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.
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.