If you are going to have the death penalty then it needs to be carried out relatively humanely, sadly none of the historical methods always offer that. (Advance apologies for grisly nature of post):
Electric chair - can still be botched (dry sponge in Green Mile comes to mind albeit probably exagerrated) and probably not very pleasant for the guards or witnesses to watch/smell.
Gas chamber - person is effectively forced to kill themselves by inhaling the vapour and not a quick death reading historical accounts.
Shooting - whether firing squad or back of the neck. Imprecise and potentially messy. Chinese have purportedly switched to lethal injection as alternative to AK47 bullet to the neck.
Guillotine - *probably* quick and painless at least using the German fallbeil which almost resembled a surgical instrument, but messy aftermath.
Hanging - judicial hanging as practiced in the UK towards the latter period of capital punishment is probably the best alternative. However it needs precision calculated drop and proper noose, not the traditional US "cowboy coil" and average drop. There is also still a possibility of botching it with a clumsy executioner thus that the victim strangles or ends up decapitated.
Which does tend to leave lethal injection as the only clinically "clean" method. Or I guess the only other option is to devise some means of getting the prisoner to imbibe the fatal cocktail used in that Swiss euthanasia clinic.
A very emotive subject and one on which it is difficult to hold a precise view, particularly when faced with a heinious crime. Personally I think the most sickening part of the US system is that the condemned are kept waiting on death row far longer than the "life" tariff for similar crimes would be in many countries.
Electric chair - can still be botched (dry sponge in Green Mile comes to mind albeit probably exagerrated) and probably not very pleasant for the guards or witnesses to watch/smell.
Gas chamber - person is effectively forced to kill themselves by inhaling the vapour and not a quick death reading historical accounts.
Shooting - whether firing squad or back of the neck. Imprecise and potentially messy. Chinese have purportedly switched to lethal injection as alternative to AK47 bullet to the neck.
Guillotine - *probably* quick and painless at least using the German fallbeil which almost resembled a surgical instrument, but messy aftermath.
Hanging - judicial hanging as practiced in the UK towards the latter period of capital punishment is probably the best alternative. However it needs precision calculated drop and proper noose, not the traditional US "cowboy coil" and average drop. There is also still a possibility of botching it with a clumsy executioner thus that the victim strangles or ends up decapitated.
Which does tend to leave lethal injection as the only clinically "clean" method. Or I guess the only other option is to devise some means of getting the prisoner to imbibe the fatal cocktail used in that Swiss euthanasia clinic.
A very emotive subject and one on which it is difficult to hold a precise view, particularly when faced with a heinious crime. Personally I think the most sickening part of the US system is that the condemned are kept waiting on death row far longer than the "life" tariff for similar crimes would be in many countries.
