Poll of the Day > US Federal Government to resume capital punishment after nearly 20-year hiatus.

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/25/745223284/federal-government-to-resume-capital-punishment-after-nearly-20-year-hiatus

The U.S. government is poised to carry out the death penalty for the first time in nearly two decades, the Justice Department announced Thursday.

U.S. Attorney General William Barr has instructed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to change the federal execution protocol to include capital punishment, the Justice Department said.

Barr also asked the prisons bureau to schedule the executions of five inmates who were found guilty of murder. According to the DOJ, the victims in each case included children and the elderly. In some of the cases, the convicted murderers also tortured and raped their victims.

"The Justice Department upholds the rule of law and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system," Barr said in a statement.

The federal execution protocol had previously utilized a three-drug cocktail; the DOJ says that it will now use just one drug, pentobarbital.

The first of the federal executions is scheduled to take place on Dec. 9. Daniel Lewis Lee was found guilty of murdering three members of a family, including an eight-year-old child. According to the DOJ, Lee is a member of a white supremacist group, and he was convicted by a jury at a federal court in Arkansas in 1999.

In the past 10 years, at least five states New Mexico, Illinois, Connecticut, Maryland and New Hampshire have abolished the death penalty, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. And in March, California Gov. Gavin Newsom put an executive moratorium on his state's death penalty.

In two more states Washington and Delaware courts recently ruled that their capital punishment laws are unconstitutional.

Truly disgusting

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WastelandCowboy posted...

the DOJ says that it will now use just one drug, pentobarbital.

Ah, is that the replacement for Thiopental?

When the producer refuses to sell something to you for ethical reasons, that is the moment you should really think about what you were actually doing.
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apparently, dying from a lethal injection is horrifying and not even remotely peaceful
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Nearly 20 years? I know Tookie Williams was executed 14 years ago. Is this at the federal level and not the state level? Because I mean here are the people who have been executed this year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offenders_executed_in_the_United_States_in_2019
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I_Always_Die posted...

apparently, dying from a lethal injection is horrifying and not even remotely peaceful

Then they don't get off lightly, good.
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Miroku_of_Nite1 posted...

Nearly 20 years? I know Tookie Williams was executed 14 years ago. Is this at the federal level and not the state level? Because I mean here are the people who have been executed this year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offenders_executed_in_the_United_States_in_2019

It's in the article, these are federal executions

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Kyuubi, your 8th Amendment exists for a reason.
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Kyuubi4269 posted...

I_Always_Die posted...

apparently, dying from a lethal injection is horrifying and not even remotely peaceful

Then they don't get off lightly, good.

8th amendment dawg. You are a disgusting excuse of a man.
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But what if the person being executed is later to be found innocent? Congratulations! You just killed an innocent man!

blibber1 posted...

But what if the person being executed is later to be found innocent? Congratulations! You just killed an innocent man!

In a most horrific way and made the people that care about them live with that memory.
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I think capital punishment is a terrible idea, if for no other reason than the extreme cost, in some states over 10 times the cost of life imprisonment.

But playing the Advocatus Diaboli, there are much more humane ways of executing a person. Inert gas asphyxiation will render a person unconscious after only a few breaths and death will occur within a few minutes. Any biologically inert gas will work: nitrogen, argon, helium, methane, neon, sulfur hexafluoride, etc. Nitrogen is probably the best choice due to its low cost and high availability. Breathing pure nitrogen does not trigger the hypercapnic alarm response in humans, and most people who have been accidentally exposed to an oxygen-depleted environment never knew what hit them.

Here's a fun read about the Hazards of Nitrogen Asphyxiation: https://web.archive.org/web/20070203150950/http://www.csb.gov/safety_publications/docs/SB-Nitrogen-6-11-03.pdf
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Doctor Foxx posted...

Truly disgusting

Not used to not having things go your way?
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blibber1 posted...

But what if the person being executed is later to be found innocent? Congratulations! You just killed an innocent man!

Executing an innocent person should be punished with death
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Haven't the Feds given out like a dozen death sentences in recent years? Have they not been carried out or are in appeals or something?

Doctor Foxx posted...

Truly disgusting

This. Ain't no place for the death penalty in supposedly first-world nation.
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Miroku_of_Nite1 posted...

Is this at the federal level and not the state level?

Federal is the second word in the topic title.
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Mead posted...

blibber1 posted...

But what if the person being executed is later to be found innocent? Congratulations! You just killed an innocent man!

Executing an innocent person should be punished with death

The state arrogates to itself the power and the prerogative to kill innocent people all the time. It's called war.

Wipe out hundreds of innocent people at long range with sophisticated weaponry, and it'll largely earn a shrug of indifference. Execute a guilty individual up close and personal in a ritualized manner, and the "Save Our Poor Murderers!" mobs will start gibbering about barbarism. Morality as a question of distance and technology.
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Firewerx posted...

Mead posted...

blibber1 posted...

But what if the person being executed is later to be found innocent? Congratulations! You just killed an innocent man!

Executing an innocent person should be punished with death

The state arrogates to itself the power and the prerogative to kill innocent people all the time. It's called war.

Wipe out hundreds of innocent people at long range with sophisticated weaponry, and it'll largely earn a shrug of indifference. Execute a guilty individual up close and personal in a ritualized manner, and the "Save Our Poor Murderers!" mobs will start gibbering about barbarism. Morality as a question of distance and technology.

r/im14andthisisdeep
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Mead posted...

Firewerx posted...

Mead posted...

blibber1 posted...

But what if the person being executed is later to be found innocent? Congratulations! You just killed an innocent man!

Executing an innocent person should be punished with death

The state arrogates to itself the power and the prerogative to kill innocent people all the time. It's called war.

Wipe out hundreds of innocent people at long range with sophisticated weaponry, and it'll largely earn a shrug of indifference. Execute a guilty individual up close and personal in a ritualized manner, and the "Save Our Poor Murderers!" mobs will start gibbering about barbarism. Morality as a question of distance and technology.

r/im14andthisisdeep

You may not have noticed, but there very definitely hasn't been a 20-year hiatus on the US federal government killing innocent people. Yet as soon as murderers find themselves on the business end of a state killing, suddenly the credentials of the US as a civilized nation are deemed to be hanging in the balance. Save the candelight vigils for people who deserve pity.
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I mean, if the purpose of prison is rehabilitation, and an inmate shows no remorse or signs of being able to be rehabilitated, then what's the point of keeping them?
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Firewerx posted...

Wipe out hundreds of innocent people at long range with sophisticated weaponry, and it'll largely earn a shrug of indifference.

There recently was that US Soldier that used his position as a Sniper to be his serial killer self, that did not think his actions were wrong.

He was still recognized as a murderer.
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Mead posted...

blibber1 posted...

But what if the person being executed is later to be found innocent? Congratulations! You just killed an innocent man!

Executing an innocent person should be punished with death

But what if it turned out he was innocent of the execution? Does his executioner get executioned?

Firewerx posted...

The state arrogates to itself the power and the prerogative to kill innocent people all the time. It's called war.

Wipe out hundreds of innocent people at long range with sophisticated weaponry, and it'll largely earn a shrug of indifference. Execute a guilty individual up close and personal in a ritualized manner, and the "Save Our Poor Murderers!" mobs will start gibbering about barbarism. Morality as a question of distance and technology.

idk, people were kinda mad that time Obama executed an entire wedding procession with a drone. Granted, they were less annoyed that time he killed a guy because he was the same height as Osama bin Laden. Not to mention that there are thousands of large protests against war non-stop so even your basic argument is fundamentally wrong and absolutely moronic.

Firewerx posted...

You may not have noticed, but there very definitely hasn't been a 20-year hiatus on the US federal government killing innocent people.

In theory, there's been an unlimited hiatus on the US federal government killing innocent people.

Zareth posted...

I mean, if the purpose of prison is rehabilitation, and an inmate shows no remorse or signs of being able to be rehabilitated, then what's the point of keeping them?

The death penalty is frequently applied to remorseful people. More importantly, murder -- the crime most frequently associated with the death penalty -- has the lowest recidivism rate so, out of all the crimes, that's the MOST likely to be rehabilitated. Something like sex offenders have an abyssmally low rehab rate, unless the offender chooses something like chemical castration.
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Zareth posted...

I mean, if the purpose of prison is rehabilitation, and an inmate shows no remorse or signs of being able to be rehabilitated, then what's the point of keeping them?

Alas, the American penal system is primarily interested in punishment, not rehabilitation. And with for-profit prisons becoming more common, rehabilitation hurts the bottom line. The US spends over $75 billion a year on incarceration and less than 1% of that total goes to prevention and treatment. The recidivism rate in the US is 83% over 9 years!

In comparison with the US, in India prisoners can receive free university courses, with some earning master degrees. Prisoners in Poland can earn minimum wage while working in prison, in the US most working prisoners make less than $1 an hour. Italian and Brazilian prisoners can reduce their sentences by reading books.

But Norway has the best system by far. It is based on the principle of normalization. Prisoners there have personal mini-fridges, TVs, private bathrooms, shared kitchen and living areas to create a sense of family, and they wear normal clothing. They receive free education, job training, and therapy. Prison guards are required to complete 3 years of training. As a result, Norway has the lowest recidivism rate in the entire world at less than 30%.
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Doctor Foxx posted...

Truly disgusting