• zaplachi@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    I mean how many progressive stars have the death penalty? Most of the pushback towards it is because you could never design an ethical test, and that prisons might make a mistake (such as impure nitrogen).

    Lethal injections have a 7% failure rate, so at least 1 in every 14 executions are already botched.

    “The odds of being tortured to death by lethal injection are pretty substantial. The odds of a botch with nitrogen hypoxia are uncertain,” Dunham told CNN. “I think it’s a choice to avoid a sure bad thing, as opposed to an affirmative embrace of nitrogen hypoxia.”

    These are the same arguments that got the electric chair, and lethal injection approved. So unless we are going back to a firing line (which is practically painless, just messy), why not try to make it more ethical?

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      So what you’re saying is, because we know that all the other methods of state murder are inhumane, we should try one we know fuckall about on the extremely slim chance that it MIGHT be any less cruel.

      There’s nothing ethical about murdering humans in the first place and doing it in new completely unknown ways that might be worse and doctors are warning will probably be excruciating makes it much LESS ethical. Maybe we should try NOT murdering for a while, see how we feel about things being more civilized and less dehumanising.

      • zaplachi@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        I mean you’re objectively correct, but those states don’t seem like they’re gonna stop capital punishment anytime soon. If current death row inmates ask to be executed by nitrogen, I don’t think there is any harm in trying.

        • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Doesn’t your back hurt from constantly moving those goalposts?

          Inmates are not asking to be murdered in an untested way that will most likely be excruciating.

          The corrupt and callous governments of three of the worst states want to use nitrogen because it’s cheap, it’s plentiful and that’s all they care about.

          As for “no harm in trying” , what part of “unknown but likely to be excruciating” is it that you fail to understand? Is it that long word at the end? It means roughly “very painful, much ow” 🙄