisoners to supply the means for their own demise no doubt thought that since the prisoner isn't the state, that the suppliers would gladly sell to them, and their deaths would be short and humane again.

Problem solved, I guess?

Except that being forced to pay for the device that will kill you can also be considered cruel and unusual punishment.

My choice would be death by fugu. If I'm gonna die, let my last memory be really expensive sushi.

P.S. Death by snu-snu works, too. ;)