DP, EC, LI And Good Old Guns

[richardm]

On the subject of options for the DP, lethal injection seems pretty reasonable. Person goes to sleep, never wakes up. Good enough for Socrates (though he had to drink and walk).

Gas chamber seems... bad. I mean, you've got a conscious guy sitting in a room, knowing it's coming. Not sure how fast it is, but the smoke filling the room has gotta be rather horrific.

Unfortunately much the same problem exists with the lethal injection. You're conscious and strapped to a trolley, while people mill about prepping you for the injection. Albert Pierrepoint witnessed a lethal injection process and reckoned it to be the most cruel and sadistic execution he'd ever seen, based on the length of time it took the prisoner to go from the cell to unconscious. As a hangman he could cover that same distance in less than ten seconds, which is pretty impressive in anyone's book.

Edited to add this link , which discusses the problems with lethal injection. From one point of view the problem is that most people think the lethal injection is a nice, easy way to go, which means that not much fuss is made about it.

It also lists a few executions that went wrong, including several people who had the medics stabbing away at their arms and legs for anything up to an hour before they found a vein; one person who complained about pain for ten minutes after the drugs were administered, one person who choked and struggled so much that one male witness fainted, etc., etc.

Worth reading, I think.

 

[cesium]

Supposidly, the first drug that is given with leathel injection is over 3 times the leathel dose of a powerful anesthetic used in surgery. Then other paralytics and brain-stopping stuff is given.

It seemes like the IV catheter is the most problamatic part of Leathel Injection; the vein could be hard to find; the medic could miss the vein; and in the worst cases, the fluid is accidently injected into the skin instead of the vein, while the exicutionee lies there in pain.

The only other problem is actualy injecting more stuff into the person then thier bloodstreem can handle, which can result in very bad things.

Gas-chamber has a whole slew of problems, most notably the gas itself. The most common gas is cyanide, which works by shutting down cells ability to convert oxygen and food to energy, so you can feel like you have held your breath for a long period when infact you are breathing as quickly as possible, which only allows more gas in.

This is an extremely painful death, and I have heard of a case where the guy died by banging his head against the pole behind the chair.

My opinion: 10 50BMG rounds to the head (trained snipers, each pointing at a specific part of the brain)

 

[TeaBag420]

Has everyone squirted? Because I think it's time to break the circle. This thread has "GAY" written all over it. Gotta get back to Neverland. Byeeeee!!!!!

 

[Crossbow]

The History Channel had an interesting show on prison history last night but I hit upon a question that I don't understand why they did and still do things the way they do. Centuries ago people were hanged to death or whatever then in more recent times electric chairs and now lethal injections are used. Aren't we doing this the hard way? Guns. They are an amazing new technology that shoots a piece of metal at several times the speed of sound. The felon could have a gun pointed at his head, bam!, dead right away and pretty painless; it would happen to fast to notice. Why isn't this how they are and were finished off?

The reason why guns are no longer used is due to the constitutional prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishments".

It was noted that there were occasional problems with execution by firing squad (as well as execution by hanging and execution by the electric chair) so in order to avoid a possible legal challenge to the way the death penalty was carried out, states eventually came up with the lethal injection system since it is far less painful to the person being executed and far more certain to work the first time.

I hope this helps!

 

[Art Vandelay]

As there is no projectile with a blank, the only mass being driven down the barrel is the burning powder gases, and little bits of wadding.

Of course, gas is the only thing providing a recoil in either case.

Although this provides some "theoretical" recoil, it's not sufficient to overcome the inertia of a rifle in the 8-pound range.

You do realize that "inertia" isn't exactly a physical quantity, don't you? As used in common parlance, it's a very ambiguous term, used for anything from momentum to mass. If you meant the former, there is no momentum to overcome. If the latter, you're mixing up dimensions.

 

[Bikewer]

Please excuse my misuse of physics terminology. My knowledge of shooting has been obtained from about 40 years of shooting, reloading, and so forth, in addition to considerable reading in forensic ballistics.

Having fired some thousands of rounds of blanks (courtesy of the Military...) I can assure you that there is no perceived recoil from such rounds.
Unless, of course, the blank is used to propel a rifle grenade....