alternatehistory.com

Apologies for anybody who is offended by a somewhat gruesome WI (stop reading now if you are easily offended or a sensitive type)...

One of the principal objections to the death penalty (yes I know there are many others as well, such as innocent victims, how it reflects on society to kill even a murderer, etc.) is that the victim takes time to die, and feels pain.

Long drop hanging, electrocution, gas chamber, lethal injection were all justified as being more humane ways to kill a prisoner, but each draw backs, and some can take considerable amounts of time and pain to kill the victim, especially if they are poorly implemented.

What about squishing being introduced as a humane method of execution? (perhaps initially in the US? in says the early 20th or late 19th century?)

The victim, lies on a perfectly flat steel plate.

Another very heavy flat steel plate, is raised above them, and dropped down with great force from a great height.

By the time it hits the victim it is travelling in excess of 200 km/h (about 56 metres per second) -- or faster if you prefer.

It passes through the victim like a knife through butter, almost instantly crushing them to a pulp (at 56 meters per sound, a 30cm thick body would be crushed in 1/200th of a second - probably not even time for pain nerve impluses of pain to reach the brain).

This method of execution might perhaps initially introduced as a humane method of execution by an American industrialist and steel mill owner (who gets the idea after watching a steel mills in operation), and who has a side interest in criminal justice.

It gets adopted in one or two US states only (those where the industrialist owns steel mills?)

By the 1960s however anti-death penalty movement is growing. The pain inflicted is not such an issue in the campaign - but barbarity, wrong executions of innocent, etc., are key planks in the opposition.

In the early 70s, the Supreme court rules that methods of execution that inflict pain are "cruel and unusual" punishment, and banned by the US Constitution. Banned methods including shooting, hanging, gas chamber, lethal injection and the electric chair.

In response, more states adopt squishing as a method of execution.

Some death penalty opponents argue that squishing is especially barbaric, since it allows the infliction of the death penalty, without feeling guilt for causing pain during death.

In the mid 70s, the Supreme court narrowily rules that the Constitutional right to privacy, includes a right to bodily integrity, even after death, and bans squishing... this ruling eventually is over-turned, and squishing is reintroduced.

In the EU, the death penalty is eventually abolished. Opposition to extraditing death-penalty prisoners to the US is based on the amount of time they spend on death row (as in OTL), and the perceived barbarity of squishing.


Thoughts? Comments?
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