http://angel-diaz-florida.blogspot.com/

i'm really torn on this one ... i am actually for the death penalty and there is no part of me that feels sorry that he didn't slip into unconsciousness within the 'usual' 2-3 minutes before his breathing and heartbeat stopped.

*shrugs*

Wish I heard about this from you know US news sources as opposed to British news services. Liberal media indeed.

Just so you know, by posting this clip I'm not in anyway sympathising with the bloke.
I'm all for the death penalty in certain cases.
But in these circumstances you'd think they could employ someone with the basic skills needed to hit a vein.

Train the person who does the damned injection to hit the arteries, wow even an orderly who misses an artery in an IV line gets railed nasty by the doctors. Ever seen an IV miss an artery?, big bubble of liquid in under the skin, and can lead to death.

Fireing squad hits the guy in the leg.... MAKE SURE THEY CAN SHOOT. Wow the incompetence is abounding. Thats my daily rant!

NordlichReiter, the term you want is air embolism. (The wiki article actually sucks, but I'm adding the link out of habit.)

In any case, I see this as more of a technological problem that should be considered separately from the moral issues of the death penalty. If you're gonna kill the guy, do it right, don't dick around.

not quite an air embolism, remy ... the technician would have actually had to inject air into his artery, which he failed to hit.

the single air bubble killer is just a myth anyway ... it would take a large bolus of air into the bloodstream to actually interrupt the flow of blood in the heart to kill someone ... mmhmm ... yeah!

basically, the person administering this lethal injection did not check for placement before actually injecting the drugs ... i can't see how they would miss doing that, since it becomes second nature to drawback on the syringe, but ... if this was any other person, the most common problems they would have suffered from this miss hit are usually an abscess or cellulitis.

interesting subject though!

dogs' right, phlebotomists needs to know their trade...Firing Squad. Heart Explodes. Short and humane.

thanks for the new word choggie.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

I've often thought that if I had to be put down - I would want to placed in a giant meat grinder with the power off but the blades all around me. And then someone flips the switch so my body is made into mince instantly, blocking most nerve pulses before they get a chance to reach my brain.

... yeah, I've often thought that.

Dag! that comment made my soda come up my nose

DEATH BY SIFT

I really don't understand how anyone can condone the death penalty in the 21st century...

No evidence is 100% conclusive (certainly not DNA tests 27 years ago when this unfortunate guy was charged with murder; and anyone who has a vague interest in science knows that fingerprints are hugely inaccurate, plus statistically no where near as unique as once thought). Even for religious reasons: the Bible says an eye for an eye, but stresses forgiveness more than anything...although I'm surprised that a Bush brother has stopped the Death Penalty (after the massive push by the rest of the US dynasty for more death).

Which countries have capital punishment?

Putting sumone to death in a developed counrty is a compleaty ubsurd and eval thing to do. i cnt belive annyone would think that killing sumone is the corect actioin to take for annything sumome has done.

allso i belive it costs more to put people to death than to hold them for life ( in manny casses )
mestakes are made and inosent people are put to death
you canot lern annything about sumone and why thay took there actoins once thay are dead
i havent seen anny evidence to sajest killing people reduces crime

the only time death pental makes sence would be when you are in a limitid situatoin like u cnt take hostages ore you simply donot have the means to ceep sumone who is potentaily dangerouse to people in a an enviroment that would keep them and you safe

i cnt belive people actualy put up with the fact in some states thay have death penalty i would have thought thousends apon thousends of people would protest it whats up with americans that thay dont do annything about sutch blatently obvously stupid things.

The death penalty is blatantly wrong for all and any possible scenario (in a humane society anyway: hence why the US and other backwards [China?] or 'third world' countries carry the punishment). Michie: the death penalty is still applicable in 68 out of 197 of these countries (via an excellent Wiki here).

Am for the death penalty under the right investigative conditions.

You can't argue with me that people like Charles Manson, Ted Bundy or others deserve a free ride on society for whatever ethical reason.

Most of the countries you mentioned have it because of despotism and corrupt goverment. In America it's a question of state reform, and it's not the same everywhere, Texas is probably the highest.

But really is it shocking that it exists in countries like Uzbekistan or China where political enemies can just vanish overnight?

Death Penalty is wrong even when the convicted commited the most disgusting and hainous crime.
First of all, you can NEVER be 100% sure that the person is really the guilty one. Maybe 99%, but there's always chance for error. And I think it's best not to punish 100 guilty men than punishing a single innocent one.
Second of all, there's absolutely no proof whatsoever that the death penalty could actually work in stopping crime making criminals be afraid of getting executed.
Thirdly, a civilized government and justice system CAN NOT stoop to acting the same as a murderer. It must act out of justice, not of vendetta or hate, and it must be an example to follow.
Fourth, I think it's inhumane and cruel keeping a person alive in a jail cell for months or even years when they know they are going to be executed. It's twisted.
That's all I think.

Here here, Empire. The death penalty is a filthy, barbaric practice. It has no place in civilised society and it needs to be left behind like slavery, torture, and religion.

We cannot move to the next stage in the development of the human species until we can overcome our ancient vices; revenge being one of them.

Blackstone Ratio, Tolerence to learn and life is worse. We all die.

Okay you need to explain how in cases like the BTK killer, Unabomber, God Sniper, Oklahoma City Bombing, Zodiac killer, Ted Bundy and Charles Mason there is a possible margin for error.

It's easy to take the utopian view and say that capital punishment should be abolished, but clearly the rule and enforcement of law keeps society in check. With rising population, comes rising prison populations, because of rising income inequality and differences in economic opportunities. You can't simply dictate change, see Iraq. Radicalism towards such ideas suffers from this, the belief of a higher morale stance without relation to the real world. Crime and capital punishment arose from social problems, they should be thus treated as such.

I think there are far more pressing concerns then abolishing the death penalty, oh like assuring economic equality?

Let the rest of the World develop to the levels the first world possesses and the same change in rational will take place.

i don't feel that the death penalty is blatantly wrong in a humane society ... there are just some individuals that are not and never will be productive members of our society. sad fact.

i feel that our current prison system does very little for recidivists (current and potential ones) ... i see very little reform here like there is in canada or sweden. i wish it were different ... i am surrounded by it daily. the institution where i work was actually formed by one of the pioneers in social reform (of the insane), dorthea dix.

do i believe in the death penalty for every situation? no ... are there times when an innocent man/woman has been found guilty? yes ... but those instances are becoming less and less with our advance technology in DNA tests.

as for reform and rehabilitation ... where i work, sometimes i feel like a fish swimming upstream ... *sigh*

If you were on Death Row and you were mentally-ill or worse innocent then i think you would have only one pressing concern.

It is pleasing to me that more areas of the world than at any other time in history practice state punishment without the use of death.

here's another pressing concern to think about ... what do you do with an individual that openly talks about (with pleasure) about the time he molested a 3 year old little girl ... he describes what he did in detail and how he enjoyed it ... how he hates the fact that he is still locked up when there are so many little girls out there ...

this would be a very small excerpt from one of my many patients who are with me for the rest of their life ... KROL (NGRI) patients used to be judged not guilty by reason of insanity, they were then sent to a psychiatric hospital until considered competent to stand trial based on a competency test, which is the ability to discern right from wrong and to aid in one's self defense ... then if they were considered competent, the person was placed on trial for the offense.

"Now, Krol (a judge) came along and challenged the procedure based on double jeopardy, with the result that patients were judged not guilty by reason of insanity and were placed in psychiatric hospitals under a civil involuntary commitment. This means that your Krol patients are treated like any other patient in the Hospital setting. They are under civil commitment."

what this means is that we, the treatment team (aka "the state") must prove that the patient is a danger to self and/or others in order to remain hospitalized ... if dangerous cannot be proven, the patient must be discharged by court order. (notice those two keywords??)

anyways ... it's very easy to "pretend" and "behave" knowing that you cannot be held under committment due to a court order ... AND that you cannot be tried again for your crime.

i digress ...

oh f.y.i. ... mr diaz had also been sentenced to life in prison in Puerto Rico for killing another but escaped prison and came to the United States.

time for bed ...

The victims of this sh-tbag more than grimaced a little when "Angel" shot them or hacked them to death with a machete.

"If we are to abolish the death penalty, I should like to see the first step taken by my friends the murderers."
-- Alphonse Karr (1808-1890)

Mercy toward the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.
--Adam Smith

I've seen reports from American media of investigations into such cases. That people have been underdosed to prolong the time taken to death. Or they use the paralysing agent, but not the pain supressing agent so that it appears as though they're peaceful. Conditions that are apparently not even fit for animal euthenasia. Disgraceful.

I would not be suprised at all if many of these cases were of malice toward the convict.

If you're gonna do this, get an uncorruptable organisation to do these killings or just DON'T do it at all. (Need I point out the likelyhood of finding one of these?)

Edit: (To take a side..)
You just cannot be black and white about the usefulness of death as punishment - for the reasons that Prof. Agnus Heller(sp?) from the New School for Social Research said in her interview on Penn & Teller:

"Deterrance is the worst most fraudulent principle. The death penalty has no deterrent effect because murder is comitted for three different reasons or motivations. First passion. Second, profit. And third, compulsion.
- If it's for profit, the people who kill for profit do it very rationally. They are always convinced that they will not be caught:
- Second, passion crimes cannot be deterred - if you hate your husband that much that you kill your husband, no punishment can deter you.
- And the worst is ofcourse, crimes by compulsion. If a sexual criminal kills a child, for example. Unfortunately, these are the kind of criminal, violent acts which cannot be deterred at all because it is a compulsion."

There is no proof that harsh punishment will completely deter the future committals of crime. So why not be humane and keep them locked away, so that they may never harm again.

Dag, that's one of the funniest comments ever typed and I do actually agree with you - it's strangely a method I hadn't yet considered.

I am for a federal death penalty mostly for the McVeighs of the world, but not for the county-by-county (read: death penalty only for the poor and minorities) that is practiced in the United States.

Deterrence is indeed a fraudulent principle, but I am equally skeptical of the cost/benefit analysis of the anti-DP crowd.

Ladybug raises a salient point that is not addressed by the "keep 'em humanely locked away" anti-DP crowd. Prisons are miserable places with not only a vicious amount of convict/guard or convict/convict crimes, but places where crime networks (such as the Aryan Brotherhood) are frequently organized to run drug/murder rings within prisons, between prisons, and even orchestrate crime rings on the outside.

And I won't even go into the procedural and legal nightmares that allow convicted murderers to go free (just saw a case near my home where a man who killed his son and another man in 1987, was freed in 2005, and then killed a woman and her one year old child last week).

The sad fact of the matter is that the mere threat of a DP sentence allows prosecutors to get higher non-DP sentences through plea deals than they would otherwise in good cases (i.e. you have some physical evidence), but where witnesses can't or won't testify.

A moral and enlightened society recognizes evil, and recognizes that some persons cannot be rehabilitated or corrected. A moral society also deals with its procedural failings.

The death penalty is wrong, no human should have the right to end another's live without their consent, period. It doesn't work for one, people will always commit crimes. If I had the choice between a life in prison or death, it would be death. Crime prevention in all countries seems to be about deterrents. Maybe if more time and money was spent into dealing with the causes of crime, there would be less. I am glad I live in a country where there is no capital punishment

There are also two sides to deterrence. Will a criminal audience viewing the tortured death of Mr. Diaz think twice about committing crimes? Probably not.

Will Mr. Diaz commit any more crimes either within prison or upon release? Also probably not. Utilitarian to the extreme to be sure.

Statements like "The death penalty is always wrong" or that it is "blatantly wrong for any and all possible scenarios" just strike me as fanciful as statements like "Jesus was always right about turning the other cheek because He was Jesus." Both are faith-based projections of a view of a utopian society without much regard to the realities of the failings of man, criminal sentencing, and criminal rehabilitation.

The United States is not terribly serious about treating prisons as rehabilitative environments and removing the death penalty won't really affect this side of the issue. There is certainly no political motivation to provide funding to make prisons rehabilitative environments

If you are serious about opposing the death penalty, then to a certain extent you must believe in individual salvation. But I think that removing the possibility of death would be damaging to criminal litigation in the United States. I believe that most anti-DP advocates want a dark, closed, but sterile box where 'the worst of the worst' are kept and a sort of a kennel for the rest of the general prison population. It just doesn't deal with all of the interconnected systemic issues.

Rickegee, for once: I think you've completely missed the point (that I stated anyway). This is not a theologicsl debate, but one of basic human rights (the right to live). No-one has the right to decide who is worthy of existence and who isn't (both the criminal and the US government murderers). It's hypocritical, unethical and in-effective on crime rates (surely: gun control would have a much larger effect on the murder-rate?)

For instance: here in the (relatively sane) UK, we've had no capital punsishment for 40 years - I guess it's back to our government to show the way forward in basic human rights (like slavery: abolished in England in 1807 and the US by 1865). In no way do I defend any kind of murder (hence my stance) - the best punishment is a life of confinement with only your mind for company, dependent on the effectiveness of the law...which is obviously not so good across the Atlantic.

The US is still in the mind-frame of the 19th century - as it's the only 'developed' western government which carries the death penalty...

SHITE. Accidental downvote. Ugh. I hate when I do that.

As for myself, I support a federal death penalty with stricter regulation and oversight. Not much I can think of right now to add to the conversation, other than that there are some people who offer little else but evil and pain to our society. These people deserve death.

Upvote to cancel out for rembar

benjee:

I was hoping that you weren't going the religion route, particularly since you are best source for great atheistSift.

And perhaps I would be in absolute agreement with you if I lived in the UK. It is difficult to compare America to the UK because there is so much more violent crime here.

And I think ethical murder exists. A late term D and X abortion to save the life of a mother is an ethical murder, for instance. Having a SWAT team shoot a hostage taker to save others would be ethical. Both government sponsored.

But I share many of your qualms about giving a government the power to kill its citizens without the hint of duress.

I won't reiterate why I find a limited DP is justified since my previous posts do that. I do think that the DP is tied into many other things besides deterrence and is a necessary philosophical evil for the level and types of horrendous crimes present in the U.S. And I believe firmly that there are some choices a person can make that strips his/her right to choose to continue to exist.

I'm not taking any kind of 'religous route' Rick - you were ('fanciful as statements like "Jesus was always right about turning the other cheek because He was Jesus." Both are faith-based projections'?) I'm an anti-theist - I dislike any form of organised religion (of which, ironically: atheism is becoming one). If you read my last comment - I was saying to you that this wasn't a theological debate!

Where's the immediate threat of further murder victims when a prisoner is being injected with a lethal substance in a sealed compartment? I see very little relevance from your point of ethical murder; both examples are of course acceptable as an un-neccessary death can be avoided (the whole point I'm trying to get across: un-necessary death!?)

You misunderstood me. I was expressing relief that you were not seriously citing some Bible in your previous post. And while it is true that duress may change the equation for the ethics of a murder, the level of the atrocity of the crime also changes the equation.

And it appears from the Diaz case that a death penalty would have prevented the unnecesary death of the innocent after Mr. Diaz escaped from Puerto Rico.

In the end, it is a flawed system and merely the utopian wish for a nicer system will not really effect constructive change.

The death penalty is always about revenge. That's the problem with it....they claim this or that reason, but it's always about "getting even". And in the end, killing this person doesn't "make up" for any crime they've committed, and everyone who wanted revenge on them is less of a person for getting it.

As someone already mentioned, these "accidents" are almost assuredly the vigilantiism of someone who thinks that a quick death is too good for these people. But this IS murder, whether or not the person committed a crime (which is far from a guarantee remembering the way the system works in the States, ie, if you have money, you're innocent, otherwise, good luck). No moral OR religious person should condone this.

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