My goodness, was it really eight months ago that I wrote about an execution in Oklahoma?
More will follow on this soon, I’m sure.
Burt Likko is the pseudonym of an attorney in Southern California. His interests include Constitutional law with a special interest in law relating to the concept of separation of church and state, cooking, good wine, and bad science fiction movies. Follow his sporadic Tweets at @burtlikko, and his Flipboard at Burt Likko.
Burt Likko
Pseudonymous Portlander. Pursuer of happiness. Bon vivant. Homebrewer. Atheist. Recovering Republican. Recovering Catholic. Recovering divorcé. Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of Ordinary Times. Relapsed Lawyer, admitted to practice law (under his real name) in California and Oregon. There's a Twitter account at @burtlikko, but not used for posting on the general feed anymore. House Likko's Words: Scite Verum. Colite Iusticia. Vivere Con Gaudium.
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Prediction: This will not change anybody’s mind about anything. People who think murderers deserve to die won’t care (or will actually prefer) that it’s not painless. The people who are upset about this are people who were against the death penalty to begin with.Report
Yeah, the conversations I saw about this yesterday either pointed out:
1) (from the death penalty is okay folks) well, the guy did (description of horrific crime here). It’s difficult for me to generate a whole lot of sympathy here.
2) (from the death penalty is not okay folks) well, the death penalty wasn’t okay last week and it’s still not okay.
Maybe it’s my circle but I haven’t encountered anyone who supported the death penalty last week but this execution changed their mind.Report
Brandon is correct. However maybe Palin will help out by comparing this to baptism. That could change some minds.Report
“Accelerated sleep therapy.”Report
Yeah, once you applaud torture it’s not a big step to applauding torture.Report
People who think murderers deserve to die won’t care (or will actually prefer) that it’s not painless.
Clearly true, since we’ve had the (quite low) tech to execute people painlessly and reliably by displacing the oxygen in a room for most of a century now. Heck, people accidentally killed themselves by sticking their head into pooled Halon under raised floors in computer rooms and never noticed anything was happening.
As a side benefit related to a short story Burt put up a while back, no medical knowledge needed. The DA who asks for the death penalty can push the button him/herself.Report
That’s what seems crazy to me. It’s not like the whole “killing people” thing is some new high tech problem that mankind has never addressed.
For a while I assumed that all of the fumbling was because they needed to go through some sort of complex approval process before changing to a new mix of drugs. But now it’s clear that they’re just trying shit out with no real supervision to see what works, so why all the confusion? A few minutes on the Internet should come up with a list of chemicals that are fatal to put into the human body and more less painless.Report
People opposed to the death penalty are fairly good at public shaming companies that provide death penalty drugs to the state. So the companies that used to do it, don’t do it anymore. (This is why they don’t just give massive overdoses of the stuff they give to dogs or cats for pet euthanasia.)Report
@jaybird
Yeah, whereas big tanks of dry nitrogen are available at any number of places, no questions asked, and the gas is used for so many different purposes that no one’s going to stop selling it.Report
Heck, bullets for a firing squad would be cheap and abundant… and, I imagine, the companies in charge of selling them for this purpose could put the fact that they do so in ads.
“Our bullets stopped at least 50 Convicted Murderers in Texas last year. That we know of.”
That sort of thing.Report