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Question regarding last meals on death row

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auntblabby
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19 Oct 2018, 2:30 am

sly279 wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
sly279 wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
if executions are to be done, they should be done before dawn. if they could pump in a mix of carbon monoxide and tranquilizer into the death row cell [sealed] while the condemned is still asleep, that would likely be the most humane way. special last meal would be moot.

Or they could mix cyanide into their last meal.desth by carbon monoxide is horrible and too holocaust like.

that is the purpose of the tranquilizer gas before and simultaneous to the carbon monoxide. cyanide is a HORRIBLE suffocating death. :idea:

Cyanide is nearly instantaneous.

"nearly" don't cut it. up to 10 seconds of suffering, fruitless gasping for breath and panic. constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.



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19 Oct 2018, 8:03 pm

auntblabby wrote:
sly279 wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
sly279 wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
if executions are to be done, they should be done before dawn. if they could pump in a mix of carbon monoxide and tranquilizer into the death row cell [sealed] while the condemned is still asleep, that would likely be the most humane way. special last meal would be moot.

Or they could mix cyanide into their last meal.desth by carbon monoxide is horrible and too holocaust like.

that is the purpose of the tranquilizer gas before and simultaneous to the carbon monoxide. cyanide is a HORRIBLE suffocating death. :idea:

Cyanide is nearly instantaneous.

"nearly" don't cut it. up to 10 seconds of suffering, fruitless gasping for breath and panic. constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.


And yet we use lethal injection which has a high failure rate and possibly not as painless as people want to believe it is.

The electric chair was really cruel too and so was hanging because often times the prisoner would strangle to death.

I'm more in favor of the firing squad. I read statistics that say it actually has the lowest failure rate of the executions practiced in the U.S. in fact maybe if we just shoot all prisoners in the back of the head instead of in the chest it would be a guaranteed instant death and the brain would have no time to register pain.



auntblabby
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19 Oct 2018, 8:08 pm

TW1ZTY wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
sly279 wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
sly279 wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
if executions are to be done, they should be done before dawn. if they could pump in a mix of carbon monoxide and tranquilizer into the death row cell [sealed] while the condemned is still asleep, that would likely be the most humane way. special last meal would be moot.

Or they could mix cyanide into their last meal.desth by carbon monoxide is horrible and too holocaust like.

that is the purpose of the tranquilizer gas before and simultaneous to the carbon monoxide. cyanide is a HORRIBLE suffocating death. :idea:

Cyanide is nearly instantaneous.

"nearly" don't cut it. up to 10 seconds of suffering, fruitless gasping for breath and panic. constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.


And yet we use lethal injection which has a high failure rate and possibly not as painless as people want to believe it is.

The electric chair was really cruel too and so was hanging because often times the prisoner would strangle to death.

I'm more in favor of the firing squad. I read statistics that say it actually has the lowest failure rate of the executions practiced in the U.S. in fact maybe if we just shoot all prisoners in the back of the head instead of in the chest it would be a guaranteed instant death and the brain would have no time to register pain.

awfully gory, no? but that is the point, if we're gonna kill people for killing people, we need to televise it and plaster the gory pics on the front pages of newspapers and state websites. to do otherwise is namby-pamby hypocrisy. let the people see what their tax dollars are paying for, what they have not chosen to vote down, let them see it all until they've had their fill and still more.



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19 Oct 2018, 8:16 pm

TW1ZTY wrote:
The electric chair was really cruel too and so was hanging because often times the prisoner would strangle to death.

Hanging won't cause pain if you do it properly. Ironically when they went from hanging to the electric chair to be more human, they actually produce a system that was more painful and less human. Of course Thomas Edison was a jerk who didn't care about people's suffering. He had other concerns.

I don't think lethal injection is painful if the condemned is anesthetised before he's killed. The problem with lethal injection is that the toxin is carried by the bloodstream to every part of the body, rendering the organs useless for transplant.

Even if the condemned wanted to donate his organs, he would be unable too. Organ transplants work far better when the donor organ is removed immediately after death or even before death. The reason why sick people have a hard time getting donor organs isn't due to a lack of donors but because if someone dies in their sleep and is found hours later, their organs are already far too decayed to be of use.

If the condemned wants to alleviate his remorse by donating his organs I'd suggest they anaesthetise him and remove his liver first, than his kidneys and finally his heart. By this point lethal injection would be redundant. As a reward you could even give the condemned ten last meals (nothing too fatty, you don't want to deposit too much fat in that liver).


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19 Oct 2018, 8:35 pm

RetroGamer87 wrote:
TW1ZTY wrote:
The electric chair was really cruel too and so was hanging because often times the prisoner would strangle to death.

Hanging won't cause pain if you do it properly. Ironically when they went from hanging to the electric chair to be more human, they actually produce a system that was more painful and less human. Of course Thomas Edison was a jerk who didn't care about people's suffering. He had other concerns.

I don't think lethal injection is painful if the condemned is anesthetised before he's killed. The problem with lethal injection is that the toxin is carried by the bloodstream to every part of the body, rendering the organs useless for transplant.

Even if the condemned wanted to donate his organs, he would be unable too. Organ transplants work far better when the donor organ is removed immediately after death or even before death. The reason why sick people have a hard time getting donor organs isn't due to a lack of donors but because if someone dies in their sleep and is found hours later, their organs are already far too decayed to be of use.

If the condemned wants to alleviate his remorse by donating his organs I'd suggest they anaesthetise him and remove his liver first, than his kidneys and finally his heart. By this point lethal injection would be redundant. As a reward you could even give the condemned ten last meals (nothing too fatty, you don't want to deposit too much fat in that liver).


Hanging was done because most of the time it would cause the person's neck to break which was very painless but whenever it messed up (which happened pretty often) the prisoner would strangle to death which you can imagine is really painful and considering how hanging was originally a public execution I imagine people got really bothered by watching a person suffocate to death and nobody being able to do anything about it.

And the problem with lethal injection is that the anesthetic drugs don't always work like they are supposed to. Sometimes the prisoner wakes up half-conscious gasping for air and twitching in agony because he is aware of his lungs collapsing and his heart stopping. Plus the people who inject the chemicals aren't trained medical professionals and then there's the issue of having to be struck multiple times with needles to find a good vein which I imagine is unpleasant

Shooting a prisoner in the head may be gory but at least it is proven to be quick and painless. I'd personally be more concern about making the execution as quick and painless as possible for the condemned prisoner than I would being concerned about the vultures sitting around watching a fellow human die like they are watching some sort of sideshow attraction.



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19 Oct 2018, 9:18 pm

having researched it, hanging is NOT painless, there are a few survivors who report feeling that their bodies felt like they were on fire [spinal cord damage] and the nuclear bomb of headaches as the smaller veins allowing outward flow are constricted. there are many more [relatively] humane ways to do somebody in, than hanging.



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19 Oct 2018, 9:22 pm

auntblabby wrote:
having researched it, hanging is NOT painless, there are a few survivors who report feeling that their bodies felt like they were on fire [spinal cord damage] and the nuclear bomb of headaches as the smaller veins allowing outward flow are constricted. there are many more [relatively] humane ways to do somebody in, than hanging.

I agree. I don't understand why hanging was so popular for so long. Even cutting a person's head off would have seen more humane.



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19 Oct 2018, 9:26 pm

TW1ZTY wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
having researched it, hanging is NOT painless, there are a few survivors who report feeling that their bodies felt like they were on fire [spinal cord damage] and the nuclear bomb of headaches as the smaller veins allowing outward flow are constricted. there are many more [relatively] humane ways to do somebody in, than hanging.

I agree. I don't understand why hanging was so popular for so long. Even cutting a person's head off would have seen more humane.

no survivors of that, but witnesses reported that when the executioner picked up the just-chopped-off head of Marie Antoinette and spat at/slapped it, it glared back at him. 8O :skull: :o



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19 Oct 2018, 9:33 pm

auntblabby wrote:
TW1ZTY wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
having researched it, hanging is NOT painless, there are a few survivors who report feeling that their bodies felt like they were on fire [spinal cord damage] and the nuclear bomb of headaches as the smaller veins allowing outward flow are constricted. there are many more [relatively] humane ways to do somebody in, than hanging.

I agree. I don't understand why hanging was so popular for so long. Even cutting a person's head off would have seen more humane.

no survivors of that, but witnesses reported that when the executioner picked up the just-chopped-off head of Marie Antoinette and spat at/slapped it, it glared back at him. 8O :skull: :o


Yeah that's pretty inhumane. But a lot of people really hated her and her husband.

Sometimes I think people living in those days were completely heartless and they gathered around to see public executions because they got some sort of sadistic pleasure out of watching a condemned criminal who they viewed as being subhuman get put to a grizzly death. It was really sickening.

I think one of the worst forms of executions they used to perform was burning people alive at the stake. You don't get any more inhumane than that!



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19 Oct 2018, 9:49 pm

TW1ZTY wrote:
I know that some states like Texas don't even do last meals at the prisoner's request anymore.

But one thing I've been wondering about... do they still feed the prisoner before they execute him? I can understand not wanting to give him a special meal of his choice because he is being punished for the crime he commited but not feeding him at all, even if it's on the day of his execution, seems kind of inhumane to me. :|


Their last meal is the same thing being served to the other inmates. They do feed them, just no more special requests. The guy who ordered that huge meal and didn't eat it was Lawrence Brewer, one of the guys who killed James Byrd.


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19 Oct 2018, 9:55 pm

Tim_Tex wrote:
TW1ZTY wrote:
I know that some states like Texas don't even do last meals at the prisoner's request anymore.

But one thing I've been wondering about... do they still feed the prisoner before they execute him? I can understand not wanting to give him a special meal of his choice because he is being punished for the crime he commited but not feeding him at all, even if it's on the day of his execution, seems kind of inhumane to me. :|


Their last meal is the same thing being served to the other inmates. They do feed them, just no more special requests. The guy who ordered that huge meal and didn't eat it was Lawrence Brewer, one of the guys who killed James Byrd.


I think it's pretty unfair to do that to the other inmates just because of what he did. I mean there's ways of ruling it so that the inmates can't ask for too much or for something ridiculously expensive.

They could do like Florida does and say that the meals have to be purchased locally or place a $20 limit on what they can eat.

I think people in Texas just like being a**holes. I really do.



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19 Oct 2018, 10:11 pm

TW1ZTY wrote:
I think people in Texas just like being a**holes. I really do.
Everythin's bigger in Texas! Includin' a**holes!


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19 Oct 2018, 10:14 pm

RetroGamer87 wrote:
TW1ZTY wrote:
I think people in Texas just like being a**holes. I really do.
Everythin's bigger in Texas! Includin' a**holes!

Everything there must be too big for me then. :P

I'd rather stay in Georgia. Georgia is conservative too but we got that southern hospitality and people for the most part are pretty friendly here.



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19 Oct 2018, 10:25 pm

TW1ZTY wrote:
Yeah that's pretty inhumane. But a lot of people really hated her and her husband. Sometimes I think people living in those days were completely heartless and they gathered around to see public executions because they got some sort of sadistic pleasure out of watching a condemned criminal who they viewed as being subhuman get put to a grizzly death. It was really sickening. I think one of the worst forms of executions they used to perform was burning people alive at the stake. You don't get any more inhumane than that!


humans are pretty ingenious at making other people suffer while they are being killed, the Japanese with slow-boiling people in oil, the English with drawing & quartering, stretching people to death on the rack, too many examples to list here. back in the days before tv and movies and internet and even print magazines, the public execution was the game of the week for those folks.



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19 Oct 2018, 10:34 pm

auntblabby wrote:
TW1ZTY wrote:
Yeah that's pretty inhumane. But a lot of people really hated her and her husband. Sometimes I think people living in those days were completely heartless and they gathered around to see public executions because they got some sort of sadistic pleasure out of watching a condemned criminal who they viewed as being subhuman get put to a grizzly death. It was really sickening. I think one of the worst forms of executions they used to perform was burning people alive at the stake. You don't get any more inhumane than that!


humans are pretty ingenious at making other people suffer while they are being killed, the Japanese with slow-boiling people in oil, the English with drawing & quartering, stretching people to death on the rack, too many examples to list here. back in the days before tv and movies and internet and even print magazines, the public execution was the game of the week for those folks.


Well it's not like we Americans were above that even though we like to believe we are. Didn't we used to stack heavy rocks on top of people and crush them to death to get them to confess to witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials? That seems pretty torturous.

We also used to beat people with bullwhips as punishment for certain crimes and we would also lock homeless drifters in wooden shackles and let them starve for days while passersby would throw refuse at them.

Maybe humanity, compassion, and empathy isn't something humans were born with since the very beginning? Maybe it's just a behavior we learned or developed over time? I guess in the beginning we were all very cruel and savage and only in recent times have we started feeling bad about it.



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19 Oct 2018, 10:40 pm

TW1ZTY wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
TW1ZTY wrote:
Yeah that's pretty inhumane. But a lot of people really hated her and her husband. Sometimes I think people living in those days were completely heartless and they gathered around to see public executions because they got some sort of sadistic pleasure out of watching a condemned criminal who they viewed as being subhuman get put to a grizzly death. It was really sickening. I think one of the worst forms of executions they used to perform was burning people alive at the stake. You don't get any more inhumane than that!


humans are pretty ingenious at making other people suffer while they are being killed, the Japanese with slow-boiling people in oil, the English with drawing & quartering, stretching people to death on the rack, too many examples to list here. back in the days before tv and movies and internet and even print magazines, the public execution was the game of the week for those folks.


Well it's not like we Americans were above that even though we like to believe we are. Didn't we used to stack heavy rocks on top of people and crush them to death to get them to confess to witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials? That seems pretty torturous.

We also used to beat people with bullwhips as punishment for certain crimes and we would also lock homeless drifters in wooden shackles and let them starve for days while passersby would throw refuse at them.

Maybe humanity, compassion, and empathy isn't something humans were born with since the very beginning? Maybe it's just a behavior we learned or developed over time? I guess in the beginning we were all very cruel and savage and only in recent times have we started feeling bad about it.

it took the lion's share of our time on earth before more than just an enlightened few people learned the golden rule, but a critical mass likely won't be reached before our collective time on earth is up. it will be a new civilization on earth that is the truly great society. not us.