Don’t Ban it, FIX IT!

Another messed up execution from the Rube-Goldberg machine:

A convicted murderer in Arizona gasped and snorted for more than 90 minutes after a lethal injection Wednesday, his attorneys and witnesses said, dying in a botched execution that prompted the governor to order an investigation and the state Supreme Court to mandate that the materials used in the procedure be preserved.

Joseph Rudolph Wood III’s execution almost certainly will reinvigorate the national debate over the death penalty. He received an injection at 1:52 p.m. at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence. The execution became so prolonged that reporters witnessing the execution counted several hundred of his wheezes before he was finally declared dead at 3:49 p.m. — nearly two hours after the procedure began.

The incident comes in a year in which lethal injections had already triggered controversy over botched procedures and secrecy.

Now Mr. Wood was a monster, and now he is dead. I’m not going to lose a lot of sleep over that. Still the way he died was bad justice. I’m very much in favor of capital punishment, but I’m not a fire-and-brimstone sort of guy. He killed multiple people, this is NOT revenge, revenge can’t be done in this case. He was simply too dangerous to live in society, or in prison so we fixed that, but we didn’t do a very good job of doing it.

There are way too many ways to kill a human being in a dignified, painless, and timely way. I don’t see why we need to use such a stupidly complicated machine to do this.

I don’t like complicated, especially with life-and-death. I don’t like complicated guns, I don’t like complicated cars, I don’t like complicated locks on my doors. Complicated means multiple failure points, and that’s what happened here. I don’t know how much is known about WHAT was messed up, but obviously something screwed up and the man did not die as predicted.

If we had simply started a progressive morphine drip the executioner could simply turn the machine up to full, maybe even fire up a back-up pump in the other arm (generally in lethal injections two IV needles are inserted, one in each arm in case of vein collapse or a blocked cannula). Just turn the dude’s blood into pure morphine while he’s sedated by the primary effects of the drug and his light will go out forever and not a bit of discomfort will happen after that last needle is inserted (those big gauge IVs do suck going in!) and that first wave of drug hits the brain.

Still there are LOTS of other fine-and-dandy ways to punch somebody’s ticket. I’m a fan of calculated long-drop hanging. The condemned is weighed, and a calculation is made to how far they need to drop to sever the spine, and hopefully keep the head attached to the body. If you fudge the numbers a little liberally the person may become decapitated, and while gross, the person we’re really caring about (and yes, we should care for them) is the condemned.

Also a suicide technique I’ve been reading about is pretty cool. So-called “Exit bags” where the person taking their own life puts a bag with a one-way-valve over their head, draws the bag tight around the neck and floods the bag with inert gas. See our bodies don’t actually KNOW when we are running out of oxygen. Instead we can only sense when we’re taking in lethal amounts of CO2. Flood the bag (or gas chamber) with Nitrogen or Helium which won’t react with body tissues in a way that might cause discomfort, and you’re still able to clear all the CO2 your body is producing. Lights out, and if done right, it’s FAST!

Heck despite it being overly showy, firing squads work pretty good too! Close-range rifle shots to the heart from a stationary target from multiple shooters will work really well. Still that’s a little showy for my tastes.

So yeah, let’s quit this bullshit with the Rube-Goldberg execution machine and do this dirty deed right!

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7 Responses to Don’t Ban it, FIX IT!

  1. You could mechanize a firing squad execution. Set up one or more fixed weapons, say a T/C Contender in a Ransom Rest, with a solenoid trigger mechanism. A remote switch outside of the execution chamber would activate the solenoid. You could have multiple switches with only one active so no one would know who triggered the killing shot(s).

  2. Joe in PNG says:

    Nitrous Oxide would do the trick as your inert gas, and be a pleasant way to go.

  3. Cargosquid says:

    I was just describing the inert gas technique to someone else.

  4. Tirno says:

    Hell, why not carbon monoxide? Just rig up the cells in death row to be airtight except for the air conditioning flow, hide a microphone sensitive enough to hear a heartbeat, and on some day after the final, ‘drop-dead’ (so to speak), day of execution, while the condemned is sleeping, silently disconnect the A/C from the rest of the system and flood the room with carbon monoxide. Record time of death when the heart stops beating, and then let it sit for an hour to be sure there’s no coming back. Then vent the room, pick up the garbage for disposal, and clean it up for the next guy to quietly die in his sleep.

    That’s better than many deserve, but on the plus side, it’s not complicated, doesn’t require that much in the way of special equipment, and it’s already a frequently used method of suicide. Plus, you can’t really have that much anxiety about getting offed if you really don’t know when it’s coming.

    • Weerd Beard says:

      Carbon Monoxide is pretty unpleasant to breath it, so I[d stick with nitrogen.

      Also I would rather not dispense with the formality of the execution. The condemned deserved his day in court, and deserves and observed execution day that can be documented by the press and families.

      Hell I’d be fine with making them open to the public as well.

  5. Geodkyt says:

    Yup, nitrogen asphixiation is the way to go. The condemned just loses unconsciousness, and you simply leave them in an anoxic atmosphere for, say, 30 minutes, vent to open air, and go right in once you have a full exchange. No risk lingering poisons, no risks of sharps mistakes, no risks of weird drug reactions, no mess to traumatize our employees and official witnesses who are forced to watch, etc.

    In an execution, I don’t want the bad guy tortured, I just want him dead. As cleanly and humanely as possible, not for his sake, but for the sake of those that have to carry it out. (Plus, it’s like putting down a rabid dog. You don’t torture Ol’ Yeller – you just put him down for being too dangerous to leave alive.)

    • Weerd Beard says:

      Plus it’s sentence from a court of law, not some bizarre mob rule lynching or act of revenge. The person was caught, they had their day(s) in court, their legal representation if they so wished, and they were found guilty.

      Also death is the MAXIMUM sentence, and we have that little amendment about “Cruel and Unusual” so killing with dignity means everybody sentenced gets a fair shake, and we avoid that whole “Cruelty” thing entirely.

      And frankly if the person is going to be dead within the hour, I think it’s perfectly fair to treat them as if they weren’t the rabid beast they may have been. I’ve known some people who have done some REALLY shitty things, and later did everything they could reasonable do to make people who were wronged whole again. That doesn’t earn my trust back, but it does do a lot to earn my respect.

      A person going to the death chamber to take their licks they were sentenced to earns my respect as well.

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