Capital punishment

I find it very highly doubtful that the courts will ever approve seized drugs of uncontrolled provenance. If people want to use lethal injection here, they will need to find or bring a willing drug manufacturing plant back to the U.S., owned by a pharmaceutical that is not publicly traded.

The old drugs became unavailable when U.S. manufacturing was shut down and consolidated to European plants, which then forbid their use in capital punishment. If any of the veterinary supply (or any supply for non-lethal human use) gets diverted to capital punishment, the U.S. will get completely cut off from those drugs for all uses.

 

My biases:
I'm deeply opposed to capital AND capitol punishment, although I AM a person of some humble faith, and must engage in my daily battles.
What this means:
I'm human.
Sometimes I root for both sides.

So.
This is an ironclad and copper bottomed example of "government efficiency."
I mean, they used to have GAS chambers, right?
Nitrogen is a GAS. (VERY widely used in the US Submarine Fleet!)
WHY did they need straps and a mask????

I just checked.
Nearly 500 people die from accidental CO poisoning. I'm thinking that if they 'suffered' or were 'tortured' in death then they might not have died....given the nature of most CO deaths.

Nearly 70,000 dogs and cats are killed each year in animal shelters by some measures.
PITA puts this number much MUCH higher - because, Science and Data.
Pets who are 'eased over the rainbow bridge' by loving adoptees/fur parents represent a still larger number.
Are these animals 'tortured?'
I've buried two beloved pets and my sweet CFO was 'there in the end.'
Not torture!

So-called 'Death with Dignity.'
'Some sources' suggest that 1300 people die in the US each current year by way of 'assisted suicide' and I saw one article - widely parroted in MSM suggesting that the average cost of $5,000 was 'burdensome.'
Are these people 'tortured?'
How much does it cost one flyover state in the US to help a death-row inmate over the 'Golden Bridge?'

Finally......
Drug overdose.
Heroin and Fentanyl.
Dirt cheap!!!!
Widely available!!!
Fun as all git out if one believes the ratings.
Hard NOT to die while using 'all you want.'


As an unsuccessful candidate gubernatorial candidate for the Commonwealth of Virginia (at least in this forum) I would probably have commuted most of the murder-death-kill sentences in the various "Corrections" institutes in Virginia for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that most of the people in the various 'Death Houses' would be more effectively 'corrected' in GPOP, with a cellie and a powerful incentive to protect their virtue.

ME being me again......

 

It seems they didn't even sedate him first. No different than strangling him.

 

I’m sure there is a reason anesthesia given first, then an injection to stop the heart, is avoided. It’s like going under during an operation and never waking up. Which is why I now have a fear of anesthesia.

 

Oh.
It's a 'little' different.
How exactly would have they sedated him?
Strangling involves a mechanical blockage, which is a little different than hypoxia.
Anybody who has ever seen a strangulation victim might argue that Ken wasn't exactly strangled.

The reason that this individual didn't ride the needle like his cohort did is that there is a time tested method for making it difficult for a reluctant phlebotomist to access a vain, especially if the criminal is writing around on the gurney shrieking in "agony" because he or she is being murdered - which, of course, they are.
Of course, there are also 100-percent guaranteed sure-fire counter-measures - but, that pesky Constitution again.......

All of this is why if I would just commute his sentence, and give him LWOP - and a cellie, AND neighbors.

"Death with dignity", indeed.

 

It isn't avoided. States simply can't get the drugs for executions anymore. The anesthesia is so the person doesn't suffer, and they are restrained to allow administration. Couldn't do that here, so they suffocated him while he was conscious. Smothering with a pillow at least starts with the person asleep.

 

Some factoid I absorbed years ago, don't remember from where, might not be correct, I dun᠎no, is that we get most of our conscious "suffocating" sensation, not from sensing low levels of O₂, but from high levels of CO₂ (which you would also have, say, if you were trapped in a small space).

It may be that in cases where the O₂ is displaced by something else, the same panicky feeling doesn't set in. An execution by CO₂ hypoxia would probably be most awful.

Certainly victims of CO (not CO₂) often seem not to know what hit 'em, but that's a somehat different mechanism, not that oxygen is absent, but that CO binds up all the hemoglobin that ought to be transporting it.

 

i have read that water may have leaked in before the implosion

 

If I remember right, there was some citing of credible physics suggesting there might not even be recognizable remains, but then some were found, so it might not have been the all-at-once process it could have been.

 

I'm not yet ready to completely abolish it, though would lobby to narrow its use by more than an order of magnitude.

It seems odd that they would move ahead with a death sentence that cannot be imposed today. (2nd) Jury voted 11-1 for life without parole, but judge overruled and imposed death. Apparently a judge's override in that direction is no longer legal in that state. I'd think that fairness and equal protection would dictate such a law to be retroactive. By the courts if not by the legislature.

The European factories won't let us divert these drugs to human euthanasia, lest they cut off the entire U.S. supply even for veterinary use. That is a cost of not having a U.S. factory.

Canada reached 13,000 euthanasias in 2022, up from 10,000 in 2021, and is debating an expansion. It is a broader form of Medical Aid In Dying than is legal anywhere in the U.S. in that the patient does not need to administer the drugs themselves, a medical profession can do it.

Claims are that the method was 'informed' by data from industrial accidents and suicides.

Those match my understandings.

When dad gradually faded out in front of me from low blood oxygen saturation and blood pressure incompatible with life, it was as if he was drifting off into nap, just at an inappropriate time. Revived twice in ER, he described no panic or discomfort or mental distress from the event. So when it happened again a few months later, but overnight without any witness present to intervene, we were comforted that he passed without distress or fear. By then, he had also changed his treatment preferences to preclude the interventions that revived him the first time. DNR.

But he had a long list of medical conditions that had been gradually piling up for years, and was losing his O2 slowly. A person who was essentially healthy two minutes ago may not respond to sudden O2 loss in the same way.

 

You can easily compute the speed of a water jet through a frictionless nozzle at those pressures. It is much faster than normal nerve signal propagation speed. If the structure failed via an ordinary material crack, which can propagate through uniform solid materials such as metals (don't know about fibrous composite materials) much faster than even that water jet, the water-pressure-driven implosion speed would likely have been faster than their senses could possibly perceive it.

Turbulence can cause a lot of weird results, with some significant random pieces surviving comparatively undamaged as if they were cocooned in an eddy. I don't really know anything about the processes, but they can apply to things even as violent as asteroid impacts.

 

@ Soviet Executions:
There are stories of Sovs performing a surprise back of the head shot.
Somewhat messy but if you're in what Governor Hairdo called a 'forced congregate living facility' then you have lots of help cleaning up.
The Chicomms are the ones that bill the next-of-kin for the cost of the 9x19mm round (9x18 before the Type 92 pistol was adopted.)

@ Oceangate:
When the hull let go it made quite a bit of noise.
I'm thinking that they didn't 'suffer' much.
Whether or how much foreknowledge they had of their impending doom cannot be known or even differentiated from the normal adrenaline response from just going over the side.

There is a lot of anecdotal historical evidence of IJN submarines experiencing very large underwater explosions when they reach collapse depth, especially after hedgehog (underwater mortar) attacks.
It was theorized then (and now) that this was caused by a dieseling effect to the ship's atmosphere during the hull collapse causing torpedo warhead detonation.
How long it took the boat to reach collapse depth after the attack is knowable - so some considerable foreknowledge of the crew's impending fate is very likely.

That would make it more than an order of magnitude more expensive.
We already spend millions per year to kill something like 50 inmates - and this isn't even counting all of the pro-bono work.
What would be the benefit of the redistribution of those assets into some of the lesser glamorous areas of the prison system.
It would eliminate the chance of executing the wrong person.
It would remove the moral wounding effects on the prison employees and their various contractors.
It would greatly simplify the pre-trial maneuverings.

Winner-winner.....

 

Even little cavitation bubbles can turn UV-hot inside during collapse. It would seem that an air cavity large enough to support a human, at vastly greater depth, could experience a more-adiabatic compression heating during collapse.

I presume that foreknowledge means in a submarine not meant to explore the bottom, not in an exploration vessel advertised as capable of bottom exploration.

 

Correct.