Varied Death Penalty Methods

How would it be possible for the USA to have as many possible execution methods as possible and for them to be used regularly? So, maybe a mix of hanging, gas chamber, lethal injection, firing squad etc? How would it come about?
 
Each of them would have to be seen as "quick and humane" at this point.

I actually consider the death penalty to be a lighter punishment than, per se, long-term solitary confinement. Makes yourself a living wreck and you do nothing but go insane.
 
How would it be possible for the USA to have as many possible execution methods as possible and for them to be used regularly? So, maybe a mix of hanging, gas chamber, lethal injection, firing squad etc? How would it come about?

Otl, essentially. All these methods are on the books in one state or another, although lethal injection seems to dominate these days.
 
I meant so that maybe not just one dominates. Also, are the others used regularly?

Ummm... ok, they arent used regularly, i'll admit. Otoh, certain states, like texas conduct most of the executions in the us. I think maybe 13 dont do any, and several do very few.

Since some of the variation is by state, maybe getting more states executing regularly might help?

Or if a certain category of prisoner asks for a specific method? Gangers ask for the chair, mafiosi ask for hanging, say.

Maybe more military executions, which might be more likely to use a firing squad?
 
No 8th amendment, or at least a different wording of the "no cruel and unusual punishments" clause (perhaps "excessive punishments" instead).

That clause and the cultural norms related to it have limited death penalty methods to traditional methods with an established history of continuous use in Anglo-American society (hanging, firing squads) and new methods specifically devised to be more humane than traditional methods (electrocution, gas chamber, lethal injection). It's also in recent years been pushing the abandonment of less-humane established methods in favor of lethal injection alone.
 

katchen

Banned
Katchen

Because of a) the resistance of the medical profession and pharmaceutical industry to licensing drugs to be used in lethal injections and b) less resistance to the idea of organ donation by condemned criminals so that lives taken can lead to other lives saved, I coud easily see a shift to a humane device that sends a captive bolt into the base of the condemned skull to destroy the condemned's thalamus. Once the thalamus is destroyed, the condemned is effectively brain dead and the rest of the body can be kept on life support and taken to a medical center where the organs and then tissues can be harvested.. the controversy will arise when this is done involuntarily, thus vindicating the Chinese employment of the practice.
 
Because of a) the resistance of the medical profession and pharmaceutical industry to licensing drugs to be used in lethal injections and b) less resistance to the idea of organ donation by condemned criminals so that lives taken can lead to other lives saved, I coud easily see a shift to a humane device that sends a captive bolt into the base of the condemned skull to destroy the condemned's thalamus. Once the thalamus is destroyed, the condemned is effectively brain dead and the rest of the body can be kept on life support and taken to a medical center where the organs and then tissues can be harvested.. the controversy will arise when this is done involuntarily, thus vindicating the Chinese employment of the practice.

That could be interesting. And then once the body is essentially stripped for parts, the brain-dead prisoner can be injected without concern the poison cocktail is causing them extreme pain without them being able to show it.
 
Top