cruel and unusual

(pictured above: pwn'd)

ok. so according to the fine folks over at gawker, a utah man on death-row has opted for the firing squad as his method of execution. apparently, this guy iced his attorney during an escape attempt, and probably did some other relatively heinous stuff. in utah, death-row inmates convicted after 2004 are given the needle, but those convicted beforehand still have a choice in how they are dispatched. utah is the only state to give the option of death by firing squad, a gentle reminder of the state's wild west past in which justice used to be administered with one hand on the good book (the revised and expanded good book at that) and the other on a six-gun.

if we're going to be in the business of killing things, the mark to aim for should be something that is as quick and painless as possible--a gunshot to the heart or the base of the skull does the trick nicely. if you want to get fancy you can inject someone with a cocktail of lethal chemicals, although i find lethal injection lacking in the "painless" category. if studies are to be believed, what frequently happens during lethal injection is that the person is still awake, just completely paralyzed. what fun. watching helplessly as your body suffocates strikes me as one of the worst ways to go. i'd rather be strapped to a chair and electrocuted. or guillotined.

all in all, i'm not a fan of the death penalty, although i'm not universally opposed to it. i had no problem with the execution of timothy mcveigh, and if we ever catch bin laden (before his kidneys do), i wouldn't be particularly perturbed by the thought of state-sanctioned killing heading his way. the world will not miss either of those men. nevertheless, capital punishment, if it is to be used at all, should be used sparingly. courts make mistakes. it's bad enough that we send innocent people to jail. executing an innocent person is sub-optimal for many self-evident reasons (although according to antonin scalia, it's not so terrible: "mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached"--man, i fucking hate that guy. when is nature going to flip the switch on him?). additionally, the death penalty is expensive. we'd probably be better served morally just taking all the money we'd spend offing some peckerwood and instead buy bread for hungry children (then again, one could make that argument for most things the government does. the point remains). oh yeah, and this whole eye-for-eye thing is antiquated and barbaric, and we should all be so shocked that it still happens in a country as civilized as america.

i'm being facetious. we shouldn't be shocked. america's not civilized.

+mc