Means of Execution

There's been a lot of hullabaloo about the death penalty and whether the means the state uses to execute criminals is 'cruel'.  I'm confused by this.  Every day in the US, animals are euthanized humanely.  Watch a few episodes of Dr. Pol and you'll see how humanely these animals are put out of their misery.  A shot of something to make them sleep.  Then a shot directly to the heart to end their pain.  (The animal control officer I used to work for did it the same way.)  It's quick.  It's painless, because they're asleep duh.  And it's probably a helluva a lot cheaper than what they do to execute criminals now.

But let's step away from that for a moment.  Every day, thousands of people are knocked out so that surgeons can cut them open and play around with their insides.  No pain at all.  I know, I've been there.  Once, I had a procedure using a local rather than a general.  The operation took longer than they thought it would, so I started to actually feel what the surgeon was doing.  Not pain.  It just felt like he was touching the inside of my leg.  Gross, but not painful.  I told the anesthesiologist what was happening and he put me all the way out before it reached painful.

Why can't the prison system use those drugs?  They're awesome drugs.  You get sleepy and kind of loopy and everything is wonderful, then you fall asleep and don't feel shit until you wake up.  They just wouldn't get to the 'wake up' part. 

Derp.  It all seems really simple to me. 

But let's step away from that, too.  So, they're worried about violating the 'cruel and unusual' part by drawing out the pain before the death.  It seems to me that beheading was probably way quicker.  Hanging, if done right, was pretty quick.  Unless they screwed up the knot and the prisoner suffocated rather than getting their necks broken.  Firing squad?  Nah.  That one seems like it would take too long.  The electric chair was pretty quick, but I don't know about painless.  Drawing and quartering is flat out. 

But let's step back one more time.  I know we have a law against cruel and unusual punishment.  But who determines what's cruel and unusual.  Personally, I would think sitting on death row for decades would be cruel, if not unusual because there are so many people in that situation right now.  The hope that maybe this next appeal will be the one that will save them from their fate, only to have that hope dashed?  To me, that's cruel. 

And when we consider the cruel and unusual thing, the cruelty of having these criminals kept alive for decades to the actual victims never seems to come into play.  But maybe that's me.

Anyway, it all seems pretty simple to me.  Knock 'em out.  Take 'em out.  And way more humane treatment than they ever gave their victims. 

Jus' sayin'.