Why not hanging for carrying out the death penalty?

[Myriad]

I'm thinking about the issue of timing and expectation. Thought experiment: you've been condemned to death, and you're now locked in a small comfortable room. There's a ton of high explosive under the floor, which will instantly annihilate you when it detonates. You know that this will happen sometime in the next hour.

Scenario A: There's a countdown timer visible in the room.
Scenario B: There isn't.

Any preference?

What if instead of an hour, the uncertain time span is a day? What about a week?

(Note that if it's 80 years, we're all in that situation, just some have countdown timers of varying accuracy and some don't.)

 

[sackett]

Even better, give them a general anaesthetic then remove their heart and organs for transplants!

The Chinese save a ton o' money using a pistol instead of anaesthetics, and hurry the guest of honor off still warm for organ and eye harvesting. I'm not sure they don't realize a net profit when Comrade Donor is young and healthy.

 

[Thermal]

I've heard this story and can't find the source. But with lethal injection there are three drugs involved, one person on each button but there's a coup de gras one. So they don't know who it was. So maybe that's how they live with or happy they did it. As a healthcare professional.

I've heard similar, and always thought it was the goofiest thing, to participate in the execution while trying to have the "out" that it might not have been you who released the poisons. Kind of like the firing squad that has a blank or two in the mix so you can say "hey, I might have clean hands here". No. You don't have clean hands here.

 

[theprestige]

Biggest problem, false convictions.

Yeah, probably. But this thread is about optimal methodology, not the conviction process. Says so right in the OP.

 

[theprestige]

My perception comes from the various books I've read that were about executions, crimes and executioners, it could be that I am wrong.

My perception is that it's a finicky process that is suitably quick and painless when done right, but doing it right requires a fair amount of expertise and attention to the process.

So it seems to me that it is vastly inferior to a mechanical process that just works every time, and requires minimal expertise from the executioner.

If your goal is a reliably quick and painless execution, then you probably want to remove as much risk of human error as you can. I don't see how hanging gets to the top of any list with that criteria.

 

[Chanakya]

//Total Hijack//

I wrote a horror short story a few years back, a 1st person confession from a guy who was a member of an underground group of off the book executioners, sent clandestinely by the government to prisons to perform secret executions of prisoners.

The twist was he would be taken to the prisoner's cell while they were asleep and perform a lethal injection on them. The whole point was the idea that being executed wasn't cruel, seeing it coming was. So it was decided it was better of prisoners just went to bed one night and never work up. In the story most "natural cause" deaths of prisoners are death row or in prison for extreme crimes are really secret executions carried out by this secret organization. The public "They know it is coming" executions are only used to keep the ruse up and generally saved for really extreme cases that it is felt are worth the extra pain and suffering of seeing their death coming.

Cool plot! ...And it's a great idea, psychologically speaking. The most merciful death is one that is quick, and, importantly, that comes on unawares. What sweeter death than simply going to sleep, completely unaware of what's to come, and then never waking up?

(Had three deaths in the (extended) family in the last month. Two of them were, in a way, the diametric opposites of each other. Both uncles of mine, both fairly young, relatively speaking. In one case, protracted illness, over two years, towards the end guy reduced to near-comatose, and then one day gone. And in the other case, not actually passed-in-sleep, but still pretty cool: Sudden heart failure, and then, boom, gone within 5 minutes or so, less maybe. ...Of course, it was horrible for my aunt and their young daughter, my cousin, completely horrible, I'm not saying his dying was cool, but you know what I mean: I'd any day choose a sudden quick death, over a long-protracted one, even if that means a somewhat earlier death.)


eta: So what was the horror element of it? The reveal at the end, that this is what first-person-protagonist does when wears his suit and drives out in his car in the morning? Or something grisly that happens when something goes wrong, or maybe something like the Reacher plot, someone trying to make the criminals pay by dying in pain, or something like that? (Just curious. Either way, cool plot.)

 

[sackett]

I've heard similar, and always thought it was the goofiest thing, to participate in the execution while trying to have the "out" that it might not have been you who released the poisons. Kind of like the firing squad that has a blank or two in the mix so you can say "hey, I might have clean hands here". No. You don't have clean hands here.

Quite aside from the fact that blanks don't kick and ball rounds do. Of course, a shooter might kid himself that "it wasn't as strong as usual!" I've seen that work in fiction! But since nobody's easier to fool than yourself, it might work in real life. At first.

If I was the guy facing the guns, I'd want EVERYBODY to be armed with at least a .35 Whelen and to load with hollowpoints. If I can't have nice clean nitrogen, I wanna go out with a bang!

 

[Ziggurat]

The Standard & Long (Measured) Drop methods were based on medical data and the intention was to be as humane as possible by rendering the victim unconscious instantly (with death following shortly after).

I keep wanting to know how they determine that, and nobody seems to know. I don't know how you even could know, absent EEG readings through the process. The person becoming immediately non-responsive isn't proof that death was instant. I'm sure hanging (performed properly) was among the more humane execution methods available at the time, but that doesn't mean it's up to modern expectations.

 

[theprestige]

I keep wanting to know how they determine that, and nobody seems to know.

It's determined by reading "various books", apparently. I'm imagining something like the Osprey books, but instead of being about military uniforms and equipment through the ages, they're about executions and executioners.

 

[mumblethrax]

I'd probably want to be executed by having all my neurons replaced over the course of a decade or so.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I wanna be put into a transporter so I can "die" in a way that absolutely isn't dying.

 

[lobosrul5]

I wanna be put into a transporter so I can "die" in a way that absolutely isn't dying.

Ohhh noooooooooooooo. Not this argument. Yes, I think it is. Lt Barclay was right!

It would be exactly the same as being atomized by a powerful explosion, then an exact duplicate of you created with your memories intact right before that moment. Its not you. Its a copy of you.

 

[zooterkin]

The Chinese save a ton o' money using a pistol instead of anaesthetics, and hurry the guest of honor off still warm for organ and eye harvesting. I'm not sure they don't realize a net profit when Comrade Donor is young and healthy.

Well, they don't have to pay for the bullet, they send the bill for that to the relatives of the deceased.

 

[zooterkin]

I keep wanting to know how they determine that, and nobody seems to know. I don't know how you even could know, absent EEG readings through the process. The person becoming immediately non-responsive isn't proof that death was instant. I'm sure hanging (performed properly) was among the more humane execution methods available at the time, but that doesn't mean it's up to modern expectations.

Is there any method which is? I'm pretty sure, as I think I already said, that, as they are currently implemented, the electric chair and lethal injections are much less humane than hanging.

 

[theprestige]

Is there any method which is? I'm pretty sure, as I think I already said, that, as they are currently implemented, the electric chair and lethal injections are much less humane than hanging.

To Darat's question in the OP, hanging seems like a low bar. If we're going to do hanging because it's better than the electric chair or lethal injections, we might as well do something better than hanging. Which might just be better lethal injections.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Well that's kind of the problem with any method of dying being considered painless. It's not like we can ask people after it's over, we can only make educated guesses.

The method I described earlier, a large weight completely crushing the entire head, would leave real way for any "feeling" to occur at all, but as I said the reason we don't do stuff like that is that it looks horrible barbaric and disgusting and "we" want execution methods that LOOK clean and sterile and neat and that rather tips the hand as to what this really is all about.

We want methods of execution that make us feel better about the fact that we are kiling people.

There's another element involved: personal feelings and cultural taboos about mutilating the body, living or dead. Personally I'd rather take a few seconds to die by hanging than be instantly crushed by a large weight. There's more dignity in hanging. It doesn't leave such a gross corpse behind.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

The Chinese save a ton o' money using a pistol instead of anaesthetics, and hurry the guest of honor off still warm for organ and eye harvesting. I'm not sure they don't realize a net profit when Comrade Donor is young and healthy.

A China-adjacent country doesn't concern itself with the cost of ammunition.

And who needs donor organs or eyes when every good citizen emulates the leader's fabulously healthy lifestyle?

 

[Chanakya]

Send them out to space, and then eject? Or send them down in submarines, and eject? That'd be nice and dramatic. Cover it on TV, that'll cover the cost and then some.

 

[lobosrul5]

Send them out to space, and then eject? Or send them down in submarines, and eject? That'd be nice and dramatic. Cover it on TV, that'll cover the cost and then some.

The former would be quite expensive. And the condemned is taking the place of an actual astronaut, or a space tourist ($$$). I think that'd be my preferred way to go actually. Spaced, with a nice view of Earth. You die from suffocation, and apparently the lack of pressure is not that painful. I saw it described as 3/10 by someone involved in a vacuum chamber accident.

The latter, hmm. That would probably not be a fun way to go. Unless you just built a ****** submarine and had it dive automatically until the condemned is killed instantly by overwhelming pressure. Would be a creepy, frightening way to go though.

 

[theprestige]

Send them out to space, and then eject? Or send them down in submarines, and eject? That'd be nice and dramatic. Cover it on TV, that'll cover the cost and then some.

Such elaborate nonsense.

There are assisted suicide organizations that seem to have figured out a simple and reliable method for a peaceful passing, that anyone can carry out with common over the counter items and a single sheet of basic instructions. And without, mind you, the active involvement of the medical community.

Why not just do that?