My paper is going to be on personal choices and utopia. Specifically, I'm questioning whether or not society has the right to kill an individual for the good of the community. Here is a list of the current execution methods used in the world today. This list did not find a home in my paper, but should still be put out there. These are the so called "humane" ways of disposing of a human life. They do not seem very humane to me. In fact, there seems to be a certain disregard for whether or not the executions produce the desired painless death. I do not agree with the death penalty, and I do not approve of any of these methods as a "painless death".
There are eight main methods of execution in current use worldwide: 2
 | Beheading: Only two countries execute people by chopping their head off: Saudi Arabia and Iraq. |
| Electric chair: (US only) Nobody knows how quickly a person dies from the electric shock, or what they experience. The ACLU describes two cases where prisoners apparently lived for 4 to 10 minutes before finally expiring. |
| Firing squad: The prisoner is bound and shot through the heart by multiple marksmen. Death appears to be quick, assuming the killers don't miss. In the U.S., only Utah used this method. It was abandoned in favor of lethal injection on 2004-MAR-15, except for four convicted killers on death row who had previously chosen death by firing squad. 7 This is used in Belarus, China, Somolia, Taiwan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and others. |
| Guillotine: A famous French invention, not used in North America. It severs the neck. Death comes very quickly. |
| Hanging: if properly conducted, this is a humane method. The neck is broken and death comes quickly. However, if the free-fall distance is inadequate, the prisoner ends up slowly being strangled to death. If it is too great, the rope will tear his/her head off. This method is used in Egypt, Iran, Japan, Jordan, Pakistan, Singapore and others. |
| Lethal injection: Lethal drugs are injected into the prisoner while he lays strapped down to a table. Typically, sodium pentothal is injected to make the prisoner unconscious. Then pancuronium bromide is injected. It terminates breathing and paralyzes the individual Finally, potassium chloride is injected to stop the heart. If properly conducted, the prisoner fades quickly into unconsciousness. If the dosage of drugs is too low, the person may linger for many minutes, experiencing paralysis. Executions in the U.S. are gradually shifting to this method. This technique has been challenged recently by those who feel that the prisoner may not be rendered unconscious by the drugs. Some suggest that this method can be extremely painful. After a botched execution of Angel Nieves Diaz in Florida during 2006-DEC, Florida and nine other states have placed a hold on executions. This method is used in China, Guatemala, Philippines, Thailand, and the U.S. |
| Poison gas: Cyanide capsules are dropped into acid producing Hydrogen Cyanide, a deadly gas. This takes many minutes of agony before a person dies. |
| Stoning: The prisoner is often buried up to her or his neck and pelted with rocks until they eventually die. The rocks are chosen so that they are large enough to cause significant injury to the victim, but are not so large that a single rock will kill the prisoner. Used in North Afghanistan and Iran, as a penalty for murder, adultery, blasphemy, and other crimes. Source: http://www.religioustolerance.org/execut3.htm#met |
1 comment:
This is very interesting. I am against the death penalty as well. I figure why would we kill someone for killing someone? Aren't we ourselves in fact committing murder then too? Then people of course argue, "They deserve it." There is no way it's right playing God, who are we to decide if it is someones time to die. The murderer decided that person should die, but why would we turn around and become exactly like the criminal? The painless death concept is obviously a cover up. The sad fact is, people just can't help but be destructive.
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