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Pfizer Withdraws Drugs For Death Penalty
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Pfizer Withdraws Drugs For Death PenaltyPosted:

ProfessorNobody
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One of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies withdraws the last open-market drug available for executions.


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Pfizer's move to block the use of its drugs to execute prisoners could lead to US states reconsidering the death penalty altogether, experts say.
The pharmaceutical giant's decision closed off the last remaining open-market source for drugs used in lethal injections.

It followed similar actions by more than 20 US and European drug manufacturers.
Robert Dunham, executive director of the non-profit Death Penalty Information Center, called Pfizer's move "significant", saying it forces states to make a choice.

"It underscores that (Pfizer) along with the rest of the pharmaceutical community is committed to ensuring medicines that are made to save lives are not misused by states to kill prisoners," he told Sky News.
Mr Dunham added that it is becoming difficult for states to obtain drugs used in lethal injections.

He pointed specifically to Utah, which approved firing squads as a backup method to lethal injections in March 2015.
That decision, however, prompted an unlikely push by a conservative state lawmaker to abolish the death penalty altogether.

The measure passed the state Senate but did not obtain enough votes to make it through the House before the end of the legislative year.
Mr Dunham said despite its failure to obtain passage, the conservative-led bill showed a "reconsideration" among those who are typically in favour of capital punishment.

Last year, Nebraska became the first traditionally conservative state to abolish the death penalty over a veto from the state's governor.
More than half the country - some 31 states - still allow executions.


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#2. Posted:
Tywin
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Looks like we have no choice but to use these decapitator machines.
#3. Posted:
Motivational
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It's about time. They need to make a more humane way of carrying out the death sentence, the lethal injection, electric chair and lethal gas are an absolute joke.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they introduced decapitating machines within the next couple of decades
#4. Posted:
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Motivational wrote It's about time. They need to make a more humane way of carrying out the death sentence, the lethal injection, electric chair and lethal gas are an absolute joke.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they introduced decapitating machines within the next couple of decades
Id say a bullet to the head but i think all the family's that choose to have a funeral will want an open casket.
#5. Posted:
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Father-Doug wrote
Motivational wrote It's about time. They need to make a more humane way of carrying out the death sentence, the lethal injection, electric chair and lethal gas are an absolute joke.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they introduced decapitating machines within the next couple of decades
Id say a bullet to the head but i think all the family's that choose to have a funeral will want an open casket.


Exactly. A bullet is completely painless and is instant compared to the stuff they do at the moment.

Personally, I don't agree with the death penalty because of the amount of innocents that are convicted and die but since there's nothing I can do about it, I would agree that a bullet to the head is better.

I honestly don't know how they're able to do the electric chair, considering what it does to the prisoners body. Thankfully we live in the UK

..the prisoner's eyeballs sometimes pop out and rest on [his] cheeks. The prisoner often defecates, urinates, and vomits blood and drool. The body turns bright red as its temperature rises, and the prisoner's flesh swells and his skin stretches to the point of breaking. Sometimes the prisoner catches fire....Witnesses hear a loud and sustained sound like bacon frying, and the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh permeates the chamber. (Ecenbarger, 1994)
#6. Posted:
ProfessorNobody
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It is strange to respond to my own post without quoting someone, but given that the general topic of whether or not capital punishment should be legal has cropped up, I will give my thoughts.

The concept of retribution and revenge has never made much sense to me. The death penalty does not undo the effects of the crime which has been committed.
It does not bring the victims of said crimes back to life, or back to health.

The death penalty is solely a mechanism for revenge. The only difference between Frontier Justice and what we call criminal justice today is that the person who passes the sentence, the person who ties the noose, and the person who pulls the lever must be dispassionate.

This is my philosophical objection to the death penalty, it can be argued against with ease because it is inherently opinionated.
The next point cannot be so easily refuted by any person who considers themselves to be ethical or moral interlocutors.

Like Motivational has already put forward, capital punishment does result in the deaths of innocent people. It is a rare occurrence, but it does happen.
In some cases, these people would still have been alive by the time the technology in criminal science was able to exonerate them, had they not been sentenced to death.
If you are a proponent of the death penalty, I encourage you to take a few moments to think about the stark reality of that fact.

An opponent of this view might say that there are some cases in which we just know that they are guilty.
We have CCTV footage of them killing someone, the gun has their fingerprints all over it, the victims blood is on all of their clothes and they were caught by a police officer running away down the street from where the victim was lying dead.

The problem with this standard is that crimes are rarely this perfect in terms of prosecution.
A standard must be set by the criminal justice system for death penalty cases in terms of evidence analysis and this bar will continuously be proven faulty as the capabilities of evidence analysis progress.
In short, if there is an intrinsically perfect scenario in which intentions and evidence all prove that the criminal is guilty beyond any possible suggestion otherwise then the death penalty would only be applicable in this scenario and anything beneath this scenario would be, by definition, imperfect and flawed.
It is possible for the criminal justice system to make mistakes and the death penalty removes the opportunity for those mistakes to be rectified by exoneration.

The exoneration rate for death row inmates in the US is 2.07%.
The exoneration rate for inmates serving life in the US is 0.188%.

This may at first glance appear to contradict my point. This shows that someone is more likely to be exonerated if they are on death row.
Consider three things.

1) The technology needed to exonerate an inmate may not exist yet. Someone who is sentenced to death at the age of 25 who will be executed at 35 may have been exonerated at 45.
2) This is like playing Russian roulette with the criminal justice system. If the multitude of factors which could lead to the exoneration of a death row inmate do not converge in the right way, that person will die sooner than they would have if they were sentenced to life.
3) The tax dollars spent on death row cases would be re-directed to the general population, ideally with 'lifers' being given preferential treatment. This would change these statistics drastically.

With every case being individual and open to a sliding scale increasing or decreasing the margin of error, the death penalty is not a risk that any ethically sound person can commit to taking.

The prison system has a number of flaws - non-violent offenders being imprisoned at all is a major one - and with the right reforms, the system can keep potentially death row worthy people away from the public and living in the correct conditions for the rest of their lives, leaving them open to exoneration.

This may not be a socially pleasing standard, it may insult your ideas about justice or punishment, but it is the only logical way of preventing further innocent deaths which we know for a fact will occur if capital punishment is not abandoned.
#7. Posted:
Yin
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I would say "good," but I am sure lawmakers are looking at other terrible ways to kill someone. The death penalty shouldn't exist. If people want to die, prison or otherwise, they should have that right for a physician-assisted suicide. As for it being mandatory to die, no.
#8. Posted:
Motivational
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Wordcraft wrote It is strange to respond to my own post without quoting someone, but given that the general topic of whether or not capital punishment should be legal has cropped up, I will give my thoughts.

The concept of retribution and revenge has never made much sense to me. The death penalty does not undo the effects of the crime which has been committed.
It does not bring the victims of said crimes back to life, or back to health.

The death penalty is solely a mechanism for revenge. The only difference between Frontier Justice and what we call criminal justice today is that the person who passes the sentence, the person who ties the noose, and the person who pulls the lever must be dispassionate.

This is my philosophical objection to the death penalty, it can be argued against with ease because it is inherently opinionated.
The next point cannot be so easily refuted by any person who considers themselves to be ethical or moral interlocutors.

Like Motivational has already put forward, capital punishment does result in the deaths of innocent people. It is a rare occurrence, but it does happen.
In some cases, these people would still have been alive by the time the technology in criminal science was able to exonerate them, had they not been sentenced to death.
If you are a proponent of the death penalty, I encourage you to take a few moments to think about the stark reality of that fact.

An opponent of this view might say that there are some cases in which we just know that they are guilty.
We have CCTV footage of them killing someone, the gun has their fingerprints all over it, the victims blood is on all of their clothes and they were caught by a police officer running away down the street from where the victim was lying dead.

The problem with this standard is that crimes are rarely this perfect in terms of prosecution.
A standard must be set by the criminal justice system for death penalty cases in terms of evidence analysis and this bar will continuously be proven faulty as the capabilities of evidence analysis progress.
In short, if there is an intrinsically perfect scenario in which intentions and evidence all prove that the criminal is guilty beyond any possible suggestion otherwise then the death penalty would only be applicable in this scenario and anything beneath this scenario would be, by definition, imperfect and flawed.
It is possible for the criminal justice system to make mistakes and the death penalty removes the opportunity for those mistakes to be rectified by exoneration.

The exoneration rate for death row inmates in the US is 2.07%.
The exoneration rate for inmates serving life in the US is 0.188%.

This may at first glance appear to contradict my point. This shows that someone is more likely to be exonerated if they are on death row.
Consider three things.

1) The technology needed to exonerate an inmate may not exist yet. Someone who is sentenced to death at the age of 25 who will be executed at 35 may have been exonerated at 45.
2) This is like playing Russian roulette with the criminal justice system. If the multitude of factors which could lead to the exoneration of a death row inmate do not converge in the right way, that person will die sooner than they would have if they were sentenced to life.
3) The tax dollars spent on death row cases would be re-directed to the general population, ideally with 'lifers' being given preferential treatment. This would change these statistics drastically.

With every case being individual and open to a sliding scale increasing or decreasing the margin of error, the death penalty is not a risk that any ethically sound person can commit to taking.

The prison system has a number of flaws - non-violent offenders being imprisoned at all is a major one - and with the right reforms, the system can keep potentially death row worthy people away from the public and living in the correct conditions for the rest of their lives, leaving them open to exoneration.

This may not be a socially pleasing standard, it may insult your ideas about justice or punishment, but it is the only logical way of preventing further innocent deaths which we know for a fact will occur if capital punishment is not abandoned.


Wow, that's an amazing reply. I agree with you completely.

Not to mention if someone is killed and their murdered is executed, the family probably wont get an apology from the killer, which is more important than their execution.

What's your opinion on the actual execution methods? Do you think they're fair?

If you haven't seen in detail the methods they use for execution, check this page out - [ Register or Signin to view external links. ]
#9. Posted:
ProfessorNobody
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Motivational wrote
Wordcraft wrote It is strange to respond to my own post without quoting someone, but given that the general topic of whether or not capital punishment should be legal has cropped up, I will give my thoughts.

The concept of retribution and revenge has never made much sense to me. The death penalty does not undo the effects of the crime which has been committed.
It does not bring the victims of said crimes back to life, or back to health.

The death penalty is solely a mechanism for revenge. The only difference between Frontier Justice and what we call criminal justice today is that the person who passes the sentence, the person who ties the noose, and the person who pulls the lever must be dispassionate.

This is my philosophical objection to the death penalty, it can be argued against with ease because it is inherently opinionated.
The next point cannot be so easily refuted by any person who considers themselves to be ethical or moral interlocutors.

Like Motivational has already put forward, capital punishment does result in the deaths of innocent people. It is a rare occurrence, but it does happen.
In some cases, these people would still have been alive by the time the technology in criminal science was able to exonerate them, had they not been sentenced to death.
If you are a proponent of the death penalty, I encourage you to take a few moments to think about the stark reality of that fact.

An opponent of this view might say that there are some cases in which we just know that they are guilty.
We have CCTV footage of them killing someone, the gun has their fingerprints all over it, the victims blood is on all of their clothes and they were caught by a police officer running away down the street from where the victim was lying dead.

The problem with this standard is that crimes are rarely this perfect in terms of prosecution.
A standard must be set by the criminal justice system for death penalty cases in terms of evidence analysis and this bar will continuously be proven faulty as the capabilities of evidence analysis progress.
In short, if there is an intrinsically perfect scenario in which intentions and evidence all prove that the criminal is guilty beyond any possible suggestion otherwise then the death penalty would only be applicable in this scenario and anything beneath this scenario would be, by definition, imperfect and flawed.
It is possible for the criminal justice system to make mistakes and the death penalty removes the opportunity for those mistakes to be rectified by exoneration.

The exoneration rate for death row inmates in the US is 2.07%.
The exoneration rate for inmates serving life in the US is 0.188%.

This may at first glance appear to contradict my point. This shows that someone is more likely to be exonerated if they are on death row.
Consider three things.

1) The technology needed to exonerate an inmate may not exist yet. Someone who is sentenced to death at the age of 25 who will be executed at 35 may have been exonerated at 45.
2) This is like playing Russian roulette with the criminal justice system. If the multitude of factors which could lead to the exoneration of a death row inmate do not converge in the right way, that person will die sooner than they would have if they were sentenced to life.
3) The tax dollars spent on death row cases would be re-directed to the general population, ideally with 'lifers' being given preferential treatment. This would change these statistics drastically.

With every case being individual and open to a sliding scale increasing or decreasing the margin of error, the death penalty is not a risk that any ethically sound person can commit to taking.

The prison system has a number of flaws - non-violent offenders being imprisoned at all is a major one - and with the right reforms, the system can keep potentially death row worthy people away from the public and living in the correct conditions for the rest of their lives, leaving them open to exoneration.

This may not be a socially pleasing standard, it may insult your ideas about justice or punishment, but it is the only logical way of preventing further innocent deaths which we know for a fact will occur if capital punishment is not abandoned.


Wow, that's an amazing reply. I agree with you completely.

Not to mention if someone is killed and their murdered is executed, the family probably wont get an apology from the killer, which is more important than their execution.

What's your opinion on the actual execution methods? Do you think they're fair?

If you haven't seen in detail the methods they use for execution, check this page out - [ Register or Signin to view external links. ]


The method by which an execution is carried out should be as quick and painless as possible.
Unfortunately, there is no perfect method of executing someone. A gunshot can go wrong, the electric chair is horrible, as you described, and many of the methods can leave the person who pulls the lever with severe psychological scarring.

If we are going to have a death penalty it should be - in my opinion - impersonal, mechanical, quick, and clean.
The clean part is so that the people viewing the death, to make sure that the sentence is carried out accordingly, are not also scarred for life by the event.
It should be quick because a death row convict has the right not to be subjected to cruel or unusual punishment. A slow death is the dictionary definition of cruel.
[Just as a side note here, many people advocate that the death penalty is a violation of this law, but given that the death penalty is legal in this hypothetical situation, it does not need to be discussed in those terms here.]
Impersonal and mechanical should not be too difficult to achieve with the amount of advances in technology being made every day. The impersonal aspect is a bit of a psychological mystery. Flicking a switch and knowing that two floors down someone is dying as a result of that action is very different to putting a gun to their head and pulling the trigger.
Given that the only difference here is the distance between executioner and criminal it is strange that this has any bearing on the executioners mental state at all.

Making a death consistently quick and clean is the problem. These two often conflict with one another.
For instance, squashing someone's head inbetween two large concrete slabs will end their cognitive functions and any knowledge they might have had of what is happening to them will be removed from existence. But this would obviously be a very messy and very shocking display to those witnessing it and for the clean up crew.

There is also the issue of what is perceived to be clean by one person, but not by another.
To one person, a quick incision through the back of the neck into the brain stem is a quick, clean, dignified way to execute someone.
To another person, this may be one of the most horrible displays of anti-surgery imaginable.

To summarize, I don't think that there is a dignified way to execute someone. But given the rationality of the situation, that revenge is good and that this person deserves to die, I don't understand why there has to be a nice way to kill these people.

I also don't understand why we, people who don't want the death penalty to be legal, have to engage in these hypothetical discussions when we don't want the mechanism by which they are plausible to be legal in the first place.
Those who want the death penalty to be legal need to answer these questions for themselves.

1) Why should the death penalty be legal?
2) Should convicts be entitled to quick and dignified deaths?
3) [If the answer to 2 is yes] By what method should they be killed?

Engaging in this discussion is interesting in a hypothetical fashion, but given that these conversations have real world consequences and could very well influence the beliefs of pro-death penalty advocates, I do not want to do their backwards thinking for them.

Unless the outcome of this conversation is, "There is no dignified way to kill someone." I don't want to engage in this conversation.
#10. Posted:
BJP
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I think the majority of common methods are less human than a firing squad.

Gas - Utterly horrible
Electric chair - Painful and does not kill first time all the time.
Injection - Studies show it feels like your insides are burning while you die.

Yet a firing squad or the method to kill people in sieges used by the SAS is instant and painless.

Firing squad, the person doing it doesn't know who is the killing shot. Its instant if done correctly.

Military method, Two bullets through the mouth, It is said to make it the most pain less thing possible. It is meant to cut off any feeling by paralysing you completely before you die from the second bullet.

BJP
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