I was listening to a story on NPR this morning about how a lawmaker in Florida wants to take away lethal injection as an option for death-row inmates: They would instead decide between the electric chair and a firing squad. That got me thinking about which one I would choose.

Please participate in this Slog Poll, and explain the reasoning for your choice in comments: Love drama? Hate needles? Chair too creepy?

For the record: I am against the death penalty.

34 replies on “Death-Penalty Shenanigans”

  5. Firing squad because @3, and also it just seems more dignified. The electric chair is extra-barbaric. Needles, I don’t love, and it’s such a crappy passive death.

    Obviously none of the above would exist in a non-crappy society.

  6. Firing squad. I want people to have to know and cope with the fact that they just killed a person. A final, psychological, “fuck you.”

  7. Actually firing squad is by far the least painful of all of these methods, since, by modern methods you get ~5 rifle bullets to the head at the same time. That kills you instantly.

    The chair and lethal injection: not so quick or painless, they just look cleaner.

  8. They’d never catch me, but the other posters have convinced me of the wisdom of the firing squad. Especially if it meant I could have a final cigarette. (After 15 years not smoking I have no desire to start up, but if it I was going to die in a minute I’d want a fucking cigarette.)

  12. I was outside Point of the Mountain in Utah when Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad decades ago, so here is some detail:

    One of the rifles is shooting a blank so the squad can have some psychcological comfort (but there are literally hundreds of volunteers so this doesn’t seem to be a problem – they use citizens, not state employees). The target is on the chest, not the head. Mormons believe in “blood atonement” which is why the firing squd is still used in Utah. They always get a very tight pattern with the bullets – no one flinches.

  13. Firing Squad, for sure.

    But the way it works is – I believe – there are five prison guards with rifles. Four are loaded with real bullets, while one is loaded with a blank, and the guards don’t know which is which.

    So you would never know whether you had fired or not. Which makes it worse, I think.

  14. What was that death in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, where the guy is chased off a cliff by a pack of topless women? I want that one.

    (Full Disclosure: I’m gay, so my comment wasn’t meant to be nearly as misogynistic as it appears at first glance.)

  15. Dorothy Parker’s view on method:
    Resume’

    Razors pain you;
    Rivers are damp;
    Acids stain you;
    And drugs cause cramp.
    Guns aren’t lawful;
    Nooses give;
    Gas smells awful;
    You might as well live.

  18. @17: not quite. First you are paralyzed (but not put to sleep) so the observers have no idea whether the poison they inject into you while you’re still awake but unable to move or make a sound is actually excrutiatingly painful or not.

    If anybody chooses anything other than firing squad in this poll, they obviously haven’t thought it through.

    And who came up with the electric chair? Pure barbarism somehow dressed up as a more “humane” way of execution.

  21. @14 there’s nothing misogynistic about boobs
    celebrating sexuality is not misogyny

    now, being a penis hater and being chased off a cliff by a penis might be construed as misandry

    errr.. do you hate boobs?

  25. My law:”Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.”[1](I.K.)

  31. I’m a straight woman, I love boobs. Not my own so much. 3 children later, 3+ years total of breastfeeding–my rack is not so much racklike. But I sure do enjoy looking at other women’s boobs.

    And boobs= much better than topic than how would you choose to die.

  32. Lethal injection is a shitty way to go anyway …. bullet to the brain is the least painful. Though hanging (if done correctly) would be another good way.

  33. Discussions of execution methods are part of the problem just as discussions of foolproof convictions are a fool’s errand. Making these things error-free or painless is totally beside the point.

    Abolish the death penalty. There is no humane way to murder someone.

  34. Hanging. Rope is cheap and economical and hey, if you use real hemp, it’s also environmentally friendly. And if we wanted it to be really humane we could just lock murderers and rapists in a window-less jail 6’X6′ cell for their entire lives with a noose hanging from the ceiling and let them self-execute (or not). We’d save a fortune in appeals.

Comments are closed.