The administration of United States President Donald Trump has announced plans to expand the use of the federal death penalty, including through the deployment of firing squads.
The announcement on Friday was part of a policy document issued by the Department of Justice, setting out the legal argument for various methods of execution.
It touted steps for “restoring and strengthening” the death penalty as integral to the pursuit of justice.
“The Department of Justice acted to restore its solemn duty to seek, obtain, and implement lawful capital sentences — clearing the way for the Department to carry out executions once death-sentenced inmates have exhausted their appeals,” the Justice Department said in a news release.
If I supported capital punishment, I’d be in favor of firing squads over lethal injection. It’s more honest. Shooting someone is clearly meant to kill while lethal injection dresses it up like a medical procedure.
I oppose capital punishment though. The criminal justice system is not reliable enough to only punish those truly guilty of the worst crimes, it doesn’t seem to be a more effective deterrent than imprisonment, and it usually ends up costing more than imprisonment for an offender’s natural lifespan.
I mean…
There’s completely painless ways to die.
That’s what the whole assisted suicide thing is in civilized countries.
The “problem” is, that’s completely painless, you just go to sleep. And the people who want this, want it to be a painful gruesome death.
It’s not justice or even removing an uncontrollable element, it’s vengeance. And vengeance has to be painful.
There’s nothing stopping an ethical death penalty except the ethics of the people implementing
Up next, america announces new crucifixion punishment for “politically problematic” prisoners
Relevant George Carlin
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This comment implies that the method of killing is the fundamental ethical problem with the death penalty. The killing part is the fundamental problem for me.
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Yes…
Any discussion on an ethical way to do something, is first predicted on the thing happening.
There’s an ethical way to cut aomeone’s leg off, that doesn’t mean we should cut Bob’s leg off, it doesn’t even mean we should cut anyone’s leg off under any circumstances.
Just that if we were going to do something, there are ways to do that ethically.
People really don’t learn this shit anymore?
On the other hand, there’re good, ethical reasons to cut off Bob’s leg sometimes. If you hold the view that there’s never an ethical reason for the state to execute someone, then by that definition all those killings are just some varied degrees of unethical.
A prisoner is suffering and wants to die, their life is a constant pain and keeping them in prison until they die would be torture…
Youd make them suffer for years to only die in prison later?
I guess everyone has different ethical lines…
That’s not a “death penalty” though. It’s mercy killing.
First, I didn’t make the argument.
Second, I think most people could draw a line between allowing a suffering prisoner to choose death and forcing it on them.
Third, that assumes that there’s an ethical argument for life imprisonment.
Yeah. If done correctly, a bullet to the head is quick and painless, as in, you are dead before your body has recognized that you’ve been shot.
But the people who want this want suffering, so likely firing squads will be ordered to hit body parts that will not result in instant, painless death but rather a gruesome and agonizing death from shock and blood loss.
Who would do the actual shooting though? For me this presents a problem. It can go two ways:
Or even worse…
Honestly: While it may feel wrong, and requires some emotional distancing, if you start thinking about it rationally you’ll find that there isn’t really a fundamental problem with this one. Note that you gave an argument why the first case is bad but not for the second.
If we think things through, the main issue we have with killing is that people whom we don’t want to die die; [while I reject capital punishment in the vast majority of cases](https://fiona.onl/positions.html#no-death-penalty-for-individual-crime), the assumption here is that we have made a decision that we want someone to die, so causing that person to die is within the deployed ethical framework not unethical.
And if there is someone who wants to perform an act that is usually highly unethical, but in some instances is, according to the accepted ethical framework, not, then there isn’t really a clear issue to let that person do that thing in those cases, especially if others don’t want to do it.
The issue here is the framework in which the death penalty is a commonly available punishment itself, not that some things feel wrong within that framework.
ACAB
Select one person from the jury that convicted and assign them the role of carrying out their judgment.
I thought about that too, but juries usually don’t decide the sentence (in this case, execution). Juries just determine guilty or not on the charges. Sentencing is usually decided by the presiding judge after the jury renders its verdict on the charges and are already dismissed.
It’s not even reliable to REACH those truly guilty of the worst crimes, it seems.
Heck, where we’re at now, let’s just ask ChatGPT to put red dots where each person will shoot and really spice up the thing. Turn that room into Equilibrium.