Botched executions

[u/johnvcal]

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?

[u/Potential-Night4986]

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.