Transcript
Alabama suffocated a man to death in a gas chamber tonight after starving him so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit as they did it. And this was deemed perfectly legal by multiple courts in the vaunted American legal system.
That’s what happens when you value institutions over people.
Link for more info: https://www.reuters.com/legal/alabama-prepares-carry-out-first-execution-by-nitrogen-asphyxiation-2024-01-25/
The death penalty is a reason not to consider the USA a civilized country.
Among many. Extrajudicial Executions are far more common than official ones. And the police rob more money of people than all other criminals combined (excluding white collar crime, of course). So yeah, totally civilised.
And the death penalty is not legal in many states, but cops murdering people in the streets is legal in all 50.
Literal whataboutism:
What about Japan?
Th crimes these inmates committed are so fucking despicably heinous, and yet the government wants to kill them in the most humane manner and you think that makes them not civilized?
The problem with that is that the government decided I did a crime. A pretty bad one. I didn’t do it. There’s no convincing anyone that I didn’t do it even though there’s zero evidence(because I didn’t do it). Now I have a felony.
I’m certain this happens to anyone the police decide not to like.
The government regularly executes wrongly convicted people in our name. That’s enough of a reason to ban the death penalty. Even if we granted that some people deserve to die, the government is going to get it wrong with some degree of regularity.
Going beyond that, the justice system should be about preventing crime, not inflicting punishment. So yes, if there’s going to be a death penalty, it’s right to take every possible step to make it humane.
I was not talking about this case in particular but yes, of course I do think that. The method or killing makes no difference at all. There are several reasons for my position. Just a few:
The death penalty violates basic human rights.
The perpetrators are in prison and therefore no longer pose a threat to anyone. That means killing them now would be nothing more than an unnecessary cruelty, based on a medieval understanding of the law, which is based on the idea of revenge.
One murder cannot make up for another murder. The victim is dead and killing the murderers will not bring her back.
Governments should not kill people and in general, killing is wrong and should be avoided. Exceptions might be certain situations of self defense, which are rare.
In countries that still have the death penalty, it also regularly happens that innocent people are executed. In the USA for example, this happens more frequently to black people, the reason being racism in the police and justice system.