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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26736 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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As someone who has been opposed to the death penalty for a long time, I can assure you that people opposed to the death penalty aren't making any arguments that are overly concerned with the specific method. The usual case is that proponents try to sanitize the process as much as possible to avoid bad PR. Capital punishment is a much easier sell if it looks more like putting down a dog rather than a violent, public action. Opponents simply point out that these methods aren't as "humane" as their proponents like to make it seem. I don't know of anyone who has ever argued that they'd be in favor of capital punishment if only we could eliminate the suffering involved. To the contrary, I and several of my friends of the same disposition are of the opinion that if we're going to have capital punishment we should stop pussyfooting around and just do it. Firing squad and hanging are still viable methods of execution in the US, but the authorities in places like Alabama that like to thump their chests about capital punishment are too squeamish to actually implement them, and instead turn to half-assed measures like nitrogen hypoxia in a vain attempt to make people think that the business of killing someone against his will is a perfectly cromulent practice.

I remember back in the 90s Phil Donahue or some other left-leaning talk-show host wanting to show an execution on television in the hopes that it would end public support for capital punishment. I also remember, a few years later, news reports that public opinion for the practice dipped to an all-time low following the heavily publicized execution of Timothy McVeigh (before shooting back up after 9/11). If all of these southern governors so adamant about the necessity of the death penalty are serious, they should have no problem 1.) Using execution by firing squad, 2.) Personally attending an execution, and 3.) Either showing it on TV or livestreaming it. The fact that this is the one part of the penal system that's kept under wraps says a lot. PRisons have no problem bringing in TV crews for reality shows and allowing access to various do-gooders who want to help prisoners. Fines are pretty self-explanatory. Community service is done within the community, and even the oft-criticized "forced labor" of chan gangs is usually done right along a public highway. But when it comes to executions, they don't want to even record the process let alone broadcast it, and we rely on descriptions from a select group of journalists and other witnesses to even know what happens. All I ask is that if death penalty proponents are serious, they stop half-assing the process and let people see it. Public executions were the norm throughout most of human history, and I haven't heard any compelling reasons why, if we're going to keep the death penalty, we have to hide it from the public.

Public executions were the norm throughout most of human history, and I haven't heard any compelling reasons why, if we're going to keep the death penalty, we have to hide it from the public.

This is usually justified by death penalty proponents as giving privacy to a dying man as the only mercy available. The punishment is death, it isn't suffering, it isn't humiliation.

On an additional practical note, public executions in this day and age would be attended by dueling sets of activists and maintaining security can present a potential problem. In the 19th century it was also noted that public executions were sometimes used by deranged condemned to put on a spectacle.

I think deranged it a bit much. Part o& the reason for a public execution is the lack of mass media that is widespread enough to get the message out as the state needs it out there.

The message would be essentially three things: person is found guilty of a crime, the state is able to catch try, and punish people, and the state has decided that the crime is serious enough that a harsh sentence is warranted. In our era, coverage of the crime is pretty solid, and at the time of trial, most of the details are known. You know they’ve been arrested, you hear about the crime, and you hear the sentence. There’s really no need to publicly execute the person on top of that because we have news to tell us. Go back 150 years or more and it might take time to get news to all of the surrounding communities that someone had committed a crime worthy of death. Go back 250 years and getting the same news out gets harder still. But people would gather for the execution and of course talk about it (and the more of a spectacle you make, the better) which makes a public execution a way to leverage a sort of virality to make sure that people don’t do the kinds of crimes that get them executed.

All I ask is that if death penalty proponents are serious, they stop half-assing the process and let people see it.

Once again: this isn't because of proponents. It's because of opponents. This is a constant issue with death penalty arguments. Someone claims that the fact that we don't do X means that we are ashamed of the death penalty. No, "we" don't do X because if we did, the activists who don't like the death penalty regardless of what we do would raise a stink about it. I'd be fine with public executions. But there would be campaigns and boycotts and blacklisting by people who don't really think non-public executions are any better than public ones, but who will do anything they can to make the death penalty harder.

Why aren't executions public? Activists. Why don't we just hang or shoot them? Activists. Why do we make it look medical? Activists. Why do we care so much about making it painless? Activists. Don't blame proponents for any of it.

On this topic, I really smell a meme of, "Just fucking tell me how I'm allowed to execute people." The unfortunate thing for @Rov_Scam is that, even if he is personally willing to tell you how he'll let you execute people, he doesn't speak for all of the other folks who are against whatever variations of capital punishment. And of course, there are some folks who are just against it in general and will jump back and forth between arguments willy-nilly.

I think the proponents of capital punishment would easily be able to rally their ranks around any particular method of execution that was Officially (TM) deemed acceptable by opponents. I don't think any plurality of opponents can be formed to credibly commit to finding any particular method of execution acceptable.

Public executions were the norm throughout most of human history, and I haven't heard any compelling reasons why, if we're going to keep the death penalty, we have to hide it from the public.

Sentiment turned against public executions through scenes like the one Charles Dickens describes from the hanging of Frederick and Maria Manning:

Devonshire Terrace,

Tuesday, Thirteenth November, 1849

Sir,

I was a witness of the execution at Horsemonger Lane this morning. I went there with the intention of observing the crowd gathered to behold it, and I had excellent opportunities of doing so, at intervals all through the night, and continuously from daybreak until after the spectacle was over. I do not address you on the subject with any intention of discussing the abstract question of capital punishment, or any of the arguments of its opponents or advocates. I simply wish to turn this dreadful experience to some account for the general good, by taking the readiest and most public means of adverting to an intimation given by Sir G. Grey in the last session of Parliament, that the Government might be induced to give its support to a measure making the infliction of capital punishment a private solemnity within the prison walls (with such guarantees for the last sentence of the law being inexorably and surely administered as should be satisfactory to the public at large), and of most earnestly beseeching Sir G. Grey, as a solemn duty which he owes to society, and a responsibility which he cannot for ever put away, to originate such a legislative change himself. I believe that a sight so inconceivably awful as the wickedness and levity of the immense crowd collected at that execution this morning could be imagined by no man, and could be presented in no heathen land under the sun. The horrors of the gibbet and of the crime which brought the wretched murderers to it faded in my mind before the atrocious bearing, looks, and language of the assembled spectators. When I came upon the scene at midnight, the shrillness of the cries and howls that were raised from time to time, denoting that they came from a concourse of boys and girls already assembled in the best places, made my blood run cold. As the night went on, screeching, and laughing, and yelling in strong chorus of parodies on negro melodies, with substitutions of “Mrs. Manning” for “Susannah” and the like, were added to these. When the day dawned, thieves, low prostitutes, ruffians, and vagabonds of every kind, flocked on to the ground, with every variety of offensive and foul behaviour. Fightings, faintings, whistlings, imitations of Punch, brutal jokes, tumultuous demonstrations of indecent delight when swooning women were dragged out of the crowd by the police, with their dresses disordered, gave a new zest to the general entertainment. When the sun rose brightly— as it did— it gilded thousands upon thousands of upturned faces, so inexpressibly odious in their brutal mirth or callousness, that a man had cause to feel ashamed of the shape he wore, and to shrink from himself, as fashioned in the image of the Devil. When the two miserable creatures who attracted all this ghastly sight about them were turned quivering into the air, there was no more emotion, no more pity, no more thought that two immortal souls had gone to judgement, no more restraint in any of the previous obscenities, than if the name of Christ had never been heard in this world, and there were no belief among men but that they perished like the beasts.

I have seen, habitually, some of the worst sources of general contamination and corruption in this country, and I think there are not many phases of London life that could surprise me. I am solemnly convinced that nothing that ingenuity could devise to be done in this city, in the same compass of time, could work such ruin as one public execution, and I stand astounded and appalled by the wickedness it exhibits. I do not believe that any community can prosper where such a scene of horror and demoralization as was enacted this morning outside Horsemonger Lane Gaol is presented at the very doors of good citizens, and is passed by, unknown or forgotten. And when in our prayers and thanksgivings for the season we are humbly expressing before God our desire to remove the moral evils of the land, I would ask your readers to consider whether it is not a time to think of this one, and to root it out.

I am, Sir, your faithful Servant.
Charles Dickens

You can say that this is all just stupid sentimentality and why shouldn't treat executions as public entertainment (if the Coliseum was good enough for the Romans, it's good enough for us!) And indeed, if our society has become coarsened enough, why not? But I think having public executions will be a battleground for two sets:

(1) Anti-capital punishment, who will want to show the degrading and inhumane activity and get it banned. (2) Pro-capital punishment, who are purely about vengeance and would have no problem watching someone dangling from a botched hanging and slowly strangling to death for minutes at a time.

Though I can understand the family members of victims wanting "yes, he should suffer torture and slow death the same way he inflicted it on my loved one", I think a lot of people who think they're tough enough to watch an execution and simply laugh at it might change their minds when faced with the reality. I don't think it is beneficial to society in the long run to coarsen our citizens to the extent that public torture is "eh, the last Saw movie was better, gorier, more enjoyable".

(I'm anti-capital punishment and anti-abortion, if anyone needs to know my positions here).

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