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What I Learned from Executing Two Men

203 points by pmcpinto 10y ago

mhb 10y ago
This article unfortunately conflates the value (or absence of value) of the death penalty with the unpleasantness involved with carrying it out. If the process were better would he still be opposed to it?
- willvarfar 10y ago
  > After much contemplation, I became convinced that, on a moral level, life was either hallowed or it wasn’t. And I wanted it to be. Also > I could not see that execution did anything to enhance public safety.
- fauigerzigerk 10y ago
  I'm not sure he really conflates the two things any more than necessary. The unpleasantness he describes is the result of moral doubts about killing a person who no longer poses a threat to anyone. What he does, in my view, is to suggest that these doubts are justified and society as a whole should have those doubts as well. In other words, he gives a human face to the agony that society should feel about this. He isn't saying, oh the death penalty is great, but it feels so bad to administer it for some reason, so let's save ourselves the trouble, shall we?
deleted 10y ago
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arethuza 10y ago
The video "Hanging with Frank" covers the details of the process the UK used to use: https://vimeo.com/24804876 https://vimeo.com/24804876
homero 10y ago
While death penalty supporters suggest that capital punishment has the power of deterrence, a 2012 report by the National Research Council found that research “is not informative about whether capital punishment decreases, increases or has no effect on homicide rates.”
- dforrestwilson1 10y ago
  Put deterrence aside for a moment. Let's talk about the cost of keeping guilty murderers alive in prison for the remainder of their lives. Is it worth it?
  - orkaa 10y ago
    You're pushing into a direction you might not like. Should we start executing people that aren't positively contributing to the society (disabled, sick..)? I think the decision between life and death shouldn't be made based on cost.
  - smeyer 10y ago
    Are you talking about the financial cost? Due to the extra precautions around death row (including things like a more extensive appeals process and more security), it costs more to keep someone on death row and then execute them than it does to keep them in prison for life without parole. I'm not saying that this is the argument to use for abolishing the death penalty, but it's definitely not one for keeping it as it currently stands.
  - generalk 10y ago
    > Is [keeping "guilty murderers alive in prison"] worth it? In many cases, guilt is not certain, only proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Lifetime imprisonment can be reversed if a mistake is realized, but death can't. Even given a hypothetical case where the evidence is so damning and guilt is fairly concrete, the execution of another human should be a punishment reserved for when we have no other option.
  - tbcj 10y ago
    The cost wouldn't be substantially more than it is today if only because capital murder trials are rare occurrences these days, and its even rarer when the death penalty is given. Death row inmates stay on death row for a long time, so while its not effectively a life sentence, the state still has to keep them alive.
  - TelmoMenezes 10y ago
benevol 10y ago
How can a society which calls itself "civilized" keep the death penalty? There's so much deeply disturbingly wrong with it that I don't even.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >How can a society which calls itself "civilized" keep the death penalty? Well, what you say doesn't necessarily has to match what you are. Hypocrisy is a thing -- and modern society is full of it.
- onevoice 10y ago
  How can a society which calls itself "civilized" allow murderers to stay alive for so long? There's so much deeply disturbingly wrong with it that I don't even.
  - nxzero 10y ago
    Mistakes happen, killing people for killing just sends the message that killing is a solution. There is a long list of "murders" that were found not guilty after being executed: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_execution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_execution Beyond that, some confessed murders go on to contribute to society, for example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Burroughs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Burroughs Feel free to respond with your reasonings, though think in the end they'll fail to be reasonable.
    - onevoice 10y ago
      I suppose I should have clarified, my point was mostly that this kind of message isn't really an argument for anything. While it may look like it has more substance, Its simply saying "I don't like this". So it does not really contribute too much for the discussion, other than appealing to the emotions of the reader. Personally I am not particularly for or against capital punishment, because I don't think the subject is researched well enough. And seeing as this is morally a problematic subject with regards to human rights ETC. I don't really have too many hopes it would ever be properly studied.
abrookewood 10y ago
I can't even begin to imagine the anguish that taking another human's life in that manner would cause me.
vilda 10y ago
Does anybody have an opinion why not to use low pressure as a method killing [0]? All the failed executions by electrical chairs and administered chemicals makes me think about a safer and more human method. Just theoretical question, not advocating for anything. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUfF2MTnqAw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUfF2MTnqAw Edit: Typo
- Gustomaximus 10y ago
  I've thought the same. It seems like they want it to be cruel. There are clearly better options. even for lethal injection and the recent errors. Why not just morphine or heroin someone up. Rather than this paralyse then administrator more drugs that apparently hurt. There something creepy/evil about current methods.
- Luc 10y ago
  There's a great BBC documentary with Michael Portillo on how to most humanely execute a person: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband/tx/executions/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband... Hypoxia seems the most kind way. Low pressure is not needed, just a lack of oxygen (by e.g. breathing helium). I suppose it's not enough of a punishment to go out this way, as it's rather pleasant as these things go (there's no feeling of suffocation) and there can even be a mild euphoria.
- dsacco 10y ago
  I agree that the methodology could probably be improved. If we're optimizing for psychological comfort for the prisoner and certainty of the process working, I'd actually recommend a close-range shot to the head with a high caliber bullet. Depending on the distance and round, not only will the prisoner not experience their own death (they won't see or even hear it coming), it's astronomically unlikely to fail. High velocity rounds will pierce through the tissue more quickly than it can physically tear, and will technically exit the body before the brain matter has begun tearing. The physics of this is fascinating, because it not only ultimately destroys significant brain tissue; the process stretches out the tissue, straining and damaging the rest of the surviving brain tissue. Of course, this is not optimized to be clean. It's gruesome, but I don't think it's necessarily cruel. One moment they're alive, the next they're not. Blunt force is still the quickest way to induce a cessation of consciousness. If the prisoner were not aware of it happening, they would probably be at greater peace at the time of their death. This could also be done remotely so as to reduce the mental toll on the executioner. Unfortunately, it would make an open casket unlikely. But I imagine most prisoners due to be executed experience a lot of terror in the hours, days and weeks preceding their final moments under the current system. I imagine living with that anticipation is horrifying for some. From what I can understand through cursory research, morphine is a painless way to die, so much so that doctors use it to ease patients into death when there is an acceptable lack of available treatment. Extreme euphoria followed by unconsciousness doesn't sound like a bad way to do.
choko 10y ago
While it may not serve as a deterrent, in my opinion there are people that have performed actions so heinous and grizzly that they should not be allowed to live. The death penalty should be reserved for only the most depraved and irredeemable members of society. If you don't agree, how about an opposing viewpoint instead of downvotes?
- sillysaurus3 10y ago
  Many people have been proven innocent after they were on death row.
  - choko 10y ago
    If there is any question of guilt, then the death penalty would not be an appropriate sentence. There are many examples where there is no question of guilt, where I feel the death penalty would be completely appropriate. Admitted serial killers for example. I'm not advocating a liberal use of the death sentence, but I still feel that there are cases where it's needed. If anyone doesn't agree, make an argument instead of downvoting. HN is better than that.
    - teddyh 10y ago
      > Admitted serial killers for example. Like this man? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sture_Bergwall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sture_Bergwall
      - choko 10y ago
        "With no eyewitnesses or technical forensic evidence to connect him to the crimes..." So no, not like that at all.
        teddyh 10y ago
        He was at one point convicted of eight murders, and had confessed to more than 20 more. Who, if not that man, would you nominate for a death penalty? Or is a conviction not a conviction?
SFJulie 10y ago
Misery is a very well used form of slow painful execution, why do people wish to use more flashy forms that are counterproductive in keeping our systems so perfect? The poor needs to fear the wealthy in order to not disrupt a perfect society that have proven being an example of progress, humanitarian values and eco-friendly system.
jokoon 10y ago
I wonder what happens if a death row inmate keeps yelling and fighting. Do they sedate him? That would be a deterrent for those officers, having to handle inmates who won't consent to their own death.
marcoperaza 10y ago
On a purely moral level, I think capital punishment for murderers and traitors is absolutely justified. You, who have stolen a man's most precious possession, his life, shall not enjoy the rest of your own. You, who have betrayed our nation and our security, will never again enjoy our protection. But in its practicalities, the chance for wrongful conviction, the cost to society, the anguish it causes the executioners, and the potential for abuse, I see many good reasons for abolition.
- pilsetnieks 10y ago
  > You, who have betrayed your nation and its security, will never again enjoy its protection. Which can also be accomplished by exile instead of killing.
  - adrianN 10y ago
    The world ran out of Australias to send people to.
    - majewsky 10y ago
      That might be an interesting venue for space travel. Gather a bunch of convicts sentenced to exile, put them in a space ship where they can sustain themselves for the rest of their life [1], and send the ship onto a locked course into outer space. [1] At least in theory. In practice, a society of convicts will likely not hold up very long.
  - marcoperaza 10y ago
    Retribution is a legitimate end of justice. Aside from the practical impossibility of exile as punishment in the modern world, I don't think exile fits the gravity of the crime of treason.
  - deleted 10y ago
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- harrybarry 10y ago
  > I think capital punishment for murderers and traitors is absolutely justified The set of murderers is not identical to the set of those convicted of murder. Not are they not the same size, many of the elements in the latter are not in the former set.
sickbeard 10y ago
But the average citizen might find himself looking at the death row prisoner in the eye when the said prisoner is doing the killing.
- Pigo 10y ago
  Or maybe it's their 10 year old son who's lured away by some maniac, abused and killed. It's a complicated issue, and really easy to talk about how revenge doesn't solve anything from a great distance. I could see the absence of a death penalty putting me in a situation where I would end up taking the law into my own hands. Not that I think that's okay, but I could very much see it happening in that situation.
  - saiya-jin 10y ago
    there is 7 billion people on earth, and number is growing fast. rather than focusing on preserving quantity at all costs, which is not an issue anyway, we should focus on quality (character, added value to mankind etc.). With this reasoning, killing a murdered of your own child (or any similar case, ie parents/loved one) isn't that much of a stretch. Extreme situations call for extreme solutions
    - lorenzhs 10y ago
      It's a small step from what you're proposing to euthanizing "unwanted" or "unproductive" parts of the population. Are you sure you want to go down that path?
      - saiya-jin 10y ago
        my point was only concerning the case above - somebody intentionally, even brutally kills someone closest to you. I never suggested scaling it up to anyone else, liked or not, from where did you get that?
        lorenzhs 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
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saalweachter 10y ago
The difficulty with trying to argue down the death penalty is that you end up arguing on so many levels. This article mentions the dollars and cents expense of the death penalty; this is an empirical fact, either it is cheaper to execute someone or cheaper to imprison them. This article mentions the ineffectiveness in protecting society; this is also an empirical question, although it is harder to measure than the monetary cost. Finally, the article speaks of the emotional and moral cost to those employed to carry out the execution. But the article only devotes a single sentence to the core of the argument, at the very beginning: the author has come to believe that life is either hallowed or not, and he prefers to believe that it is always hallow, and killing always wrong. This is the core of the problem. Some people believe killing is always wrong. Some people believe justice requires the execution of those convicted of a capital crime. Heck, sometimes these contradictory beliefs are held by the same person. All the other arguments don't matter. If killing is always wrong, you pay the cost of life imprisonment and don't execute people to save money. If justice requires a life for a life, you don't scrimp on that, either. You pay whatever monetary, emotional, and moral costs are necessary for justice to be done.
- rayiner 10y ago
  This is an excellent point, and I think much of the same principles apply to the abortion debate a well.
  - deleted 10y ago
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  - fsloth 10y ago
    Not really. People will always get abortions and in some cases really need them. No-one forces the government to execute people.
    - akavi 10y ago
      Would you be ok with permitting murder on the basis "people will always do it."? Because if you take the arguments of pro-life advocates on good faith, that's what you're saying. You can't make your case against position by ignoring the underlying reasons people hold it.
freerobby 10y ago
It's nice to see a statement of regret, but it really bothers me how rarely those who feel this way do anything about it while in positions of power. This Warden claims to have felt it wrong in the moment, yet he did not make the faintest of sacrifices to oppose it. It would be much more influential for a well-regarded Warden to publicly oppose or resign over such policies, than to obey them blindly and issue a mea culpa years later when he no longer has influence. Read the passage below, and consider the lack of courage required to kill someone in a way you feel is pointless at best, and morally heinous at worst, because it's your "job." How many extra years of capital punishment will we have, how many extra prisoners killed, because people in his position took too long to speak up? > Regardless of their crimes, the fact that I was now to be personally involved in their executions forced me into a deeper reckoning with my feelings about capital punishment. After much contemplation, I became convinced that, on a moral level, life was either hallowed or it wasn’t. And I wanted it to be. > I could not see that execution did anything to enhance public safety. While death penalty supporters suggest that capital punishment has the power of deterrence, a 2012 report by the National Research Council found that research “is not informative about whether capital punishment decreases, increases or has no effect on homicide rates.” > I now believed that capital punishment was a dismal failure as a policy, but I was still expected to do my job. So I met with my staff and explained my position. I made it known that anyone who felt similarly opposed could back out of our assignment. According to state policy, assisting in the executions was voluntary for everyone but the superintendent. And yet each of those asked to serve chose to stay to ensure that the job was done professionally.
- overcyn 10y ago
  I disagree that it is so cut and dry. Does publicly opposing a̶n̶d̶ or resigning prevent those deaths from occurring? Should all of the staff involved be morally obligated to hand in their resignation or publicly oppose as well? What of the other prisoners under his custody that he may feel responsibility for? Quitting or publicly opposing may be the most conspicuous way of opposing the death penalty, but people need to be able to choose their battles.
  - freerobby 10y ago
jordache 10y ago
on the subject of deterrence, if the author argues that the death penalty is not a deterrence, how does he explain the relatively low levels of drug crimes in asian countries where death penalty is more heavily used? It appears to me the death penalty, while used as a potential punishment threat in the U.S, is actually a sparsely applied. Criminals know that, so its deterrence factor is effectively diminished
- RockyMcNuts 10y ago
  The US has the death penalty, they have the death penalty, why would one conclude that the death penalty is what makes the difference? even if a country with a harsh penalty for drugs has less drug crime, other confounding factors have to be looked at, like a large potential market for illegal drugs, a large population with no better means of making a living. I would expect that a draconian death penalty may be some deterrent but it may not be the best policy, either.
- VLM 10y ago
  You may be confusing the metric of convictions with the metric of activity (proxy for deterrence) The way it works in the USA for example, is if the punishment for cocaine dealing is draconian, for white people it'll be plea bargained down to time served and some probation for a small possession charge, but black people will get convicted and go to prison on a full trafficking and conspiracy charge, so the metric you're actually measuring is the racial ratio of coke dealers caught by the cops. Likewise what you're likely really measuring in the Asian countries is the ratio of border guards and cops who can be bought off and stay bought off. There may be some occasional extremely aggressive bribe negotiation situations, or a much disliked or distrusted courier is ratted out by his own guys (or an opposing group?). Another metric that's actually being measured is the local technologies and ratios of shipments; its quite possible that things in the USA are extremely personal with trunks full of stuff in personally owned vehicles but in Asia anonymous shipping containers in government owned and operated ports that don't legally exist are the primary source or maybe something even sneakier.
  - aminok 10y ago
libeclipse 10y ago
>During a prisoner’s final days, staff members keep the condemned person under 24-hour surveillance to, among other things, ensure that he doesn’t harm or kill himself, thus depriving the people of Oregon of the right to do the same.
tim333 10y ago
You could make a general case that the government shouldn't kill anyone unless it's obviously beneficial to do so. That would rule out capital punishment since imprisonment works ok, would allow for killing armed attackers in self defence and probably for assisted dying for the terminally ill. It gets more tricky with regime change and the like but you could make a case for opposing the Saddams and Assads financially rather than with bombs.
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manish_gill 10y ago
This is a strange article. The author glosses over the criminals charged with death penalty easily and goes into depth about his and his staff's personal experience and their moral burden/PTSD, the distress they might have felt. While that's a valid point of view, it completely sidesteps the core issue of why the author is advocating a change in his stance on the death penalty, or worse, it's the only reason for the change. Being an outsider, it's something I notice a lot in American media - a tendency by law officials (and soldiers) to lament about their suffering while not paying enough attention to the people who are the real figures of the tragedies (death penalty, victims of war). It also relates to the hero worship that I see in American culture (even online). Every soldier with a PTSD is made out to be a "poor fellow who needs help". The person who said "yes" to being comfortable in killing people telling his harrowing story about how difficult it was for his staff. Apologies in advance if the above comes across as too insensitive. Not sure what I'm trying to say here but just dumping my immediate thoughts.
- jonknee 10y ago
  > The author glosses over the criminals charged with death penalty easily and goes into depth about his and his staff's personal experience and their moral burden/PTSD, the distress they might have felt. I think that is pretty much expected with an article titled "What I Learned from Executing Two Men". > Being an outsider, it's something I notice a lot in American media - a tendency by law officials (and soldiers) to lament about their suffering while not paying enough attention to the people who are the real figures of the tragedies (death penalty, victims of war). But there is damage on both sides. No one disputes the suffering of those who are killed, but it's a fairly recent development to study the suffering of those on the other end. I think it should be studied so that we know what we're asking people to do (be it an executioner, soldier or first responder).
- icc97 10y ago
  I don't think that the article is trying to give a definitive answer, just his perspective on it.
agentgt 10y ago
The article sort of delved into this but there are some convicts that strangely find comfort in the future of being executed. In some ways I can understand this as the thought of being in American prisons for an extended period is rather terrifying. Michael Shermer examined this in a recent article in Scientific America [1]. I'm sad to say I don't have that many strong thoughts on the subject because as (some other commenters have posted) there are just so many other atrocities that far more concerning both quantitatively and qualitatively. [1]: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-death-row-inmates-speak-of-love/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-death-row-i...
- John23832 10y ago
  I don't think that they find comfort in it. I think it's more they can't stop the fact that they are going to die, and want some control over the process. So they take control of how they die, not whether they die or not. And that seems like comfort.
Ace17 10y ago
Do we actually have numbers that shows death penalty actually impacts criminality rates? Why put any emotional stuff (revenge, punishment, suffering) in the equation?
Splendor 10y ago
I'm curious about the intersection of two policies that each seem to be gaining momentum: 1) Discouraging the death penalty 2) Encouraging "end of life" options for the terminally ill Should an inmate serving life without parole have the option of voluntarily ending their own life?
retrogradeorbit 10y ago
Essential reading on this topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish The opening I will never forget. It is a detailed historical description of one of the last public executions in France for Regicide. A powerful opening to a very thought provoking book. It details the decline of capital punishment as the public began to see the punishment as worse than the crime, and the moving from the taking of life by the state (execution), to the taking of bodily freedom (imprisonment). From punishing the soul of the man, to merely punishing his body. After reading the book I became sure that this trend in the reform of punishment will continue and that it is inevitable that eventually capital punishment will disappear completely from the world.

203 points by pmcpinto 10y ago

mhb 10y ago

This article unfortunately conflates the value (or absence of value) of the death penalty with the unpleasantness involved with carrying it out. If the process were better would he still be opposed to it?

willvarfar 10y ago
> After much contemplation, I became convinced that, on a moral level, life was either hallowed or it wasn’t. And I wanted it to be. Also > I could not see that execution did anything to enhance public safety.
fauigerzigerk 10y ago
I'm not sure he really conflates the two things any more than necessary. The unpleasantness he describes is the result of moral doubts about killing a person who no longer poses a threat to anyone. What he does, in my view, is to suggest that these doubts are justified and society as a whole should have those doubts as well. In other words, he gives a human face to the agony that society should feel about this. He isn't saying, oh the death penalty is great, but it feels so bad to administer it for some reason, so let's save ourselves the trouble, shall we?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

arethuza 10y ago

The video "Hanging with Frank" covers the details of the process the UK used to use: https://vimeo.com/24804876 https://vimeo.com/24804876

homero 10y ago

While death penalty supporters suggest that capital punishment has the power of deterrence, a 2012 report by the National Research Council found that research “is not informative about whether capital punishment decreases, increases or has no effect on homicide rates.”

dforrestwilson1 10y ago
Put deterrence aside for a moment. Let's talk about the cost of keeping guilty murderers alive in prison for the remainder of their lives. Is it worth it?
- orkaa 10y ago
  You're pushing into a direction you might not like. Should we start executing people that aren't positively contributing to the society (disabled, sick..)? I think the decision between life and death shouldn't be made based on cost.
- smeyer 10y ago
  Are you talking about the financial cost? Due to the extra precautions around death row (including things like a more extensive appeals process and more security), it costs more to keep someone on death row and then execute them than it does to keep them in prison for life without parole. I'm not saying that this is the argument to use for abolishing the death penalty, but it's definitely not one for keeping it as it currently stands.
- generalk 10y ago
  > Is [keeping "guilty murderers alive in prison"] worth it? In many cases, guilt is not certain, only proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Lifetime imprisonment can be reversed if a mistake is realized, but death can't. Even given a hypothetical case where the evidence is so damning and guilt is fairly concrete, the execution of another human should be a punishment reserved for when we have no other option.
- tbcj 10y ago
  The cost wouldn't be substantially more than it is today if only because capital murder trials are rare occurrences these days, and its even rarer when the death penalty is given. Death row inmates stay on death row for a long time, so while its not effectively a life sentence, the state still has to keep them alive.
- TelmoMenezes 10y ago

benevol 10y ago

How can a society which calls itself "civilized" keep the death penalty? There's so much deeply disturbingly wrong with it that I don't even.

coldtea 10y ago
>How can a society which calls itself "civilized" keep the death penalty? Well, what you say doesn't necessarily has to match what you are. Hypocrisy is a thing -- and modern society is full of it.
onevoice 10y ago
How can a society which calls itself "civilized" allow murderers to stay alive for so long? There's so much deeply disturbingly wrong with it that I don't even.
- nxzero 10y ago
  Mistakes happen, killing people for killing just sends the message that killing is a solution. There is a long list of "murders" that were found not guilty after being executed: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_execution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_execution Beyond that, some confessed murders go on to contribute to society, for example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Burroughs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Burroughs Feel free to respond with your reasonings, though think in the end they'll fail to be reasonable.
  - onevoice 10y ago
    I suppose I should have clarified, my point was mostly that this kind of message isn't really an argument for anything. While it may look like it has more substance, Its simply saying "I don't like this". So it does not really contribute too much for the discussion, other than appealing to the emotions of the reader. Personally I am not particularly for or against capital punishment, because I don't think the subject is researched well enough. And seeing as this is morally a problematic subject with regards to human rights ETC. I don't really have too many hopes it would ever be properly studied.

abrookewood 10y ago

I can't even begin to imagine the anguish that taking another human's life in that manner would cause me.

vilda 10y ago

Does anybody have an opinion why not to use low pressure as a method killing [0]? All the failed executions by electrical chairs and administered chemicals makes me think about a safer and more human method. Just theoretical question, not advocating for anything. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUfF2MTnqAw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUfF2MTnqAw Edit: Typo

Gustomaximus 10y ago
I've thought the same. It seems like they want it to be cruel. There are clearly better options. even for lethal injection and the recent errors. Why not just morphine or heroin someone up. Rather than this paralyse then administrator more drugs that apparently hurt. There something creepy/evil about current methods.
Luc 10y ago
There's a great BBC documentary with Michael Portillo on how to most humanely execute a person: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband/tx/executions/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband... Hypoxia seems the most kind way. Low pressure is not needed, just a lack of oxygen (by e.g. breathing helium). I suppose it's not enough of a punishment to go out this way, as it's rather pleasant as these things go (there's no feeling of suffocation) and there can even be a mild euphoria.
dsacco 10y ago
I agree that the methodology could probably be improved. If we're optimizing for psychological comfort for the prisoner and certainty of the process working, I'd actually recommend a close-range shot to the head with a high caliber bullet. Depending on the distance and round, not only will the prisoner not experience their own death (they won't see or even hear it coming), it's astronomically unlikely to fail. High velocity rounds will pierce through the tissue more quickly than it can physically tear, and will technically exit the body before the brain matter has begun tearing. The physics of this is fascinating, because it not only ultimately destroys significant brain tissue; the process stretches out the tissue, straining and damaging the rest of the surviving brain tissue. Of course, this is not optimized to be clean. It's gruesome, but I don't think it's necessarily cruel. One moment they're alive, the next they're not. Blunt force is still the quickest way to induce a cessation of consciousness. If the prisoner were not aware of it happening, they would probably be at greater peace at the time of their death. This could also be done remotely so as to reduce the mental toll on the executioner. Unfortunately, it would make an open casket unlikely. But I imagine most prisoners due to be executed experience a lot of terror in the hours, days and weeks preceding their final moments under the current system. I imagine living with that anticipation is horrifying for some. From what I can understand through cursory research, morphine is a painless way to die, so much so that doctors use it to ease patients into death when there is an acceptable lack of available treatment. Extreme euphoria followed by unconsciousness doesn't sound like a bad way to do.

choko 10y ago

While it may not serve as a deterrent, in my opinion there are people that have performed actions so heinous and grizzly that they should not be allowed to live. The death penalty should be reserved for only the most depraved and irredeemable members of society. If you don't agree, how about an opposing viewpoint instead of downvotes?

sillysaurus3 10y ago
Many people have been proven innocent after they were on death row.
- choko 10y ago
  If there is any question of guilt, then the death penalty would not be an appropriate sentence. There are many examples where there is no question of guilt, where I feel the death penalty would be completely appropriate. Admitted serial killers for example. I'm not advocating a liberal use of the death sentence, but I still feel that there are cases where it's needed. If anyone doesn't agree, make an argument instead of downvoting. HN is better than that.
  - teddyh 10y ago
    > Admitted serial killers for example. Like this man? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sture_Bergwall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sture_Bergwall
    - choko 10y ago
      "With no eyewitnesses or technical forensic evidence to connect him to the crimes..." So no, not like that at all.
      - teddyh 10y ago
        He was at one point convicted of eight murders, and had confessed to more than 20 more. Who, if not that man, would you nominate for a death penalty? Or is a conviction not a conviction?

SFJulie 10y ago

Misery is a very well used form of slow painful execution, why do people wish to use more flashy forms that are counterproductive in keeping our systems so perfect? The poor needs to fear the wealthy in order to not disrupt a perfect society that have proven being an example of progress, humanitarian values and eco-friendly system.

jokoon 10y ago

I wonder what happens if a death row inmate keeps yelling and fighting. Do they sedate him? That would be a deterrent for those officers, having to handle inmates who won't consent to their own death.

marcoperaza 10y ago

On a purely moral level, I think capital punishment for murderers and traitors is absolutely justified. You, who have stolen a man's most precious possession, his life, shall not enjoy the rest of your own. You, who have betrayed our nation and our security, will never again enjoy our protection. But in its practicalities, the chance for wrongful conviction, the cost to society, the anguish it causes the executioners, and the potential for abuse, I see many good reasons for abolition.

pilsetnieks 10y ago
> You, who have betrayed your nation and its security, will never again enjoy its protection. Which can also be accomplished by exile instead of killing.
- adrianN 10y ago
  The world ran out of Australias to send people to.
  - majewsky 10y ago
    That might be an interesting venue for space travel. Gather a bunch of convicts sentenced to exile, put them in a space ship where they can sustain themselves for the rest of their life [1], and send the ship onto a locked course into outer space. [1] At least in theory. In practice, a society of convicts will likely not hold up very long.
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  Retribution is a legitimate end of justice. Aside from the practical impossibility of exile as punishment in the modern world, I don't think exile fits the gravity of the crime of treason.
- deleted 10y ago
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harrybarry 10y ago
> I think capital punishment for murderers and traitors is absolutely justified The set of murderers is not identical to the set of those convicted of murder. Not are they not the same size, many of the elements in the latter are not in the former set.

sickbeard 10y ago

But the average citizen might find himself looking at the death row prisoner in the eye when the said prisoner is doing the killing.

Pigo 10y ago
Or maybe it's their 10 year old son who's lured away by some maniac, abused and killed. It's a complicated issue, and really easy to talk about how revenge doesn't solve anything from a great distance. I could see the absence of a death penalty putting me in a situation where I would end up taking the law into my own hands. Not that I think that's okay, but I could very much see it happening in that situation.
- saiya-jin 10y ago
  there is 7 billion people on earth, and number is growing fast. rather than focusing on preserving quantity at all costs, which is not an issue anyway, we should focus on quality (character, added value to mankind etc.). With this reasoning, killing a murdered of your own child (or any similar case, ie parents/loved one) isn't that much of a stretch. Extreme situations call for extreme solutions
  - lorenzhs 10y ago
    It's a small step from what you're proposing to euthanizing "unwanted" or "unproductive" parts of the population. Are you sure you want to go down that path?
    - saiya-jin 10y ago
      my point was only concerning the case above - somebody intentionally, even brutally kills someone closest to you. I never suggested scaling it up to anyone else, liked or not, from where did you get that?
      - lorenzhs 10y ago

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saalweachter 10y ago

The difficulty with trying to argue down the death penalty is that you end up arguing on so many levels. This article mentions the dollars and cents expense of the death penalty; this is an empirical fact, either it is cheaper to execute someone or cheaper to imprison them. This article mentions the ineffectiveness in protecting society; this is also an empirical question, although it is harder to measure than the monetary cost. Finally, the article speaks of the emotional and moral cost to those employed to carry out the execution. But the article only devotes a single sentence to the core of the argument, at the very beginning: the author has come to believe that life is either hallowed or not, and he prefers to believe that it is always hallow, and killing always wrong. This is the core of the problem. Some people believe killing is always wrong. Some people believe justice requires the execution of those convicted of a capital crime. Heck, sometimes these contradictory beliefs are held by the same person. All the other arguments don't matter. If killing is always wrong, you pay the cost of life imprisonment and don't execute people to save money. If justice requires a life for a life, you don't scrimp on that, either. You pay whatever monetary, emotional, and moral costs are necessary for justice to be done.

rayiner 10y ago
This is an excellent point, and I think much of the same principles apply to the abortion debate a well.
- deleted 10y ago
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- fsloth 10y ago
  Not really. People will always get abortions and in some cases really need them. No-one forces the government to execute people.
  - akavi 10y ago
    Would you be ok with permitting murder on the basis "people will always do it."? Because if you take the arguments of pro-life advocates on good faith, that's what you're saying. You can't make your case against position by ignoring the underlying reasons people hold it.

freerobby 10y ago

It's nice to see a statement of regret, but it really bothers me how rarely those who feel this way do anything about it while in positions of power. This Warden claims to have felt it wrong in the moment, yet he did not make the faintest of sacrifices to oppose it. It would be much more influential for a well-regarded Warden to publicly oppose or resign over such policies, than to obey them blindly and issue a mea culpa years later when he no longer has influence. Read the passage below, and consider the lack of courage required to kill someone in a way you feel is pointless at best, and morally heinous at worst, because it's your "job." How many extra years of capital punishment will we have, how many extra prisoners killed, because people in his position took too long to speak up? > Regardless of their crimes, the fact that I was now to be personally involved in their executions forced me into a deeper reckoning with my feelings about capital punishment. After much contemplation, I became convinced that, on a moral level, life was either hallowed or it wasn’t. And I wanted it to be. > I could not see that execution did anything to enhance public safety. While death penalty supporters suggest that capital punishment has the power of deterrence, a 2012 report by the National Research Council found that research “is not informative about whether capital punishment decreases, increases or has no effect on homicide rates.” > I now believed that capital punishment was a dismal failure as a policy, but I was still expected to do my job. So I met with my staff and explained my position. I made it known that anyone who felt similarly opposed could back out of our assignment. According to state policy, assisting in the executions was voluntary for everyone but the superintendent. And yet each of those asked to serve chose to stay to ensure that the job was done professionally.

overcyn 10y ago
I disagree that it is so cut and dry. Does publicly opposing a̶n̶d̶ or resigning prevent those deaths from occurring? Should all of the staff involved be morally obligated to hand in their resignation or publicly oppose as well? What of the other prisoners under his custody that he may feel responsibility for? Quitting or publicly opposing may be the most conspicuous way of opposing the death penalty, but people need to be able to choose their battles.
- freerobby 10y ago

jordache 10y ago

on the subject of deterrence, if the author argues that the death penalty is not a deterrence, how does he explain the relatively low levels of drug crimes in asian countries where death penalty is more heavily used? It appears to me the death penalty, while used as a potential punishment threat in the U.S, is actually a sparsely applied. Criminals know that, so its deterrence factor is effectively diminished

RockyMcNuts 10y ago
The US has the death penalty, they have the death penalty, why would one conclude that the death penalty is what makes the difference? even if a country with a harsh penalty for drugs has less drug crime, other confounding factors have to be looked at, like a large potential market for illegal drugs, a large population with no better means of making a living. I would expect that a draconian death penalty may be some deterrent but it may not be the best policy, either.
VLM 10y ago
You may be confusing the metric of convictions with the metric of activity (proxy for deterrence) The way it works in the USA for example, is if the punishment for cocaine dealing is draconian, for white people it'll be plea bargained down to time served and some probation for a small possession charge, but black people will get convicted and go to prison on a full trafficking and conspiracy charge, so the metric you're actually measuring is the racial ratio of coke dealers caught by the cops. Likewise what you're likely really measuring in the Asian countries is the ratio of border guards and cops who can be bought off and stay bought off. There may be some occasional extremely aggressive bribe negotiation situations, or a much disliked or distrusted courier is ratted out by his own guys (or an opposing group?). Another metric that's actually being measured is the local technologies and ratios of shipments; its quite possible that things in the USA are extremely personal with trunks full of stuff in personally owned vehicles but in Asia anonymous shipping containers in government owned and operated ports that don't legally exist are the primary source or maybe something even sneakier.
- aminok 10y ago

libeclipse 10y ago

>During a prisoner’s final days, staff members keep the condemned person under 24-hour surveillance to, among other things, ensure that he doesn’t harm or kill himself, thus depriving the people of Oregon of the right to do the same.

tim333 10y ago

You could make a general case that the government shouldn't kill anyone unless it's obviously beneficial to do so. That would rule out capital punishment since imprisonment works ok, would allow for killing armed attackers in self defence and probably for assisted dying for the terminally ill. It gets more tricky with regime change and the like but you could make a case for opposing the Saddams and Assads financially rather than with bombs.

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manish_gill 10y ago

This is a strange article. The author glosses over the criminals charged with death penalty easily and goes into depth about his and his staff's personal experience and their moral burden/PTSD, the distress they might have felt. While that's a valid point of view, it completely sidesteps the core issue of why the author is advocating a change in his stance on the death penalty, or worse, it's the only reason for the change. Being an outsider, it's something I notice a lot in American media - a tendency by law officials (and soldiers) to lament about their suffering while not paying enough attention to the people who are the real figures of the tragedies (death penalty, victims of war). It also relates to the hero worship that I see in American culture (even online). Every soldier with a PTSD is made out to be a "poor fellow who needs help". The person who said "yes" to being comfortable in killing people telling his harrowing story about how difficult it was for his staff. Apologies in advance if the above comes across as too insensitive. Not sure what I'm trying to say here but just dumping my immediate thoughts.

jonknee 10y ago
> The author glosses over the criminals charged with death penalty easily and goes into depth about his and his staff's personal experience and their moral burden/PTSD, the distress they might have felt. I think that is pretty much expected with an article titled "What I Learned from Executing Two Men". > Being an outsider, it's something I notice a lot in American media - a tendency by law officials (and soldiers) to lament about their suffering while not paying enough attention to the people who are the real figures of the tragedies (death penalty, victims of war). But there is damage on both sides. No one disputes the suffering of those who are killed, but it's a fairly recent development to study the suffering of those on the other end. I think it should be studied so that we know what we're asking people to do (be it an executioner, soldier or first responder).
icc97 10y ago
I don't think that the article is trying to give a definitive answer, just his perspective on it.

agentgt 10y ago

The article sort of delved into this but there are some convicts that strangely find comfort in the future of being executed. In some ways I can understand this as the thought of being in American prisons for an extended period is rather terrifying. Michael Shermer examined this in a recent article in Scientific America [1]. I'm sad to say I don't have that many strong thoughts on the subject because as (some other commenters have posted) there are just so many other atrocities that far more concerning both quantitatively and qualitatively. [1]: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-death-row-inmates-speak-of-love/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-death-row-i...

John23832 10y ago
I don't think that they find comfort in it. I think it's more they can't stop the fact that they are going to die, and want some control over the process. So they take control of how they die, not whether they die or not. And that seems like comfort.

Ace17 10y ago

Do we actually have numbers that shows death penalty actually impacts criminality rates? Why put any emotional stuff (revenge, punishment, suffering) in the equation?

Splendor 10y ago

I'm curious about the intersection of two policies that each seem to be gaining momentum: 1) Discouraging the death penalty 2) Encouraging "end of life" options for the terminally ill Should an inmate serving life without parole have the option of voluntarily ending their own life?

retrogradeorbit 10y ago

Essential reading on this topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish The opening I will never forget. It is a detailed historical description of one of the last public executions in France for Regicide. A powerful opening to a very thought provoking book. It details the decline of capital punishment as the public began to see the punishment as worse than the crime, and the moving from the taking of life by the state (execution), to the taking of bodily freedom (imprisonment). From punishing the soul of the man, to merely punishing his body. After reading the book I became sure that this trend in the reform of punishment will continue and that it is inevitable that eventually capital punishment will disappear completely from the world.