A discussion on capital punishment?

[McAvoy]

Nitrogen asphyxiation is supposed to be pretty humane. Humans are set up to detect a build-up of carbon dioxide, not a lack of oxygen, and our air is mostly nitrogen, so theoretically put someone in an environment with plenty of nitrogen and too little oxygen and they just go to sleep and die. That's happened by accident with nitrogen leaks.

If you want to be even more sure, a high-speed explosive can destroy the head faster than nerve signals in the brain can propagate.

When I went through my post boot camp training for my rate in the Navy, one of them was training on oxygen and nitrogen. They spent some time warning how nitrogen has no color or smell and is easily breathed in like air. Only that you get nothing out of it and you just go to sleep and die.

Actually seems like the best way to execute someone. How expensive really is it anyway? I know a your typical nitrogen bottle (175 pound bottle pressurized to 2600 psi) costs about 40 dollars to fill. A regulator can vary from less than a hundred to close to a thousand depending on the brand.

You could easily set up a room pumped with nitrogen for far less than what it takes by lethal injection.

Wonder why no one thought of it. Not like this is new technology.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

It's NEVER humane to end a life.

JK just messing.

[AlucardNoir]

@ Riedquat

You're the guy that called the death penalty "uncivilized" and then compared most of the people you disagree with in here to the Spanish Inquisition, a product of medieval, european christian civilization.

We, as a society, are ok with killing innocent civilians if it means killing the people that try to subjugate or kill us, be it though war or terrorist acts on their part. Yet, because of a "risk of miscarriage of justice" we should be ok with keeping a serial killer indefinitely in prisons?

A few millennia ago we were migratory and if someone did something bad they were usually ostracized and expelled from the tribe. That was usually a death sentence, just not one carried by any of the tribe. Then we stopped moving from place to place and we couldn't afford to just sentience people that why. Why? because villages were several times larger then what tribes used to be and if enough neighboring villages did that you would end up with a large group of desperate people that nobody wanted... and that usually ends up with raiders and bands.

Tumors usually comes in two "types. Benign and malign. Benign are tumors that the body keeps under control. Everybody, EVERYBODY, gets them. Malign are... well, cancer. The difference is that the body can keep benign tumors under control while malign ones are just spreading. But both are made of cells that don't really do the job they were meant to be doing. Cells that have become immortal and who in place of being skin, or liver or something else are just there to keep existing. Great strategy if you're a single cell organism, bad if you're one cell of billions that are part of a multicellular organism.

Why tell you what you probably know? because that's what a prison is. Prisons as they are organized now are benign tumors. And whenever somebody leaves they're that one cell that departs the benign tumors to invade neighboring tissue and which turns it into cancer.

That's why my original post was about rehabilitation and the death penalty. By all means, give everybody a fair chance and a fair shake, but fuck keeping them in prison indefinitely because you're icky with the death penalty or because you want to punish them.

Oh yeah, I'm ok with bombing an industrial complex because that's were they make bombs and I don't care about civilian casualties, I'm ok with bombing an airport or a busy city street because that's where the target is right now but I'd rather waste millions keeping criminals locked away then killing them? And I know what you're going to say, but that's just money. NO, no it isn't just money. It's guards, it's doctors, it's nurses, it's construction workers and custodians, it's mechanics that build and keep a prison running. It's drivers delivering food, and farmers farming it, and so and and so forth. It's not just money or material goods, it's people. People that end up wasting their lives guarding and keeping criminals fed and worm. It's people that could be doing other things with their lives, more productive things. Worse off is that the way prisons are run now they are schools for criminals more then rehabilitation centers. Religion and racism only make things worse by forcing new inmates to asociate with one group or another for their own safety. And once outside, every life someone that was in prison takes is on the consciousnesses of people like you.

Prisons only exacerbate the problem that is the "career" criminal. People that might have just stolen out of desperation once get out of prison hardened criminals better equipped for a life of crime then for finding gainful employment. People that spend too much time in the system are already fucked. Innocent or not. The current system is frankly shit. The current system is already destroying the lives of people, and does so at a great cost to society.

You want to combat a miscarriage of justice? Make the judges and prosecutors directly responsible for wrong convictions. If at any point in the future it can be proven that the person that was sentenced to death was innocent make the judge that ordered the execution and the prosecutor that brought the case before the court directly responsible for his death and sentence them to death.

[Riedquat]

Do we have a facepalm smiley on here?

[TGLS]

There's always the new style emoji approach.

[ProfessorDetective]

Nitrogen asphyxiation is supposed to be pretty humane. Humans are set up to detect a build-up of carbon dioxide, not a lack of oxygen, and our air is mostly nitrogen, so theoretically put someone in an environment with plenty of nitrogen and too little oxygen and they just go to sleep and die. That's happened by accident with nitrogen leaks.

If you want to be even more sure, a high-speed explosive can destroy the head faster than nerve signals in the brain can propagate.

When I went through my post boot camp training for my rate in the Navy, one of them was training on oxygen and nitrogen. They spent some time warning how nitrogen has no color or smell and is easily breathed in like air. Only that you get nothing out of it and you just go to sleep and die.

Actually seems like the best way to execute someone. How expensive really is it anyway? I know a your typical nitrogen bottle (175 pound bottle pressurized to 2600 psi) costs about 40 dollars to fill. A regulator can vary from less than a hundred to close to a thousand depending on the brand.

You could easily set up a room pumped with nitrogen for far less than what it takes by lethal injection.

Wonder why no one thought of it. Not like this is new technology.

My guess: not wanting to invoke a mental connection to the most infamous users of that technology. That's why we (The US) stopped using those in the Late Forties. Though, some may get behind it if you adequately explain the science to them before they just make junk up on the spot like with vaccines, the internet, etc.

[Nealithi]

As a rule I feel it should be on the table for the worst offenders. But as political as the law enforcement and judicial systems are in this country. I feel there can never be a properly impartial level to properly implement this.
If you lock a person away for a year or fifty, and then find they are innocent of the crime(s). Then they can be released and if there was bias in their conviction, restitution paid out. But once a person is dead we cannot bring them back.
So a system that will convict for skin color, religion, or being an election year is a poor one to trust that absolute to.
I wish we could have absolute proof. Then too bad, take them out back and shoot them through the head. No appeals, no long stays. Done. But we do not get to have absolute proof.

[AlucardNoir]

The systems exists to serve humanity. Humanity does not exist to serve the system. The problem is that in order for the system to continue existing humanity must serve the system. A catch 22. What happens when individuals or groups refuse to serve the system? Rebellions, revolutions, organize crime... the Paris commune. How does the system react? with extreme force to what is threat to it's continued existence.

When it comes to the justice subsystem the question one must ask is what it's raison d'être is. Is it to punish as Yuka thinks? or is it to remove from society those that deviate from the legally mandated norm? Emphasis on the "legally mandated" part.

Laws aren't moral, they aren't imoral. They are just the whims of those in power at a certain point in time. Disagreement on this point is irelevant because that's what they are.

To be for the death penalty is to be of the opinion that the purpose of the legal system is to remove and not punish. To remove and not waste time and resources on punishment. To be of that opinion but against the death penalty is to split hairs. A pointless task. To say you're for the death penalty, but only if a guaranteed proof of one's misdeeds can be presented is to say you're against the death penalty since to such proof can exist. And yet you keep saying you'd be all for the death penalty, but for that pesky absolute proof. You guys could at least be sincere with yourselves and say the truth, you are not for the death penalty because you find it distasteful to say the least. Not waste time with a line of reasoning that would invalidate all fields of scientific endeavor that make this very conversation possible in the first place.

[Nealithi]

To be for the death penalty is to be of the opinion that the purpose of the legal system is to remove and not punish. To remove and not waste time and resources on punishment. To be of that opinion but against the death penalty is to split hairs. A pointless task. To say you're for the death penalty, but only if a guaranteed proof of one's misdeeds can be presented is to say you're against the death penalty since to such proof can exist. And yet you keep saying you'd be all for the death penalty, but for that pesky absolute proof. You guys could at least be sincere with yourselves and say the truth, you are not for the death penalty because you find it distasteful to say the least. Not waste time with a line of reasoning that would invalidate all fields of scientific endeavor that make this very conversation possible in the first place.

The absolute proof can entirely exist. We caught the Boston Marathon bomber. Well one of them. If the Sandy Hook shooter had been caught. That proof available would be fine.
But a man and woman in their home are killed. No witnesses and no video. Police decide to pickup the man of colour that was passing through? Too many cases pop up where evidence like DNA evidence proves the person convicted is innocent. Sometimes after they have been executed. Why are prosecutors reluctant to allow such tests if they may find someone innocent? Because they already got the conviction. It damages their win/loss record, as if they are an athlete in a sport.
That is what I find repugnant.

[AlucardNoir]

The absolute proof can entirely exist. We caught the Boston Marathon bomber. Well one of them. If the Sandy Hook shooter had been caught. That proof available would be fine.
But a man and woman in their home are killed. No witnesses and no video. Police decide to pickup the man of colour that was passing through? Too many cases pop up where evidence like DNA evidence proves the person convicted is innocent. Sometimes after they have been executed. Why are prosecutors reluctant to allow such tests if they may find someone innocent? Because they already got the conviction. It damages their win/loss record, as if they are an athlete in a sport.
That is what I find repugnant.

From my previous post:

You want to combat a miscarriage of justice? Make the judges and prosecutors directly responsible for wrong convictions. If at any point in the future it can be proven that the person that was sentenced to death was innocent make the judge that ordered the execution and the prosecutor that brought the case before the court directly responsible for his death and sentence them to death.

But no, absolute proof does not in fact exist. Witnesses are known to be unreliable. Video evidence doesn't work like it does on TV. Most cameras are usually black and white and of very low quality. DNA is one of the types of evidence that is somewhat solid, but even then, it's only somewhat solid. Twins will have the same DNA. There are other methods, like for example fingerprinting that is indeed unique, even in the case of twins. But frankly, most police forces ignore it.

I went to law school and one of our professors was a retired former police chief and retired doctor of what in english would be crime science and forensics. He outright told us that over the course of his over 30 year career he saw not only new methods discovered but he saw them abandoned because of the ease of use of other methods. He told us of a technique that allowed one to get fingerprints from lime paint but now most forensic department would probably consider it impossible to get a fingerprint from a wall covered in lime paint because of it's uneven texture. Why? because the technology to get such a fingerprint was expensive and hard to manufacture so it was abandoned. I should probably note that in my country lime based paint is about as ubiquitous inside the home as wallpapers are in the US.

In the US there was a scandal a few years ago when it was discovered that there was a massive rape kit backlog. Why? because technology not only isn't at the level of NCIS but it's usually ignored or out of reach for most small town police departments. And when it isn't judges and prosecutors are out of touch with it.

As for the Boston Marathon bomber... didn't they shoot somebody and flee after the image of them was posted but before anybody had identified them?