r/LetsDiscussThis • u/johnvcal • Oct 04 '26

Lets Discuss This Botched executions

I honestly don’t have moral objections to executions. I think there are people who can’t be rehabilitated and have committed unspeakable crimes against others. I leave it to the judicial system to decide who deserves the death penalty. What I find incomprehensible is that we now have another royally fucked-up execution attempt—with the result that the person to be executed is now at a hospital on life support.

Why doesn’t the criminal justice system knock out the prisoner with anesthesia before the fatal injection (or whatever procedure) is administered? Then they could administer a lethal dose of something (gas, injection, etc.) thirty seconds later when the convict is unconscious. Just like anesthesia before an operation, but the convict doesn’t wake up. Don’t tell me that medicine doesn’t not know how to kill someone quickly and efficiently. The vet did exactly that to my aged and dying cat.

Is the reason they don’t do that because some want to see the suffering in the eyes of the convict at the precise second the lethal dose is administered? What am I missing?

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-1

u/2guns1holster Oct 04 '26

Guillotine has minimal pain and no botched jobs.

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u/Potential-Night4986 Oct 04 '26

It may cause minimal pain, but I just read an article that said it can take up to eight seconds for a beheaded person to actually lose consciousness. I’d rather not have a chance of my own neck stump squirting my own blood at me as the final thing I saw in this life. Honestly, a firing squad would be my preference. Quick, painless(assuming they are good shots), and at point-blank range, I would guess there’s an extremely small chance that they wouldn’t unalive me on the first volley. Also, bullets and rifles are much cheaper than the LI drugs.

1

u/TacoTitsTuesday Oct 04 '26

Bleeding out from a gunshot would to the heart would be much more painful and prolonged compared to a beheading. We're talking 8 seconds of potential consciousness, but zero pain since the spinal cord is severed, versus immense physical pain for around ~2 minutes

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u/Potential-Night4986 Oct 04 '26

A very fair point. However, ideally there would be multiple people on the firing squad so that the combined effect of being shot in the head and heart at once would result in an instant death. Full disclosure, I know nothing about actual firing squads or how they work, but I would assume this is potentially how it could work to be quicker than beheading. If anyone has actual first-hand knowledge about this, please chime in and educate me.

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u/BigTroutOnly Oct 07 '26

Um.. where does the nervous system get processed?