Why isn't the guillotine used for executions?

MikeG said:
If you were the condemned prisoner, and they offered you any method of death of your choice, what would it be?

Personally, I would opt for hanging. Alive, in your cell, and blocking your ears from the infernal droning of the priest one moment, dead 15 seconds later.
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Hangings have been botched.
 
Undesired Walrus said:
Painless, very cheap and without the complications of someone being injected with a cocktail of drugs that can have the side effect of torturing that person to death.
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Please refer to ARTICLE VIII of the US Constitution:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

While one can correctly argue that the guillotine is cheap, easy, and quite effective; however, the pain issue is still in some dispute. Therefore, it may run contrary to the 'cruel' provision.

Also, since the guillotine has never been used in the USA, then it is clearly runs against the 'unusual' provision as well.

I hope this answers your question.
 
Crossbow said:
Please refer to ARTICLE VIII of the US Constitution:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

While one can correctly argue that the guillotine is cheap, easy, and quite effective; however, the pain issue is still in some dispute. Therefore, it may run contrary to the 'cruel' provision.

Also, since the guillotine has never been used in the USA, then it is clearly runs against the 'unusual' provision as well.

I hope this answers your question.
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But surely the electric chair, which was invented long after the constitution, was "clearly" unusual by the standard you have employed there before it was used, and would also be cruel if you are defining something as causing pain to be cruel.
 
Innocuous said:
Guillotines are too difficult to clean. The next customer might get a fatal infection.
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I know you are joking, but consider this approach: disposable blades. The advantage is that they could be sold to people who collect gruesome things - the state might pull in $150,000 per blade.

ETA the other advantage to the guillotine is that, like hanging, it leaves the organs in good condition to transplant.
 
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angrysoba said:
But surely the electric chair, which was invented long after the constitution, was "clearly" unusual by the standard you have employed there before it was used, and would also be cruel if you are defining something as causing pain to be cruel.
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But at that time (the early 1900's) the electric chair was considered to be far more humane and scientific than the other forms of execution that were being used (hanging and/or shooting). Also, quite a few people had been accidently electrocuted by that time so death by electrocution was not terribly unusual either; as opposed to accidental beheading which is quite rare.
 
Crossbow said:
But at that time (the early 1900's) the electric chair was considered to be far more humane and scientific than the other forms of execution that were being used (hanging and/or shooting). Also, quite a few people had been accidently electrocuted by that time so death by electrocution was not terribly unusual either; as opposed to accidental beheading which is quite rare.
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I don't think whether or not others have died accidentally in the same manner has any bearing on whether or not the method is unusual. Lots of people die in car accidents but I would think that using that method would be considered unusual.
 
Spindrift said:
I don't think whether or not others have died accidentally in the same manner has any bearing on whether or not the method is unusual. Lots of people die in car accidents but I would think that using that method would be considered unusual.
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Sorry, but I think otherwise.

Death by car accident is often due to severe tramua, and execution by tramua has been done in the past. However, now it is considered to be a rather cruel form of execution.

At the time, death by electrocution was considered to be so very quick as to be painless. The same cannot really be said for death by car accident.
 
Crossbow said:
Sorry, but I think otherwise.

Death by car accident is often due to severe tramua, and execution by tramua has been done in the past. However, now it is considered to be a rather cruel form of execution.

At the time, death by electrocution was considered to be so very quick as to be painless. The same cannot really be said for death by car accident.
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They thought accidental death by electrocution was painless? I'd like to see something that backs up that assertion.

ETA: And didn't Edison go around demonstrating electrocution by A/C to show how horrifying it was?
 
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Spindrift said:
They thought accidental death by electrocution was painless? I'd like to see something that backs up that assertion.

ETA: And didn't Edison go around demonstrating electrocution by A/C to show how horrifying it was?
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It might well be painless. A high voltage current right to the brain is going to prevent thought pretty damn quick.

And it wasn't about being horrible it was about connecting alternating current with death. It was marketing against a.c., not making an especially gruesome death. And given that a fair percentage of hangings either ended in decapitation or strangling those are pretty gruesome as a base.
 
Crossbow said:
Please refer to ARTICLE VIII of the US Constitution:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

While one can correctly argue that the guillotine is cheap, easy, and quite effective; however, the pain issue is still in some dispute. Therefore, it may run contrary to the 'cruel' provision.

Also, since the guillotine has never been used in the USA, then it is clearly runs against the 'unusual' provision as well.

I hope this answers your question.
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Wasn't there a time when the lethal injection had not been used? Also, how is the pain issue of being guillotined in dispute?
 
Crossbow said:
But at that time (the early 1900's) the electric chair was considered to be far more humane and scientific than the other forms of execution that were being used (hanging and/or shooting). Also, quite a few people had been accidently electrocuted by that time so death by electrocution was not terribly unusual either; as opposed to accidental beheading which is quite rare.
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Actually, I think you are making this stuff up. I don't mind speculation, but please at least label it so instead of writing this out as fact.

You might have a point that the electric chair was first considered by some to be a more humane way of killing, but the actual first use of the electric chair was appealed on the very grounds that it was "cruel and unusual", and furthermore the first execution was botched resulting in the condemned man's skin rupturing and bleeding.

As for the term "cruel and unusual", it is a vague term originating in the English Bill of Rights - meant presumably to outlaw such methods as boiling in oil, or hang-drawn-and-quartering which was once popular on the basis of its cruelty - that has been variously interpreted to cover forms of execution, but also forms of torture, and not only on the grounds of pain but also on grounds of necessity or arbitrariness, and has been judged, and even by the SCOTUS as covering all forms of execution at one time.

However, perhaps you could point us to Supreme Court decisions that have ruled out the guillotine on the basis you mention.
 
Quick and painless, but messy:

Blowing from a gun is a method of execution in which the victim is typically tied to the mouth of a cannon and the cannon is fired. George Carter Stent describes the process as follows:

"The prisoner is generally tied to a gun with the upper part of the small of his back resting against the muzzle. When the gun is fired, his head is seen to go straight up into the air some 40 or fifty feet; the arms fly off right and left, high up in the air, and fall at, perhaps, a hundred yards distance; the legs drop to the ground beneath the muzzle of the gun; and the body is literally blown away altogether, not a vestige being seen."
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First off, I haven't read this thread because it seems to have gotten stupid...

Anyways I could imagine that the guillotine isn't used for executions because it mutilates the body and its history is barbaric (I'd argue that execution is barbarism anyways and I do not support punitive death penalty). Bad history, viable alternatives (yes lethal injection is viable even though it has a failure rate, but I do not think that the failure rate justifies instituting the guillotine anyways) and the fact that it mutilates the body keep it from being re-instituted.

To edit: Basically there's no reasonable argument against the guillotine regarding the goals of capital punishment; it works and it works very well. Hopefully we'll just abolish the death penalty.
 
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Lowpro said:
First off, I haven't read this thread because it seems to have gotten stupid...

Anyways I could imagine that the guillotine isn't used for executions because it mutilates the body and its history is barbaric (I'd argue that execution is barbarism anyways and I do not support punitive death penalty). Bad history, viable alternatives (yes lethal injection is viable even though it has a failure rate, but I do not think that the failure rate justifies instituting the guillotine anyways) and the fact that it mutilates the body keep it from being re-instituted.

To edit: Basically there's no reasonable argument against the guillotine regarding the goals of capital punishment; it works and it works very well. Hopefully we'll just abolish the death penalty.
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As it happens, one of the arguments in favour of the guillotine was that it doesn't harm organs that could be donated to others, whereas the electric chair and the lethal injection prevented this.

And I apologize for the thread getting stupid.
 
It's the amount of blood spilled, it makes it gruesome. However, I have a solution. Heat up the blade so that it cauterizes the neck after the slice and have a mechanism to hold the head in place so it doesn't roll off after the blade drops....
 
angrysoba said:
As it happens, one of the arguments in favour of the guillotine was that it doesn't harm organs that could be donated to others, whereas the electric chair and the lethal injection prevented this.

And I apologize for the thread getting stupid.
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I wouldn't argue from either side of the debate on the subject of organ donations. It isn't prima facie so if you want to supplant one method over the other you have to determine its ability to carry out the "death" as well or better than the other. Lethal injection wins I suppose because it has protocols to maximize the success while minimize pain and I suspect "gory stuff no one likes to think about." Lethal injection has anesthesiologists and care givers which carry all that out (as protocol: in reality it's not easy to do it 100% of the time).

One could suggest an amended protocol where you still anesthetize the victim first before dropping the blade I guess but it still results in beheading. You could just anesthetize the victim and then wrap cellophane around their head then... Hell the most humane way is carbon monoxide gas chambers but you're more likely to bring back the guillotine before then.

Still, not a fan of capital punishment (to say, I've been a fan before but over time it hasn't settled well for me so now I'd rather say "can't do that, think of something else").
 
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Lowpro said:
I'd argue that execution is barbarism anyways and I do not support punitive death penalty.
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I'm sorry but I never seen a clear argument why that is necessarily so by the anti-death penalty crowd. Sure, there's always the remote chance that an innocent person might get the needle or the chair but it's not like it's a sentence that is handed out lightly.

But what I want to really know is how is executing hardened, irredeemable killers and rapists any different from putting down a rabid dog? Do we really want to be keeping these wastes of space alive when their victims are dead or scared for life?
 
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