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Kenneth Smith ‘struggled for life’ for 22 minutes in Alabama nitrogen gas execution: Updates (www.independent.co.uk)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/news@lemmy.world
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“Kenny just began to gasp for air repeatedly and the execution took about 25 minutes total.”

Pretty compassionate way to kill a person.

Once again, the Law in the south is brutal.

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[–] 28 points 2 years ago (4 children)

When is America going to learn that you can't punish murder with murder? You are literally saying "rules for thee but not for me."

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I once saw a slogan on a button at a street vendor in Washington D.C. "Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?" It's stuck with me after two decades.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    I don't know that we do it to make any such statement to the guilty party. I personally think we do it to 1. deter others from going down that path for fear of the consequences, and 2. remove an individual from society who has shown themselves incapable (in the most malicious and extreme way) of properly functioning in society. They are a danger to society, therefore they need to be removed. Obviously you could make the argument that we could simply banish them somewhere or lock them up for the remainder of their lives, but in my personal opinion that's not definitive enough. They could escape, be let out early, and harm someone else.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Or they could be innocent.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    That's entirely possible, no system is perfect, but rather than countering my statement with something that happens the least, perhaps you could offer up an idea on how to handle what happens the most. How do you think we should handle maliciously evil (for lack of a better word) people who commit heinous crimes?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    What should you punish murder with? Genuinely asking. I see many who want to do away with prisons and switch to rehabilitation. In some cases I can certainly understand that, and I am against for profit prisons, but I also know that a certain portion of society is just fundementally born with dysfunctional brains and no amount of rehabilitation will ever correct that. What do you do with the person who is sadistic and sociopathic in their disdain for other human life?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Death is the easy way out. Make them understand and regret their actions, then have to live with them. If that's psychologically impossible then they belong in a mental hospital, where they should have been before committing heinous acts.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    I'm against the death penalty but that's a terrible argument against it. It's not hypocritical to jail someone who was falsely imprisoning their victim. The state has a monopoly on violence, which means a monopoly on punishing wrongdoers, controlled by the will of the people.

    The state is allowed to do all sorts of things individual people can't. It has a different role. It taxes, it enforces justice, it regulates business, it provides services that the private sector won't.

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