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Notes -
The people in charge of things have no training in traditional philosophy or morality, so it’s no surprise that they have botched the whole notion of a good execution.
Any method in which an inmate can fight against their execution and save themselves some seconds of life is going to be more dreadful than otherwise. This is obvious. This should be obvious. The feeling of dread from the slow experience of death and the knowledge that you can temporarily avoid it from, say, holding your breath, increases the torment manifold. We’ve known this forever, which is why the the worst criminals were crucified, and why the civilized method of execution back when we were enlightened was a quick hanging (death by breaking neck actually) or a quick beheading. These executions were done with dignity, relatively soon after their crime. Some dumb modernite had the bright idea that a prisoner deserves execution but also deserves to be kept in prison for years, allowed or made to continually gamble his life through the process of appealing his sentence to the courts. Horrible.
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