that's an interesting question. sure, my squeamishness about watching the saddam hanging video is somewhat related to the method used (i don't particularly want to see someone's neck broken--i wouldn't want to watch that happen in a horseriding accident, or a diving accident, either), but it's not limited to that. see the bit in my post about how i think it's actually necessary for people to see uncomfortable things that are being done in their names--i include watching animals slaughtered for consumption, here, along with battlefront pictures and executions. but the complexity of the question emerges when i think about how watching stuff like that can actually feed bloodlust and warmongering. adding further to that complexity is the propensity for witnesses to yell taunts and jeers at the person being executed. taking everything into account, public executions amount to cruel and unusual punishment for the executee, in my opinion.
on the other hand, if there are going to be executions at all, people should see it, should witness the act of their representatives in the state killing another human being. and really, is any method of execution less violent than any other? they all amount to the same thing, so the question of what method to use comes down to the question of which matters more: the experience of the person being executed, or the experience of those witnessing the execution. fyi, the last public execution in the u.s. was in 1936. i believe it was outlawed as "cruel and unusual," but that probably had more to do with the squeamishness of people watching than with any concern about the condemned person's experience.
from what i've read, autopsies of execution victims suggests that the guillotine is the most "humane" form of execution in terms of the condemned's experience. it's quick and pretty much foolproof. hanging is close. not so foolproof (it can and does go horribly wrong), but when done "correctly" so that the neck snaps at around the C1-C3 vertebrae, it's very quick (death is still usually by asphyxiation, though). interestingly, the states of washington and new hampshire still use gallows for some executions (it's up to the condemned person to choose)--in washington, most recently in the mid-1990's, i believe. the most recent hanging execution in the u.s. was in delaware in 1996, though delaware also stopped using the gallows that year.
the so-called "modern" (sanitized) mode of execution by lethal injection is easier to watch, certainly, because the victim is given both a sedative and a paralytic. but chemical death is not as quick, and probably not as painless, and the jury is out on how well the sedative works. don't even get me started on the gas chamber or the electric chair--just check out what happened to ethel rosenberg when she was electrocuted. there are more recent examples of botched electrocutions, too.
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Date: 2007-01-05 06:08 pm (UTC)on the other hand, if there are going to be executions at all, people should see it, should witness the act of their representatives in the state killing another human being. and really, is any method of execution less violent than any other? they all amount to the same thing, so the question of what method to use comes down to the question of which matters more: the experience of the person being executed, or the experience of those witnessing the execution. fyi, the last public execution in the u.s. was in 1936. i believe it was outlawed as "cruel and unusual," but that probably had more to do with the squeamishness of people watching than with any concern about the condemned person's experience.
from what i've read, autopsies of execution victims suggests that the guillotine is the most "humane" form of execution in terms of the condemned's experience. it's quick and pretty much foolproof. hanging is close. not so foolproof (it can and does go horribly wrong), but when done "correctly" so that the neck snaps at around the C1-C3 vertebrae, it's very quick (death is still usually by asphyxiation, though). interestingly, the states of washington and new hampshire still use gallows for some executions (it's up to the condemned person to choose)--in washington, most recently in the mid-1990's, i believe. the most recent hanging execution in the u.s. was in delaware in 1996, though delaware also stopped using the gallows that year.
the so-called "modern" (sanitized) mode of execution by lethal injection is easier to watch, certainly, because the victim is given both a sedative and a paralytic. but chemical death is not as quick, and probably not as painless, and the jury is out on how well the sedative works. don't even get me started on the gas chamber or the electric chair--just check out what happened to ethel rosenberg when she was electrocuted. there are more recent examples of botched electrocutions, too.