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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2788 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 12, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Any reason why we don't use laughing gas for executions? All you need it hermetically sealed chamber, throw the convicted inside, throw couple of whipping cream cannisters - like two or three gallons. Open them remotely. And it is anesthetic. Easy to procure and cheap.

Gas chambers got a bad rep. Also it's clownish and unbefitting.

More seriously, executions aren't complicated. It's pre-bronze age social technology. There's nothing in practical terms that makes it difficult or costly, it's a political and social construct to make them slow and expensive. Other people have different social constructs.

See what they do in Taiwan:

Executions are carried out by shooting using a handgun aimed at the heart from the back, or aimed at the brain stem under the ear if the prisoner had consented to organ donation prior to the withdrawal of legal death row organ donation.[27] The execution time used to be 5:00 a.m., but was changed to 9:00 p.m. in 1995 to reduce officials' workload. It was changed again to 7:30 p.m. in 2010.[28] Executions are performed in secret: nobody is informed beforehand, including the condemned. The condemned is brought to the execution range and the officers may pay respect to the statue of Ksitigarbha located outside the range before entering. Before the execution, the prisoner's identity is confirmed by a special court next to the execution range and chooses to record any last words. The prisoner is then brought to the execution range and served a last meal (which usually includes a bottle of kaoliang wine).[28] The condemned prisoner is then injected with strong anaesthetic to cause unconsciousness, laid flat on the ground, face down, and shot. The executioner then burns a votive bank note for the deceased before carrying away the corpse.[28] It is tradition for the condemned to place a NT$500 or 1000 banknote in his leg irons as a tip for the executioners.[28]

I was so disbelieving I checked the wikipedia source, apparently they really do tip the executioner (specifically the guys who take the shackles off the body after the shooting).

This is extremely based, although I maintain my preference for public executions for at least the more heinous class of crimes.

Hlynka-watch. Multi-agent environment.

There are at least two other relevant players exerting agency here. First is the group of folks who are simply opposed to any sort of death penalty on principle. One strategy they've taken is, instead of letting the argument be directly about the principle of the death penalty, focusing everyone into arguing about methods of execution. That you are even asking this question is a testament to their success on this goal.

Now, once they've gotten the focus onto methods of execution, they can focus on any extreme outliers. If there's even a 0.01% chance that someone will have an adverse reaction to something in some way, feel any anxiety or pain above the typical level, they latch onto it. They treat it like it's "possibly" the rule rather than the exception. They don't ever directly claim that it is such; they just say that perhaps sometimes things go poorly and hope the reader imagines statistics that aren't really plausible. See also arguments about unarmed black men being killed by police, abortion due to rape, or the focus on complications in the operating room preventing medical providers from providing prices.

The other relevant players are the executees. They don't want to die; this is only human. If they are aware that it is coming, they likely will have some amount of anxiety or negative psychological affect, and this may naturally lead them to struggle in any way possible in what may or may not be a vain hope that someone will make it stop.

Now back to the folks who are against the death penalty in principle. It takes no effort at all for them to interpret any outward sign of struggle as pain or whathaveyou. When Alabama used nitrogen hypoxia, a method that is used in Canada for doctor-assisted suicide specifically because it is so gentle, peaceful, and low risk1, you saw it all on display. An executee didn't want to die and knew he was going to die, so he struggled. Onlookers who don't like the death penalty can interpret that as something going wrong, pain, or whatever. So they write about how terrible it was and how everything must have gone so wrong compared to what they expected.

So unless you can win the argument of, "Yes, people may choose to struggle against their execution, even when there is no pain being imposed, and everyone just has to accept that and shut up about it," this is the problem that pro-death-penalty people have to solve. Unfortunately, the typical solutions to that are actually pretty ugly. See also ISIS, who would perform many mock executions that they wouldn't go through with, so that the executees would simply lose the will to put up a struggle every time, and hopefully they wouldn't realize which one was the real one in time to turn it back on. (Also heavy drugs; they definitely used heavy drugs which wouldn't be acceptable in the US.)

There are other ways to get around this, modifying your own protocol. Put someone in a room where you control the air content. They can even know that this is "the death room". Maybe they'll jump around and scream and put on a show, but your task would be to be able to clearly demonstrate to observers that during that time, they are absolutely receiving 100% pure, regular air, so that it is only a show, not any sort of 'execution gone wrong'. Then, when they've given up or maybe even gone to sleep or something, you turn on invisible, odorless gas, letting people observe that nothing wildly obviously painful occurred. Even if you did this, it is almost assured that the anti-death-penalty people would yet again move the goalposts, saying that it's not about the pain, it's about the psychological effects of however long they're in the room before they die, knowing that they're going to die in that room. There will always be a new set of goalposts and always a new impossible 'problem' that one has to solve.

It really is one of those, "JUST FUCKING TELL US HOW WE'RE ALLOWED TO EXECUTE PEOPLE." In a bizarro but hilarious world, the "King" would round up all of the most ardent opponents, lock them in a room, and say, "You're not allowed to come out until you tell us which method is the best method according to you. 'No method' is not an answer."

1 - You can see an example of the typical affects of hypoxia here. People report feeling perfectly fine and capable. My understanding is that even after the event, if you ask them to reflect on it, they think that everything was just fine and that they were perfectly fine; it's only when they go back and look at their own video that they're like, "WOW! I had no idea that it affected me like that!"

I personally am opposed to death penalty, except maybe in very exceptional circumstances like Nazi war criminals (where the process is kinda outside regular judicial system anyway) - but the situation right now is indeed ridiculous. That said, if I weren't - I would wonder why anybody needs to be able to observe the execution at all. I mean, I realize for example the victims may derive some feeling of closure from it, but I think if they want the guy (it'll be a guy, only one woman had been executed since 1953 in the US) dead, then they'd prefer that done unseen rather than not done at all. And, for better or worse, something that is not on TV (or now youtube) is something pretty much nobody cares about. I mean, horrible things may happen in prisons, but they are mostly undocumented, so people ignore it or make jokes about it (prison rape is one of the favorite targets). Not that I am endorsing any of it or am happy about it, but looking objectively it'd probably make it easier for people to accept.

Somebody has to confirm the process happened as intended- the law was followed, the person(and the right person) actually died, etc.

That happens anyway - prison medics confirm the death, prison guards ensure it goes as planned, etc. I am talking about involvement of people who aren't prison personnel that deals with the technology of it.

Are you suggesting that surviving relatives of a murder victim are legally required to view the murderer's execution? Because I would be surprised if that were the case. If you're simply questioning why these people would be granted the choice to view an execution, I think you've answered that by suggesting the right to be granted "closure," or, if not that, a sense of finality, or justice served--something they can see with their own eyes.

I think you've answered that by suggesting the right to be granted "closure,"

It's not a "right". At least not in any of the existing legal frameworks on the West. There are other frameworks where the kin of the victim had various rights as to prosecuting the murderer - from wergeld to vendetta, but in our Western tradition there's no "rights" with regard to that. It may be a custom, but customs can be changed. If the criminal is sentenced to prison, the victims do not get 24/7 video feed to his prison cell to enjoy his suffering, and do not get to control any details of his imprisonment except possibly in the parole hearing, so there's nothing that demands that this specific custom should be followed forever. I think for the proponents of the capital punishment it is an own goal to insist on keeping this custom.

In an bizarro but hilarious world, the "King" would round up all of the most ardent opponents, lock them in a room, and say, "You're not allowed to come out until you tell us which method is the best method according to you. 'No method' is not an answer."

After the words “round up” I thought this was going somewhere else, along the lines “You all will be executed by the method you yourself choose. The most voted for method gets adopted as the official standard.” Maybe pardon the subgroup who voted for the winning method? Need to game-theory this.

This will immediately be classified as a cruel and unusual punishment.

I can imagine a failure mode in that they could all discuss amongst themselves and agree to vote unanimously in favor of a painless method that creates gruesome results, in order to further discredit death penalty.

I'd say tell them that half of the people rounded up will be executed by the top method and the other half with the runner up. Do the executions one at a time, forcing the whole group to watch, alternating methods. After each two execution, have every one vote which one seemed to be the best, telling them that if either method gets a clear lead over the other (over 2/3 votes after at least 3 rounds / 6 executions), then everyone will get executed all at once with that method. Once that clear lead criteria is achieved, pardon everyone left.

The usual answer is that it’s easy to kill people cheaply and humanely in all sorts of ways, but most people don’t want to sell stuff for the purposes of executing people and the ones who are willing to get boycotted.

It's this.

Anesthesiologists know exactly how to kill someone reasonably cheaply and in a painless and not distressing way, it's why they have such a high suicide rate.

But finding people to sell the stuff required (and getting requisite professional staff to assist) is hard.

Then you add on the "finger on the trigger" problem (who wants to be the specific person who killed someone on purpose? Nobody you want doing it).

All this adds up to the weird dance we have.

In Utah, the condemned is offered the choice of execution methods(from a small number). All of them choose the firing squad, and firing squad executions are carried out by four volunteers from the police force, one of whom shoots a blank.

This seems like a way around both of these problems.

Huh. That's fascinating.

I wonder behind the psychology of that - wanting to stare death in the eyes?

Mormonism requires the shedding of blood to atone for murder; I’m doubting that these death row convicts were practicing Mormons prior to conviction, but we can probably expect the condemned to engage in religious bet hedging.

ah, makes sense

What are the other methods?

Lethal injection authorized by law, probably hanging on a technicality. It's worth noting that executions in Utah are very infrequent, due to a low crime rate.

Then you add on the "finger on the trigger" problem (who wants to be the specific person who killed someone on purpose? Nobody you want doing it).

This specifically has a known solution, though: you take a citizen draft of say, 10 people, and you set things up so that they all have to take an action (pressing a button for example). Only one of the buttons actually works and it’s random every time.

It’s how they used to do firing squads: most of the rifles are loaded with blanks so nobody knows who the real killer is.

you take a citizen draft of say, 10 people, and you set things up so that they all have to take an action

Why not make the jury that condemned the person do this?

I’m (perhaps incorrectly) recalling a story of how they used to do it in Utah. I imagine because they want juries to deliver the correct verdict without worrying about having to carry out the execution.

Got it reversed- firing squads have one blank among several rifles.

Right, I think it works well for firing squads but as soon as you have ten people pushing buttons and only one of them work.....it just kind of looks stupid. Since the whole issue here is optics I'm not sure how to make that shake out.

Aesthetic reasons? Executions are srs bsns: it'd be undignified, and maybe a bit grotesque to carry them out with laughing gas.

Agreed. I favour long-drop hanging or firing squads (I would also include the guillotine, except that it's French) on the basis that they kill cleanly and reliably, avoid excessive pain, and make abundantly clear that what we are seeing is authorised violence, which it is.

Capital punishment is not a medical procedure and you shouldn't make it look like one. Capital punishment sometimes is a show, but it shouldn't be optimised for entertainment value.

Capital punishment is not a medical procedure and you shouldn't make it look like one.

Why not? When guillotine was invented, execution of the enemies of the state was a public spectacle that was explicitly designed to terrify and intimidate the population (and, to some measure, entertain it, with the idea that however bad you've got it, at least it's better than that guy). I think the government has since improved to a point where it has much more widespread and efficient methods to terrify and intimidate the population, and does not limit itself to the worst of the worst of the criminals anymore. So there's no point in spectacle, why not get rid of it and get to the end point of it with minimal amount of hassle?

I said this last time, but the main reason for executions requiring injuries "incompatible with life" delivered while conscious is to prove to the observers that a) it's really him, and b) he's really dead.
That's why even when hanging breaks the neck they wait ten+ minutes for the heartbeat to stop, then leave him a bit longer until everyone goes "yeah, he's not coming back from that."

I also suspect it's why beheading was a thing for the nobility. No conspiracy theories about how he paid the executioner to fake his death when you hold the head up afterwards.

a) it's really him, and b) he's really dead.

A body can be easily identified using DNA test. And the death can be established by any half-competent medic. If the victims are suspicious, they can get their own medic to check the body. Neither requires contemporaneous observation by any third party.

No conspiracy theories about how he paid the executioner to fake his death when you hold the head up afterwards.

Sure, it was tougher when you couldn't establish the identity easily. Any random asshole could declare himself miraculously rescued king X, and create a lot of mess. But now we can identify people. It's a solved problem.

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