Applied to the forehead, this should be just what Mr. Durr is looking for. I guess that there's a small chance that he might also be allergic to lead, which is admittedly toxic. Fortunately for Mr. Durr, there's a protective copper jacket.
Full disclosure: I'm quite ambivalent about capital punishment, since I think that there are many examples of people who were wrongly convicted. That doesn't seem to be the case here - there doesn't seem to be any question that Mr. Durr did in fact rape and kill 16 year old Angel Vincent in 1988. She would be 38 today. Hasta la vista, dirtbag.
Quick and painless executions seems like an oxymoron.
ReplyDeleteCertainly there's a moron involved somewhere in this situation...
Wouldn't the allergic reaction be rather, er, short lived?
ReplyDeleteEver seen a bangstick, like divers use for sharks? Basically, a 12ga. slug on the end of a pole and mechanism to fire when poked onto a shark's noggin.
ReplyDeleteWah-lah. Problem solved.
Gotta pity the janitor, though.
There are cases where it's not really clear-cut. I don't know if Hurricane Wazzizname did it or not. A lot of folks think he didn't. (But then, a lot of folks think Mumia Wahzzizname didn't do it. Or even if he did, they should let him go.)
ReplyDeleteThen there are clear-cut cases, like this one. In those cases, execution should follow within 24 hours of the last higher-court appeal.
As it is now, once you're convicted and sentenced to death, you can look forward to 20 or so years of being a guest of the state. It ain't pretty, but you're still breathing - and the people you killed are still dead.
Evidence processing and forensics are a lot better than they were a decade ago.
Graybeard: another useful device is the horse-pistol: a rod permanently attached to the gun - when you pull the trigger, it gets fired out 3 or 4 inches, then retracts. It saves having bits of lead flying all over the place.
To Mr Durr's claim that he's "allergic to the anesthetic", we can only say, "There, there, it'll be all right".
Or skip the anesthetic and go right to the cobra venom (or whatever it is they use).
An alternate plan: the recommending feature of the guillotine was that it was painless. Certainly quick, and nobody ever complained about the pain.
I don't think that there have been many cases of mistaken execution in the US, but there may have been a few. Even one is unacceptable. My own idea for reforming the death penalty is to make the standard of proof beyond all doubt. With such a standard you would still have an occasional case where the death penalty could apply: Jack Ruby's murder of Lee Harvey Oswald would certainly have qualified under this standard of proof.
ReplyDelete