Why does the USA continue to kill its own citizens?
The “Leader of the Free World” tries to spread its version of “democracy” beyond its borders; it physically attacks Libya for mowing down its civilians and verbally attacks Syria for the same crime. It holds itself as a model for other countries to emulate, criticising, inter alia, the Chinese Human Rights record.
Yet it still murders its criminals, assuming the right of the nation to take life. I don’t know if the guy was guilty. There does appear to be at least reasonable doubt; more than a hint of having been framed by a racist police force. But even if he was as guilty as Hell, what message does it send to the rest of the world?
America straps its people to a table, injects them with poison and ghoulishly watches them die in agony. Bastards!
Boadicea's Chariot 
Sorry Bearsy,
I wish they could bring back capital punishment here in the UK. I’m all for it.
I guess we will never agree on this one.
‘Why?’ Oh, I don’t know. because those citizens kill people? Are you seriously comparing this to Libya? You must have a very strange view of justice.
Goulishly watches them die in agony?
Overegging the pudding somewhat. It is the same process as being prepped for an op but goes a smidge further. Granted the recipient will probably be suffering some form of mental anguish but they should consider that before they choose to murder someone.
“Americans strap”, not “Americans straps”. Mind the conjugations, Mr Bear.
It’s not a federal matter — although the federal government does have capital punishment as an option.
In this case it was a matter for the State of Georgia. Other states such as Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Minnesota among others do not have it. I agree with Ferret on capital punishment. However, this particular execution should not have gone forward. In fact, the entire trial should have been thrown out. The evidence was shanty and the jury that convicted him have all said that they regret their original decision and would not have voted as they did had they known how flimsy the case actually was.
Being a Christian I can not support the Death Sentence, I rather things were done the Mexican way, there if your own friends don’t chop you up for your crimes the government puts you in jail and forgets you. no doors there, no bars either, just machine guns and soldiers all around you and … if your family don’t feed you …. starvation follows.
The government then returns at the end of your sentence, if you survived … they let you free
A great system, I’m all for it, Uruguay has it too, so does Brazil and virtually every other country in South America, it works and there are very few thieves around..
Thieving is of course considered to be worse than murder over there, to us killing is not half as bad as theft, as long as they kill other criminals … that’s ok …. good for the country 🙂
Danke schön Christopher. 🙂
… I think you meant “shonky” rather than “shanty” … or possibly “scanty” … 😕
I agree with capital punishment in theory. but the practise horrifies me, no matter what form is used.
Ferret – I guess we never will.
Furthermore, I don’t go along with your euphemistic restatement. The accounts that I have read do not support it, nor, I believe, do the drugs used fall into that category. However, I have no direct medical evidence, and perhaps you do?
Here’s an account of last night’s execution by Associated Press reporter Greg Bluestein.
It’s certainly not a spectator sport and it would appear that the only people who witness the actual death, not just the administration of the lethal cocktail are prison officials.
Bitte Schön, Herr Bär. This time, however, I intentionally used a common American corruption of the word for effect.
Soutie – I see nothing in that report that affects my statement – if anything, it reinforces it. Official ghouls and the press ghouls rubbernecking to see a life extinguished by the state.
To the best of my knowledge, the victim is first injected with a paralysing agent which prevents them from moving, and then a lethal substance which stops the heart. The victim remains fully conscious and suffers the equivalent of a heart attack – which certainly isn’t painless, even if they can’t move to show it. I am not aware of a fast acting anaesthetic being administered beforehand, though I earnestly hope I am misinformed. Death takes between 5 to 10 minutes to release the victim from further suffering.
Cold blooded murder.
Thanks Christopher, just shows how little ‘mercan I know! 😦
Bearsy: ‘Merican, although in some parts it is pronounced “murrican”.
I’ve always been opposed to the death penalty. I have, however, come to think that it might be permissible in the case of acts of terrorism. The impersonal act of killing or attempting to kill people that one has never met for political or religious reasons seems to me to be the ultimate act of removing oneself the right to call oneself human. I know there are worse atrocities – but they are committed by those who mentally ill.
If nothing else, killing terrorists would stop others of like mind from committing similar acts to blackmail governments into freeing them.
Boadicea – In a way I agree but also in many other ways I disagree.
The victor always calls the “others”….. terrorists.
There are terrorists who kill out of ignorance but there are also terrorists who kill out of love for their own country and the need to liberate their peoples from things most in the west have no idea are actually being done by so called respectable governments, especially the USA.
Personally I can tell you that If I had been old enough back in 1969 I too would have gone to the USA and killed as many people as I could knowing full well they would have killed me in the end ..
they had no problems sending torturers to our country to kidnap homeless men, women and children in order to practice their art and teach it to others …. I would have had no problems then in blowing them all up … seriously …
As a matter of fact … there was plan for it … but the guys never got a chance … they got shot dead before they could do it.
You have to be under the yoke in order to understand it … sorry if I sound callous and I don’t mean to change the subject here .. 😦
Thanks for that Donald.
You’re right, My ‘history’ has always been on the side of the victors. I shall go away and rethink my position re ‘political’ terrorism, although I might still have a problem with the religious nuts…
I am not entirely against the death penalty, but I do wonder about the American justice system. If they sentence somebody to death, in my view, it should be carried out immediately. No room to appeal. That would stop juries and prosecutors calling for it and judges enforcing it when they know it will be carried out and they will carry the moral burden. For them to do so would mean complete conviction that the person is guilty of a horrendous crime. As it stands, the endless delays and appeals shift the responsibility on to others.
The delays themselves are ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ not just for the prisoner, but his family and the family of the victim as well. All it serves to do is cost the state a fortune and generate fees for lawyers. This whole thing is about sodding lawyers. They are evil, self-serving, money-grabbing, immoral bastards, especially those from the US.
For a crime to warrant the death penalty, it has to be so evil, so premeditated and the evidence so compelling that there is no question of it being a miscarriage of justice. In this particular case, the crime was not premeditated, and the evidence was not compelling. He may have been an unpleasant piece of work, but I am not convinced that he was an evil bugger.
Why should a lethal injection be such a palaver? Why can’t they just give him a general anaesthetic followed by something that will kill him? For goodness sake they can cut peoples hearts open and stitch them up without them knowing about it, why is it so hard to inject some cyanide or something that would kill them in seconds? Anybody know the logic behind how they do it?
Another thing I do not understand about police systems, the US in particular, is how they seem more intent in convicting somebody, anybody, rather than making sure they get the right person. They seem to have decided that Troy Davis was the man, based on somewhat unreliable witness statements and then worked the evidence to secure a conviction. The fact that somebody else admitted to it does not seem to have bothered them a great deal. Forget a miscarriage of justice, I would feel dirty and useless if I were a cop or prosecutor who got the wrong man convicted, even if he was an evil so and so. It would mean the real criminal was still free and I would have failed at my job.
My last point on the subject is to do with jury selection. The way US juries are formed is a farce. Either you trust US citizens to be objective or you don’t. The fact that race, class, sex, age, religious persuasion, political beliefs, personal history etc etc can play a part in determining how the jurist will judge weather the person is guilty, is self evident. Nobody is free of prejudice. Some jurists will be better at hiding their prejudices than others. Some jury selectors, prosecution or defence, will be better at choosing those jurists who are most likely to give them the result they are looking for. The point of a jury is that your ‘peers’ judge whether you are guilty. If your own community is unhappy with what you have done, they must decide whether you are guilty or not. That may have worked in the past, but it is not appropriate today. The only person who is fit to determine whether an individual is guilty, based on the evidence, is the judge, or panel of judges, who have the ability to understand the evidence and who have their own reputations to protect.
There, I have spoken.
Menachim Begin and the bombing of the King David hotel springs to mind. 91 dead and 46 injured. Yet that little s**t of a terrorist got the Nobel Peace prize. I wonder how post 9/11 USA would receive him were he alive today.
Sipu
I agree wholeheartedly with most of your #16, except on the matter of juries. I do not believe that the only people fit to determine whether an individual is guilty are judges, or panels of judges – they are, after all, drawn from that same group of “sodding lawyers” that you rail about in para 2.
Nor do I believe that they are the only people around with the ability to understand the evidence – if the prosecution cannot make a case that a well-educated and intelligent person can understand then they aren’t doing their job properly.
Sipu – pretty much go along with your #16, apart from the bit about juries. Thanks for the thoughtful comment. And total agreement about lawyers! Sorry JM.
Oh yeah, I too have a problem with religious terrorists .. they fight for no country and absolutely do not fight for any religion .. they simply use it to justify a means to reach their own selfish ends.
For that there is a solution but the Pope’s soldiers (Jesuits and ) are not allowed to crusade anymore! 😦
For you who likes history here is a wonderful link to get you started, a fascinating subject 🙂
http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/alvpop.html
Bearsy, have you noticed the comment pending?
Just let it through, Soutie.
Sipu,
Very well said on the moral accountability front. I totally agree.
As for the mechanics of the execution, I found this.
“The drugs are administered, in this order:
Anesthetic – Sodium thiopental, which has the trademark name Pentothal, puts the inmate into a deep sleep. This drug is a barbiturate that induces general anesthesia when administered intravenously. It can reach effective clinical concentrations in the brain within 30 seconds, according to an Amnesty International report. For surgical operations, patients are given a dose of 100 to 150 milligrams over a period of 10 to 15 seconds. For executions, as many as 5 grams (5,000 mg) of Pentothal may be administered. This in itself is a lethal dose. It’s believed by some that after this anesthetic is delivered, the inmate doesn’t feel anything.
Saline solution flushes the intravenous line.
Paralyzing agent – Pancuronium bromide, also known as Pavulon, is a muscle relaxant that is given in a dose that stops breathing by paralyzing the diaphragm and lungs. Conventionally, this drug takes effect in one to three minutes after being injected. In many states, this drug is given in doses of up to 100 milligrams, a much higher dose than is used in surgical operations — usually 40 to 100 micrograms per one kilogram of body weight. Other chemicals that can be used as a paralyzing agent include tubocurarine chloride and succinylcholine chloride.
Saline solution flushes the intravenous line.
Toxic agent (not used by all states) – Potassium chloride is given at a lethal dose in order to interrupt the electrical signaling essential to heart functions. This induces cardiac arrest.”
I don’t get the ‘believed by some’ statement under anaesthetic. I have had the stuff a few times now before they sliced me open and subtracted parts, I can confirm I did not feel a thing until I came round afterwards of course.
Re juries, I have never served on one, nor have I ever attended a trial, so I am not in much of a position to argue, but I must say that I am grateful that this country does not have a jury system. Were I to go to court, I would hate to think that I would be judged by a jury of 12 of South African voters.
As a rule, if I was innocent, I would prefer the decision to be made by a judge, if guilty, by a jury.
Anyway, that is just my view.
Looking into this case further, it does seem that they are missing some vital evidence to support the conviction. I do have an issue with awarding the death sentence on a hunch.
For example, I think that psycho who killed all those people in Norway is begging for execution.
Thanks Ferret. Maybe the antis make the process seem more complex and subject to errors than it really is.
I am with Furry Ferret on this one. I think the conviction of a murderer must be absolutely solid, based on such things as being caught in the act, DNA evidence and so on, before such an execution takes place. I see no reason why the rest of society should support a convicted murderer for the rest of their lives, especially as, at the moment at least, life in a UK prison is not as uncomfortable as it should be, not sure about other countries!
Thanks Ferret – I am most relieved to find that Pentothal is administered first. I still don’t agree with any nation taking the life of its citizens, but I’ll back off from the cruelty charge – for those states that follow the procedure you described.
Ferret
Thanks for the information – even if it doesn’t make me believe in State-sanctioned murder.
The only ‘drug’ that I know I’m ‘allergic’ to is Pentathol – it actually makes me violent. I’m told that it is not an uncommon reaction to that drug – so I hope that they ask those-about-to-be-executed whether they have a reaction to Pentathol!
Is it beyond the wit of science to take a convicted killer and induce a dreamless state of inactivity, somewhat similar to an induced coma and keep them under wraps until they die a natural death or, if found not guilty at a later stage, warm them up to be reunited with life and enjoy the suitable amount of compo that will come their way. This way the killers family loses access to them the same way the victims family have lost their loved one, no need to worry about welfare, heating, feeding, constant supervision, apart from simple automated medical monitering or any of the other myriad costs involved in keeping these people in the system. Seems a good idea to me.
Unfortunately OMG, with contemporary medicine, it’s necessary to spend a fortune on keeping the unconscious person in reasonable nick. Shame, ‘cos it’s a great idea. 🙂
lobotomize them, then put them to work in a factory doing menial work, the money they earn can then pay for their upkeep or/and go to the families of those they killed, … Why waste the body, it’s the mind that needs to be removed 🙂
With DNA testing today surely guilt can be nigh on confirmed without recourse?
I read the press on this case and didn’t feel it was proven that he was guilty, in such a case the death penalty is wrong. However if the proof is confirmed then I am all in favour of the death penalty, or castration for kiddy fiddlers, I would also bring back the stocks for minor crime such as vandalism etc.
What a great debate, the chariot at its best.
For the record, as one with a keen personal and professional interest in the criminal justice world, I am against the sanctioned killing of humans in the name of revenge. It isn’t a deterrent, whether terrorist or not, wife beating – husband killer or not, or even cold blooded psychotic psychopath or not.
Lock them up and make them work would be my motto – but that would apply to all criminals not just killers.
And, with the moral debate, I’m also fully with Bearsy over the hypocrisy of the yanks. And the rest of the Western world, as I think I mentioned recently!
Well said Cuprum. We also have to remember, none of us on here, at least I hope not, have ever experienced a loved one being brutally murdered, so have never experienced the hatred felt for the murderer. I don’t like the idea of capital punishment, but I have to say, if a paedophile brutally sexually attacked my child, and murdered them, I’m afraid the state would have to take his life, before I did.
ditto
Here is a more comprehensive analysis of the most recent execution:
http://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2011/09/21/mumias_the_word
Pro capital punishment.
Anti 10 years on death row, get on with it.
Can’t see why they should remain a burden on the tax payer.
I do like the way the Chinese get on with it, a trial and the sentence carried out within a week or two.
Seeing that most murderers do some pretty unpleasant things to their victims I hardly think it matters if they suffer a bit too as they exit suitably slowly.
I don’t actually accept the premise that any of the species of homo sapiens are ‘civilised’. A common mass self deception to give the feel good factor generally to liberals. Scratch the skin and an atavistic savage soon emerges. Common to all nations on earth seemingly, as is hypocrisy!
I am against murder, and the killing of humans, who isn’t? But the sub humans who choose to take the life of others with little or no remorse. They are as weeds. If there is definite proof of the crime, I say the perpetrator has forfeit his/her right to be treat as a human and should not be afforded any civil consideration.
For the record, a former neighbour and friend was brutally murdered about 3 weeks ago in Zimbabwe. We used to play rugby together. His wife is in critical condition. He was by no means the first. One almost becomes blase.
Sadly inaccurate.