Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Things I Rarely Worry About

Slate muses on a question that has, happily, not been much on my mind: if you're going to be executed, what's the best way to go?

It turns out that the firing squad, while it may seem a bit crude, isn't a bad choice. It's pretty quick and certain, which I guess is what you're going for in this situation.

Key lines: "A Utah inmate who in 1938 agreed to be gunned to death while hooked up to an electrocardiogram showed complete heart death within one minute of the firing squad's shots. By contrast, a typical, complication-free lethal injection takes about nine minutes to kill an inmate."

So in terms of pure speed, take the bullets.

There's some interesting speculation on why U.S. society seems to prefer lethal injection, if it's true that the firing squad is quicker, with the conclusion that lethal injection just seems tidier and more clinical.

We want to kill people, but let's not get all messy or anything. This is clean, impartial justice.

The article doesn't talk about beheading, although I seem to recall that the guillotine was invented as a humane method of execution that would remove the head with one clean cut--and I'm not sure "complete heart death" is something you need to worry about if your head isn't attached to your body.

Beheading is definitely not going to fall into the "tidier and more clinical" category, but evidence-based execution would demand that we base our actions on the facts, without regard to personal distaste.

So if you're considering this question, I would recommend holding off on a decision until you get that information.

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1 comment:

brian said...

such a pleasant topic to ponder on my rain/nasty St. Louis morning :-)