[Dragon]

However, until we reach the point where it can be abolished (and that point is certainly reachable), moving from more painful to less painful methods is at least a step in the right direction.

It really isn't, IMHO. Making the death penalty more acceptable doesn't make it more efficient, or more effective. Why change it, when the only effective change is to abolish it completely? Why not skip the intermediate steps and move directly to the abolishing? Or is the desire for dead criminals too strong, the need to sacrifice people on the altar of some imagined justice too pressing to do so?

Because it's less of a change. A move to abolish death penalty won't pass, simple as that. That's democracy for you, death penalty is expensive, but people want it, so it's gonna stay. However, the exact method used is easier to change, and there are multiple ones to chose from already, depending on the state. Not to mention having been tried already (and used quite recently), both electric chair and firing squad are not in "unknown" category, unlike a world without death penalty. Large changes are, in general, hard to cause in democracy, as it naturally tends towards status quo, whatever that is. People in general (and especially politicians) are hard to convince to change something that "always was like that". You either need gradual changes that individually would not be considered a big deal, or a crisis that would destroy status quo anyway, and make people more open to drastic changes (well, that, or an armed insurrection. But that's very unlikely to work in a developed country).

[The E]

The change between "We will execute people" and "We will not execute people" is never going to be not drastic, even if the method of execution has been changed to "hugged to death by kittens".

[Dragon]

Exactly. Which is why it's unlikely we'll ever see it. Or at least, unless there appears a politician with both great charisma, balls and economic knowledge that would enable him to go and make that change. So yeah. Unlikely. There is no demand to get rid of death penalty, so unless the democracy is suddenly restricted to smart and educated (one does not ensure the other, mind you...) people, it's plain simply not happening anytime soon. The least we can do is make criminals not suffer during the execution, which can and should be done.

[InsaneBaron]

I'll put it this way: I'm not opposed to executing a criminal IF the crime is severe, AND the guilt is definite, AND the method is humane. The problem is, the US system doesn't live up to said criteria, and abolishing the system is more feasible than completely solving all its problems. However, in the meantime, making the punishments less painful is at least an improvement.

[Dragon]

Well, you can slowly work your way up to fixing this. Abolishing death penalty would be impossible under current political climate (read "common people don't want it to be abolished, and this being democracy, if won't"). However, if you effectively restricted it's use to situations where the murderer/rapist was caught red-handed (in a "grabbed by the police with the knife still in victim's back" way) so that there's no doubt he did what he's accused of, this would be much easier to implement. It could be done gradually, by increasingly restricting situation in which death penalty might be used, or by piling up requirements, not to mention changes would be high-level legalese, which an average person won't understand and complain about. Also, in the end, death penalty would be effectively abolished, since it's very rare to actually grab a criminal by the hand like that.

[Mars]

I swear every time they parade some type of criminal around on CNN in the break-room at my Target, someone different says the old "why do they need a trial, we should just kill him" line. In my experience, the death penalty is disturbingly popular. And the data supports this http://www.gallup.com/poll/1606/death-penalty.aspx

[Phantom Hoover]

The change between "We will execute people" and "We will not execute people" is never going to be not drastic, even if the method of execution has been changed to "hugged to death by kittens".

Not really, the death penalty is usually formally abolished long after it's abolished for practical purposes: there are normally a few weird crimes left on the books which can sanction it.

[Dragon]

Not so much weird as so grave that it kind of makes sense to leave it on the books. From what I've gathered, those are usually "crimes against the state" such as assassinating the president, high treason, stealing state secrets, spying, stuff like that. Generally, stuff you don't see outside of wartime scenarios. In case of spies and traitors, especially, it actually makes a lot of sense to at least be able to execute them - whoever they work for probably can and sometimes will attempt a rescue operation if they're captured. But those are incredibly rare cases that are generally irrelevant in peacetime. IIRC, this was the case with death penalty in Norway. It was introduced pretty much to kill off Vidkun Quisling and a bunch of his associates. Seeing as the guy gave us a synonym for "traitor" in form of his last name, it's one of the cases that definitely warranted a death penalty.

[The E]

There is no treason in peacetime. There are no secrets the state is entitled to keep or protect with lethal force.

[Dragon]

Which is exactly what I said. Those are wartime crimes, or near-wartime ones (since you don't need to be officially at war for those to happen, c.f. Cold War) which need to be on the books nonetheless. The recent events in Ukraine should be a reminder of the fact war can happen anywhere, in spite of what we think. And military secrets can, should and are protected with lethal force, though in most situations it's applied on-site by the military in question. Remember, in case of an armed conflict, soldiers' lives depend on those secrets being secret. In some cases, more than soldiers, as is the case with anything pertaining launching and arming of nuclear weapons (you don't take any chances with these. Period).

[zookeeper]

Remember, in case of an armed conflict, soldiers' lives depend on those secrets being secret.

Right... some soldiers' lives depend on those secrets being secret, and some soldiers' lives depend on those secrets not being secret.

[Phantom Hoover]

There is no treason in peacetime.

This is just flat-out wrong.

[Dragon]

Depends on how you define peacetime (and if you assume he meant "high treason", because "regular" treason always exists). If you use the narrowest definition (as in, no hostilities, potential or otherwise, anywhere, at all), then you could argue that. However, it's hard to achieve this kind of peace. From western EU's POV, for example you could probably argue that they are at this kind of peace. Their neighbors are friendly and they're not at odds with any country to the point it could threaten national security. From Poland's POV, you could not, relations with Russia are too strained and it is potentially endangered. US also has quite a few enemies, and it can hardly be said "there's no treason" now. An information stolen and traded off to one of many anti-US countries could have devastating effects. There's no treason in peacetime, but it's no peacetime right now, either.

Note that I was speaking in general terms in my previous post. The situation now actually falls in "near-wartime" category, just like Cold War did. The situation in Ukraine is ugly, Middle East is still stirred up, and North Korea isn't sleeping, either. It's easy to preach about morality, state affair transparency and value of human life from a cozy seat in peaceful Germany, but sometimes, extreme situations can happen, and there better be proper legislation for it, so that the government doesn't end up running like headless chickens when it hits the fan... Or at least, so that there can be someone that doesn't.

[General Battuta]

Ratholing down on edge cases where the death penalty might be some kind of tactical imperative (it still probably isn't, though it might be expedient) is as pointless as ratholing on elaborate execution techniques. Most capital punishments are a result of civil lawbreaking and that's where the heart of the matter lies.

[Dragon]

Yeah, but once you define cases where death penalty is needed, you can then move towards narrowing it's scope to those cases only. This can be done gradually and in such a way that the general populace doesn't make a racket about it. "Abolish death penalty" bill would be a big change and would not pass. A series of small "Make death penalty not applicable/too much of a chore in x case" bills over a few years has a chance of cutting down the number of executions significantly enough to drive the upkeep down. Switching to firing squad by the way also makes sense because a). it's relatively painless and already a legal method. b). it requires no upkeep like other methods. Since the military has rifles and sandbags in abundance, and gunmen are easy to come by, you don't need to keep any hardware specifically meant for executions, which could ease the transition, somewhat too. As opposed to lethal injection, since drugs go out of production and have to be replaced, and even the electric chair needs to be maintained and kept around for as long as the punishment is on the books.

[General Battuta]

You just made a bunch of falsifiable statements about your model of political reality, and I'm pretty sure the real world has already falsified a number of them. Eighteen American states have abolished the death penalty through 'the general populace' 'making a racket' (because that is how democracy functions). If you think that cutting DOWN the number of executions would reduce costs you don't understand death row or, for that matter, the economics of systems: more executions would be the way to cut costs.

I hypothesize that you are fond of firing squads because you think they're cool. People interested in elective euthanasia have, through the brilliance of self-interest, discovered a lot of painless, cheap, efficient ways to die that don't require a bunch of poor bastards to look a man in the eye and shoot him to death, a process so traumatic that firing squads are specially configured to allow members to pretend that someone else fired the killing bullet.

The military itself, which certainly has riflemen in abundance, does not permit firing squads for executions.

[Phantom Hoover]

Ratholing down on edge cases where the death penalty might be some kind of tactical imperative (it still probably isn't, though it might be expedient) is as pointless as ratholing on elaborate execution techniques. Most capital punishments are a result of civil lawbreaking and that's where the heart of the matter lies.

Yeah, this was what I was trying to say. The death penalty is 'abolished' in the public consciousness basically when murder stops being a capital crime; it's not some absolute matter of whether or not the state is ever allowed to execute people.

[Bobboau]

well if the problem is you don't want to put an innocent man through the torment of having to kill someone, we do have an abundance of people who have already gone through that, other death row inmates, we could use them to administer the death penalty. and to motivate them not to just sit there and do nothing so when their time comes the same might happens we could institute a policy of one of the two being executed is sufficient, so like two men enter, one man leaves type of a situation. and to help offset costs we could sell tickets and pay-per-view. yeah, I'm really finding this line of thinking to just keep getting better and better.

[Phantom Hoover]

humane version: two men are sent into an inert atmosphere with one oxygen mask

[Dragon]

I hypothesize that you are fond of firing squads because you think they're cool. People interested in elective euthanasia have, through the brilliance of self-interest, discovered a lot of painless, cheap, efficient ways to die that don't require a bunch of poor bastards to look a man in the eye and shoot him to death, a process so traumatic that firing squads are specially configured to allow members to pretend that someone else fired the killing bullet.

Just who do you take me for? Could you be more subtle about your insults next time? Because your hypothesis is horribly wrong and insulting. Firing squad is by no means "cool". No. To clarify, anyone who thinks that is either childish or a sick bastard. It's simply the most practical, least painful way that doesn't involve an elaborate, fail-prone setup. I'd take hanging or guillotine over firing squad any day, but there seems to be a problem with that, whereas firing squad is, IIRC, still permitted in some states, albeit as an emergency measure. Certainly more likely than dusting off the ol' gallows, or introducing a whole new, modern method. As for trauma involved in serving on a firing squad, you answered your own question. There are methods for that. In case you didn't see it, I mentioned that drastic changes are hard to make. My reasoning was aimed to realize the required change (limiting/improving death penalty) by making the least amount of changes possible, and also avoid flak from the populace who might disagree with the general idea.

You just made a bunch of falsifiable statements about your model of political reality, and I'm pretty sure the real world has already falsified a number of them. Eighteen American states have abolished the death penalty through 'the general populace' 'making a racket' (because that is how democracy functions).

Yes. That's also exactly why other states didn't abolish it. Democracy is only good if you're with the majority. There are major differences between Tennessee and, say, New York. Now, in New York, people might be against death penalty, so it's relatively simple to abolish there. No such luck in Tennessee, where if you want to get rid of this (very uneconomic) punishment, you'd have to either change the populace's mind (good luck with that), or somehow go against the general sentiment, which is very hard to do.

The economy of such solution might indeed by a problem, but it could also be turned to work towards the goal of abolishing death penalty. If, as you said, execution costs will grow when the execution number decreases, if you steadily decrease it, you will, one day, get to a point where you can start wielding the cost as a much more effective debating point than it is now. With that, you might have an easier time convincing people that abolishing death penalty is a good idea, in fact.