Nine months after Kenneth Smith’s botched lethal injection, state attorney general has asked for approval to kill him with nitrogen

    • Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I’m against the death penalty but if I ever murder a load of people then I’d like to be able able to freely choose death by nitrogen over a life in prison

    • derf82@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You know what else is cruel? People killing other people. And the former continuing to live despite their cruelty.

      The only rub against execution to me is the risk of executing the innocent. But that is not the concern here. There is no dispute this guy is guilty.

      • GiddyGap@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Capital punishment is government sanctioned killing. Outside of war, the government should not have the power to kill anyone.

        Let them rot in prison. It’s cheaper anyway.

        Abolish capital punishment.

      • hoshikarakitaridia@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        The only rub against execution to me is the risk of executing the innocent.

        Right, so why is that not a total disqualifier then? Even if the risk is fleeting small, there is no taking it back. If it came out later on, dead is dead. Combining that with the fact that executions are obv a psychological cluster fuck for everyone who deals with it, especially the one executed, and the fact that it takes a lot of resources every trial because it’s such an unusually cruel punishment, the arguments for it are dwindling.

        Also

        You know what else is cruel? People killing other people.

        Right but we’re not voting someone in office who can eliminate all homicides in the United States. Things are different for execution.

        We could also talk about how this “well tough shit” opinion always fucks over positive and healthy change, but that’s probably the least impactful argument for the folks who still bank on executions as some sort of greater good.

      • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You know what else is cruel? People killing other people.

        Then why aren’t you advocating for executing those that execute killers? After all, they kill people. But I’m going to assume that you think those killers are okay.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Doesn’t ‘people killing other people’ include the state killing people? I don’t see how vengeance for a murder solves anything.

    • BaroqueInMind@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Opinion 👆.

      Fact: it’s necessary to remove certain people who are prone to violence and incapable of rehabilitation. If you have such a problem with execution, then volunteer your time, money, and home to accommodate a violent psychopath with you forever.

      • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Fact: when we sentence people to death we get it wrong one time in three

        Fact: executing someone is more expensive than keeping them in prison for life

        • TopShelfVanilla@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Ah, but it doesn’t have to be. There’s lots of inexpensive, humane ways to dispatch a human. How methods like electrocution and lethal cocktail injection were decided on is difficult to understand. Nitrogen, though, is probably the nicest way it could be done. Relatively cheap too, and with zero chance of failure.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            It’s not the method that’s expensive, it’s the appeals process, supposedly to stop innocent people from being executed. And even with all of the appeals, innocent people have still been executed.

      • hoshikarakitaridia@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Opinion 👆.

        Fact: punishments can be reversed, if the punished stays alive. Any percentage of unjust executions is irredeemable. Also, there is a lot of evidence that abolishing the death penalty either does not affect the crime rate, or it has a positive effect (see link below).

        More opinion: executions have no place in a society that highly values human rights because killing people is the exact opposite of humane. If you think prisoners are monsters and you could never end up in there, watch a documentary about it. If you see what some ppl went through, you know how easy anyone can end up there.

        https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/ACT50/015/2008/en/

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        That’s as silly a comment as “if you think Native Americans were wronged, give your house to one,” something else I’ve heard people say. Societal wrongs are not solved by individuals.

        Somehow all the countries that don’t allow capital punishment find ways to deal with extremely violent people and don’t have murderers running amok.

      • LastYearsPumpkin@feddit.ch
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        1 year ago

        Shitty take. There are more than two options here, and suggesting otherwise is using an either-or fallacy as a bad way to try to win an argument.