Stephan: When you have a death penalty, the issue becomes how should we murder this person? How can we make it happen as quickly as possible? From that perspective, on the basis of witnesses to such killings a firing squad is more compassionate than the lethal use of drugs. But that avoids the real issue.
Should there be a death penalty? The emerging trend is there should not be. According to Amnesty International, "As of April 2021, 108 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes and 144 countries have abolished it in law or practice – a trend that must continue. Despite the continued pursuit of the death penalty by some governments, the overall picture in 2020 was positive."
My personal view is that it should be an elective, and I think it should be an option extending to natural death. If I were 30 years old, and the rest of my life of 30 to 50 years was going to be lived 22.5 to 24 hours each day in solitary confinement in a cell 7 by 10 feet, about the size toilet water closet, I can see how one could get to a point of just wanting to check out.
South Carolina is not alone. In Utah, Lt. Jeff Meyers points to restraints used on prisoners for securing them to to firing squad chair during a tour of the Utah State Prison at Draper, Monday, May 5, 2003. Credit: Douglas C. Pizac
The governor of South Carolina, Henry McMaster, has quietly signed into law a bill that requires inmates on death row to choose between a firing squad or the electric chair if lethal injection is not available.
The law, signed without ceremony on Friday, comes amid a shortage of lethal injection drugs that has affected the state’s ability to implement capital punishment. South Carolina has not executed any prisoners since 2011.
Prisoners have chosen death by legal injection, leading to the halt in executions. The new law will put prisoners back in line to be killed by the state.
There are 37 people on death row in South Carolina who have exhausted the appeals process.
The state Senate approved the bill to add firing squads on 6 May, by a 66-43 vote.
South Carolina becomes the fourth state to allow death by firing squad. Mississippi, Oklahoma and […]
Why would we not use a more moral method like an overdose of Heroin or anything more humane?? It makes those doing the killing just as much a murderer as whatever they did to get into that position of having to be killed.
Why would we not use a more moral method like an overdose of Heroin or anything more humane?? It makes those doing the killing just as much a murderer as whatever they did to get into that position of having to be killed.