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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.
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 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.
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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