[Mobius]

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/22/us/tennessee-executions/

Editor's note: CNN's original series "Death Row Stories" explores America's capital punishment system at 9 p.m. ET/PT Sundays, beginning July 13. Join the conversation about the death penalty at facebook.com/cnn or Twitter @CNNorigSeries using #DeathRowStories.
(CNN) -- As controversies over lethal injection drugs surge, Tennessee has found a way around the issue: It is bringing back the electric chair.
Eight states authorize electrocution as a method of execution but only at the inmate's discretion.
Now Tennessee is the first state to make use of the electric chair mandatory when lethal injection drugs are unavailable.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam signed the measure into law Thursday.
"This is unusual and might be both cruel and unusual punishment," said Richard Dieter, president of the Death Penalty Information Center.
 The death penalty in America Lethal Injection: The process
Related story: No more complex lethal cocktails, say experts
"No state says what Tennessee says. This is forcing the inmate to use electrocution," according to Dieter, who believes "the inmate would have an automatic Eighth Amendment challenge."
The amendment protects against cruel and unusual punishment.
"The electric chair is clearly a brutal alternative," Dieter said.
Related story: Botched injection stirs debate
Controversy over lethal injections has been brewing in recent years after European manufacturers, including the Denmark-based manufacturer of pentobarbital, banned U.S. prisons from using their drugs in executions.
In April, a botched lethal injection in Oklahoma catapulted the issue back into the international spotlight. It was the state's first time using a new, three-drug cocktail for an execution. Execution witnesses said convicted murderer and rapist Clayton Lockett convulsed and writhed on the execution gurney and struggled to speak, before officials blocked the witnesses' view. Lockett died 43 minutes after being administered the first drug, CNN affiliate KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City reported.
Earlier this year, a convicted murderer and rapist in Ohio, Dennis McGuire, appeared to gasp and convulse for at least 10 minutes before dying from the drug cocktail used in his execution.
In 2009, the U.S.-based manufacturer of sodium thiopental, a drug also commonly used in executions, stopped making the painkiller.
Many states have scrambled to find products from overseas or have used American-based compounding pharmacies to create substitutes.
This month, a group of criminal justice experts recommended that federal and state governments move to a single lethal drug for executions instead of complex cocktails that can be botched.
The controversy over legal injection drugs raises the question of when a case will arise to test the new law.
The last death penalty by electrocution in Tennessee was that of Daryl Holton in 2007.
Holton -- a convicted murderer who killed his three young sons and his ex-wife's daughter -- elected to be killed by the electric chair.
Before Holton's execution, Tennessee had not used the electric chair in 47 years.

Seriously TN, what's wrong with you? I have been there last year, it's not a bad place afterall. 

Also note how the speakers tend to put an emphasis on the fact that Tennessee is a southern state.

[Nuke]

me personally id strap em to the table and torture them to death with a cnc torture machine. you can program it to miss all the arteries and internal organs and stuff, to prolong the pain of the person being executed.

[Lorric]

cnc torture machine.

I dare not Google...

[Mobius]

These things make the euthanasia coaster look like the height of mankind's morality.

[Dragon]

Consider what lethal injection has shown to do with people, this does seem like a good decision, though. People are finally realizing it's one of the least humane ways of execution. I don't think they'll break out guillotines anytime soon (by far the most humane and fail-proof, if a bit gross, execution method invented...), but this does look like a step in the right direction, considering everything. I recall hanging being an option somewhere in the US (wasn't Hussein executed like that, 10 or so years ago?), that would be good, too, though it's easier to botch than the guillotine.

[Bobboau]

http://onion.com/1nkGatt

[Lorric]

Consider what lethal injection has shown to do with people, this does seem like a good decision, though. People are finally realizing it's one of the least humane ways of execution. I don't think they'll break out guillotines anytime soon (by far the most humane and fail-proof, if a bit gross, execution method invented...), but this does look like a step in the right direction, considering everything. I recall hanging being an option somewhere in the US (wasn't Hussein executed like that, 10 or so years ago?), that would be good, too, though it's easier to botch than the guillotine.

I wonder if it would be best to use anaesthetic to put the victim to sleep then just suffocate them?

[Phantom Hoover]

thread deja vu detected

[Dragon]

I wonder if it would be best to use anaesthetic to put the victim to sleep then just suffocate them?

Lethal injection is supposed to feature something like this, but it seems that it's not that simple for some reason. It's odd that despite this being a surgical routine, it's for some reason not used for executions. Maybe it cannot. Really, if you want a "humane" way of executing criminals, go with decapitation. That's 100% sure to work the first time, causes no (or very little) pain and it's been perfected a long time ago. With chemicals and even with electricity, you can never be sure if the criminal really doesn't suffer.

[InsaneBaron]

Consider what lethal injection has shown to do with people, this does seem like a good decision, though. People are finally realizing it's one of the least humane ways of execution. I don't think they'll break out guillotines anytime soon (by far the most humane and fail-proof, if a bit gross, execution method invented...), but this does look like a step in the right direction, considering everything. I recall hanging being an option somewhere in the US (wasn't Hussein executed like that, 10 or so years ago?), that would be good, too, though it's easier to botch than the guillotine.

The problem being that the Guillotine looks brutal, and as a result people are reluctant to prescribe it (plus bad associations with the Reign of Terror). It's easier to please voters with a method that doesn't spill a lot of blood, even if it actually is more painful to the convict.

But still, I agree that the electric chair is at least an improvement.

[InsaneBaron]

Consider what lethal injection has shown to do with people, this does seem like a good decision, though. People are finally realizing it's one of the least humane ways of execution. I don't think they'll break out guillotines anytime soon (by far the most humane and fail-proof, if a bit gross, execution method invented...), but this does look like a step in the right direction, considering everything. I recall hanging being an option somewhere in the US (wasn't Hussein executed like that, 10 or so years ago?), that would be good, too, though it's easier to botch than the guillotine.

I wonder if it would be best to use anaesthetic to put the victim to sleep then just suffocate them?

Sounds good on paper, but might be too easy to botch.

[Phantom Hoover]

inert gas asphyxia is pretty much impossible to botch and completely humane. death penalty advocates oppose this because they secretly do just want to get off on their lust for brutal murder

[InsaneBaron]

inert gas asphyxia is pretty much impossible to botch and completely humane. death penalty advocates oppose this because they secretly do just want to get off on their lust for brutal murder

I... think there are more reasons than that for the death penalty. But if it is, in fact, painless and reliable (my knowledge on the topic isn't advanced enough for me to know either way) I'd say it's reasonable. On the face of it it sounds risky to me, especially when there are simpler options out there.

But lethal injection... Every time anyone brings up lethal injection I think of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S9ptM2LHSw

[MP-Ryan]

I'll just leave this here.

[Dragon]

Yeah, that's what I was talking about. Mostly lethal injections, a good number of electrocutions, a few asphyxiations. In short, terrible way to die. As I said, hanging or decapitation would be best, unless we actually want criminals to suffer (in which case we should stop saying we don't). A modern hanging is a clean, quick death by breaking the neck with little chance of failure. Though if the rope is too short, you do risk a "hemp fandango", but that's easily avoided by always erring on the side of longer rope (the worst you get in that case is an equally painless, if gross decapitation). And as I said in the other thread, I know of exactly one case of a guillotine failing to kill on the first try, and this guy (Luis IVX) was a). incredibly fat b). so hated that they didn't exactly mind him suffering. A modern, perhaps powered guillotine would be the least painful, more reliable execution method in existence.

[Bobboau]

hydraulic piston through the head, or that bolt thing they use on cows.

[Scotty]

I'll just leave this here.

While a good deal of those are really horrifying and mostly the executioners' fault for botching, at least one of them wasn't:

5. March 13, 1985. Texas. Stephen Peter Morin. Lethal Injection. Because of Morin's history of drug abuse, the execution technicians were forced to probe both of Morin's arms and one of his legs with needles for nearly 45 minutes before they found a suitable vein.[7]

Note: that's not an excuse, or an advocacy one way or the other, just that the executioners' aren't exactly at fault for this guy having ****ty veins.

[Dragon]

That's not about the executioners (in most cases, it's not their fault that something doesn't work), but about the method that has painful failure modes. The point is to chose one that couldn't screw up (for whatever reason), or that is very hard to screw up. Criminals have all sort of problems with bodies, starting from obesity (excessive body mass can really mess with lethal injection), drug abuse, various medical conditions and so on. You need to really know a lot about the guy in order to properly conduct the execution with one of the more elaborate methods. By contrast, hanging requires only to know a person's weight (by far the easiest parameter to measure) and decapitation or firing squad don't require even that. The less variables, the less failure modes and, consequently, less chance for failure (in most cases, that is). That's why I advocate simple, proven methods and not fooling around with needlessly elaborate (and painful) schemes.

Also, I just thought that a sort of mechanized, high-caliber "firing squad" could also be a good method, though it'd probably run into same issues as decapitation. If you put the guns on a stand (as human executioner can miss), make them of high enough caliber (say, 10mm Barret) and aim them at the head or heart with computer, the guy executed shouldn't feel a thing, either. Firing squad is a legal (pretty good in itself, if seldom used) option in US, though I don't think they'd approve that kind of modification. I recall hearing about a guy who actually explicitly chose it over lethal injection, so there might be some merit in this reasoning (it might've been to prove a political point, though, I don't remember).

[InsaneBaron]

That's not about the executioners (in most cases, it's not their fault that something doesn't work), but about the method that has painful failure modes. The point is to chose one that couldn't screw up (for whatever reason), or that is very hard to screw up. Criminals have all sort of problems with bodies, starting from obesity (excessive body mass can really mess with lethal injection), drug abuse, various medical conditions and so on. You need to really know a lot about the guy in order to properly conduct the execution with one of the more elaborate methods. By contrast, hanging requires only to know a person's weight (by far the easiest parameter to measure) and decapitation or firing squad don't require even that. The less variables, the less failure modes and, consequently, less chance for failure (in most cases, that is). That's why I advocate simple, proven methods and not fooling around with needlessly elaborate (and painful) schemes.

Also, I just thought that a sort of mechanized, high-caliber "firing squad" could also be a good method, though it'd probably run into same issues as decapitation. If you put the guns on a stand (as human executioner can miss), make them of high enough caliber (say, 10mm Barret) and aim them at the head or heart with computer, the guy executed shouldn't feel a thing, either. Firing squad is a legal (pretty good in itself, if seldom used) option in US, though I don't think they'd approve that kind of modification. I recall hearing about a guy who actually explicitly chose it over lethal injection, so there might be some merit in this reasoning (it might've been to prove a political point, though, I don't remember).

Political point or no, I think anyone in their right mind would choose the firing squad.

[General Battuta]

Actually a more reliable method would be to bombard the area with Hellfire missiles from a loitering remote platform. This would allow us to carry out executions without a lot of on-the-ground infrastructure. We could use statistical models to predict who needed to be executed and cut out the lengthy and expensive judicial process.

(the American death penalty is a ****ty system that does not work in any respect, even the most basic, and coming up with laughably elaborate mechanical systems to execute people in flashy cool ways will not solve any of its real problems)