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Death Penalty in China

Jimbo07 said:
Well, it started with Anti_Hypeman. The first question is: how many people who posted in disgust are also death penalty advocates? BPSCG then made the meat eating and slaughterhouse analogies. I read that as a counter to AH's post, not as a sober recrimination of meat eaters. If so my next question is: does BPSCG take the eating of meat as a means to justify execution vans? :boggled:

In the same way that vegetarians get around this thorny issue (I'm not a veggie), being against the death penalty (everywhere) gets around choosing one style over another. Would it be much different if we could humanely zap them out of existence?

edit: typos
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True enough, but I'm not enough of a frequenter of the board to know if anyone who is for the death penalty is actually against using a van to do it based on the listed posts.

As for BPSCG, I'm not sure what point he was trying to make other than a snide retort to AH. :)

Oddly enough, I'm not a death penalty advocate at all. However, I think the entire Chinese justice system is barbaric, so modernizing the actual killing isn't the part that bothers me.

I'll invoke Godwin and say that if the Nazis had drawn and quartered the first 3 million and then gassed the next 3 million, I wouldn't have blinked when they decided to start using gas. For me the horror is that 6 million died.
 
Furious said:
I'll invoke Godwin and say that if the Nazis had drawn and quartered the first 3 million and then gassed the next 3 million, I wouldn't have blinked when they decided to start using gas. For me the horror is that 6 million died.
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Since we've already Godwined...

One of the early attempts by the Nazis at mass slaughter was to use trucks. They herded the people into the air-tight cargo area, telling them they were going for work detail. The exhaust from the truck was piped into the cargo area; by the time the truck arrived at the mass grave, everyone in the back was dead.

Maybe that's part of my horror at the idea of a "mobile death chamber."
 
Big stick

shemp said:
If expense is important to them, why don't they just beat the condemned to death with a big stick?
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It would damage the organs they don't harvest.

And who do they bill for the cost of the chemicals - since they charged for the bullet re: shooting? (the family - though I always thought the following for an orphan: "You can't afford this bullet??! Well, no execution for you sonny-boy!!!"
 
Jimbo07 said:
How about those who object to the death penalty, both in China and the United States?

Are we allowed to find these vans repulsive, without being hypocritical?

:confused:
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Dut isn't the repulsive bit the death, rather than the method?
 
Makers of the death vans say the vehicles and injections are a civilized alternative to the firing squad, ending the life of the condemned more quickly, clinically and safely.
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Lethal injection is quicker than a bullet to the head? I don't think so.
 
brodski said:
Dut isn't the repulsive bit the death, rather than the method?
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True enough, but there are degrees. For example, no matter what your opinion on the death penalty, I think everyone would be just a wee bit more horrified by a mideval England Braveheart-style "FREEEEEDDDOOOM" death than we would, say, lethal injection.
 
Considering that they are killing people who are likely unfit to live in your average society to begin with, what's wrong with taking those people's organs, as well? It's not like the dead are going to need them.
 
Cleon said:
True enough, but there are degrees. For example, no matter what your opinion on the death penalty, I think everyone would be just a wee bit more horrified by a mideval England Braveheart-style "FREEEEEDDDOOOM" death than we would, say, lethal injection.
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but in that case it's about the level of suffering of the condemned.
I do not see what makes this new method of execution worse or more shocking than death by firing squad. Possibly because I find death by firing squad so barbaric.
 
TimmyBerry said:
Considering that they are killing people who are likely unfit to live in your average society to begin with, what's wrong with taking those people's organs, as well? It's not like the dead are going to need them.
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Its a great point. Given China's history of human rights protection, rule of law, democratic systems, checks and balances and idipendent judiciary, we clearly should give them the benefit of the doubt. Certainly, everyone China would sentence to death likely deserves it...if the people don't like it, they can certainly petition the government, write to newspapers, publish books, petition their legislators, sue the government...that is what makes living in a democracy so great.
 
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Cleon said:
Since we've already Godwined...

One of the early attempts by the Nazis at mass slaughter was to use trucks. They herded the people into the air-tight cargo area, telling them they were going for work detail. The exhaust from the truck was piped into the cargo area; by the time the truck arrived at the mass grave, everyone in the back was dead.

Maybe that's part of my horror at the idea of a "mobile death chamber."
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Yeah, I'm guessing that probably plays into it. Fair enough.

The flip side though is that these are convicted criminals (however poorly they were treated in getting that conviction), not an ethnic group.

Also, having or not having the truck doesn't do anything to save lives, it just makes the corpse less messy and possibly reduces the amount of physical pain rendered to the executed and the emotional pain of seeing a splattered skull from their families (assuming they even get to see the corpse).

I admit that its not much of a step away from barbarism, but I don't think its a step backwards either.
 
You know what would be cool? If, just as they prepare the execution, the bus smashes into a train as they cross railroad tracks and the only one to survive is the prisoner because he's tied down so securely.
 
Skeptic said:
You know what would be cool? If, just as they prepare the execution, the bus smashes into a train as they cross railroad tracks and the only one to survive is the prisoner because he's tied down so securely.
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yeah, train wrecks are cool! :p
 
headscratcher4 said:
Its a great point. Given China's history of human rights protection, rule of law, democratic systems, checks and balances and idipendent judiciary, we clearly should give them the benefit of the doubt. Certainly, everyone China would sentence to death likely deserves it...if the people don't like it, they can certainly petition the government, write to newspapers, publish books, petition their legislators, sue the government...that is what makes living in a democracy so great.
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Now that you mention living in a democracy, I must say that quite a number of for-lifers in American jails don't deserve to live, either. :) And shouldn't be leeching public resources.

(Edit for spelling.)
 
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From the article:
"I'm most proud of the bed. It's very humane, like an ambulance," Kang says. He points to the power-driven metal stretcher that glides out at an incline. "It's too brutal to haul a person aboard," he says. "This makes it convenient for the criminal and the guards."
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It's convenient for the criminal.
 
Anti_Hypeman said:
Its funny how death penalty advocates are only in favor of it if they dont have to see it.
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I support the death penalty, and if it paid enough, I'd love to take a job driving Ye Olde Death Mobile. The chicks would be all over me ... if they knew what was good for 'em. ;)

So much for your latest generalization, AHM. What else you got?
 
shemp said:
If expense is important to them, why don't they just beat the condemned to death with a big stick?
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Because they save money the same way Big Herman of Big Herman's Chevy-Buick-Cadillac makes his money... volume, volume, volume.
 
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