Yes, but he's coming at it from a religious perspective.

And obviously I've changed mine the last few years.

But Christians are on the decline, and their influence even more so. Maybe not in this state, but in general. So with the decline of drugs to administer, and with no one coming up with new and creative ways to kill for the state, I see the death penalty making its way out.

4/27/2017 3:05:28 PM

Quote :

"he's coming at it from a religious perspective."

Not really. He mentioned religion because of the thread title. His personal approach to the issue was not from a religious place.

Quote :

"But Christians are on the decline, and their influence even more so"

It's not about Christians man.

The support for capital punishment, among the general population, is declining. That will continue drive the death penalty out the door...not the state of US Christianity, or the inability to secure lethal injection drugs.

4/27/2017 3:40:20 PM

Quote :

"Oklahoma just approved NO (Nitrogen Oxide) gas chambers recently. I'm not convinced its especially humane. We have plenty of evidence from earlier years of horrific executions when they where using cyanide gas, which kills people way more quickly than NO or CO would. Those "botched" executions where the original catalyst for developing [quote]You must not follow the debate very closely. The number of "possibly innocent" people executed and arguments against the state being able to take a life are far and away the crux of anti-death penalty arguments."

The arguments getting the most press are the histrionics. And they are the ones being invoked in court, where it actually matters. That's what I was getting at.

4/27/2017 6:10:46 PM

I've often wondered why we don't use Hyperbaric champers for the death penalty... the overhead is maybe a little more; but afterward its just a pressure vessel with a vacuum pump that will need a little preventative maintenance every so often. Just slowly drop the air pressure in the thing until it reaches an effective altitude of like 30K Ft... a human passes out in a minute or two... and dies in like a hour, less if after they pass out you really crank up the pressure difference.

4/27/2017 7:27:58 PM

Altitude sickness is not pleasant

4/27/2017 8:43:33 PM

I've often wondered why we don't use police for the firing squad. That way, the state gets to put people to death and police officers get to use their de facto right to shoot "bad dudes". Everybody wins.

[Edited on April 27, 2017 at 11:41 PM. Reason : n]

4/27/2017 11:40:48 PM

Sentence evil people to become NC State sports fans. They'll die a horrendously slow and painful death.

4/28/2017 7:01:11 PM

^^^ maybe after you've re-oxygenated, but while it's happening you're largely oblivious. (at least I was, when I did it) And is it any worse than the electric chair? I'm just saying, I think it's a pretty humane and inexpensive execution option.

4/29/2017 1:02:11 PM

Yeah, more sorta just drunk feeling when you're acutely hypoxic.

4/29/2017 11:50:14 PM

Am inert gas gives you that sensation much quicker

4/30/2017 7:42:32 PM

Quote :

"The support for capital punishment, among the general population, is declining."

It certainly appears so. And yet, at the same time, I have to wonder.

Certainly more and more people are opposed to what I might call the "common" death penalty, which involves the state executing a mentally handicapped person, or a minority who had inadequate legal representation, or some other poor schmuck of questionable guilt and frankly less than terrifying murder. And so when you ask, "Do you support the death penalty?" a lot of people say "No." (Though not, it should be reiterated, a majority - 60% of Americans still support it)

But my guess is that the numbers would change for specific criminals or categories of criminals. There's some evidence to back this up - support shot up immediately after Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of espionage, presumably because giving nuclear secrets to the Russians was perceived as such a massive betrayal and threat. I wonder if there was a tick up after Dylann Roof got sentenced to die, or if there will be after the sentence is carried out? There's a fuck that I bet more than 60% of Americans are OK seeing with a needle in his arm. Had we captured Osama bin Laden and put him on trial, my suspicion is that you'd have seen a dramatic increase. Nobody's opposed to killing Osama. They might have been opposed to doing it humanely.

By this post I'm not trying to make any particular argument about the death penalty (though I have always been and remain a strong proponent of it), but rather the polling. I have my doubts about it.

5/3/2017 10:05:07 AM

I read the thread, but couldn't figure out what yall came up with.

5/5/2017 3:50:12 PM

^^^ prob depends on what percentage you have it at. From a partial-pressure perspective, the effect on the body should be the same in terms of hypoxia.

BTW, I have gotten hypoxic like you read about both in a hypobaric chamber and with a Reduced-Oxygen Breathing Device (http://www.environics.com/product/reduced-oxygen-breathing-device-robd-0) as part of my aviation training over the years. The ROBD basically just has you breathing lots of nitrogen and reduced oxygen, but you're just sitting in a room at ambient pressure, breathing through a mask. You can even bring the machine into a flight simulator for some really realistic training.

Now, this is going from memory about stuff that I did probably...7 and 12 years ago or so. I seem to remember the ROBD having a more rapid, severe onset, whereas the chamber was a little more gradual and insidious. However, I expect that the ROBD simulated a higher altitude, due to there being no threat of DCS (the bends) as in the actual chamber, and I also assume that the ROBD went from sea level to XX,XXX feet near instantly when activated, while the chamber took a little time to lower the pressure.

(they could do a rapid decompression, with a bang and vapor formation and stuff, but I'm sure they were limited on the simulated altitude to which they'd deliberately expose us to that).

so, all in all, I'm pretty sure there would be no difference between inert gas/nitrogen and simply low pressure, other than you could achieve a much lower partial pressure with the nitrogen without having to worry about your victim getting bent just before succumbing to hypoxia.

[Edited on May 5, 2017 at 9:36 PM. Reason : ]

[Edited on May 5, 2017 at 9:38 PM. Reason : ]

5/5/2017 9:35:41 PM

Still wildly inconsistent

5/14/2019 12:12:36 AM

No, you and John Oliver just went to the same school of discussing the death penalty. You're against it across the board, but you decide to drill into one specific aspect of it that you think will cause the pro-death-penalty camp to throw up their hands and say, "holy fuck, I never thought of that!" Then you dismiss any response to the effect that we did think of that, on the grounds that you just don't like the death penalty to begin with.

Like I said four years ago, this was never intended to be a theological or even plain logical debate thread. This was intended to be an anti-death-penalty thread. Which is fine, but don't waste time pretending otherwise.

5/15/2019 5:36:05 PM

I don't think that either Dylann Roof or Osama bin Laden should have received the death penalty.

Is the idea that the state killing them is going to reduce the number of potential hate crimes and terrorist attacks in the future?

5/15/2019 6:03:26 PM

Osama bin Laden, alive and in jail, would be a serious threat on every level. He would certainly attempt to continue leading terrorist activities from within prison, and perhaps more than any other prisoner we've ever had he would have drawn breakout attempts or hostage-taking with a view to securing his release. Killing OBL was the only safe choice, which is why even Obama happily had it done without benefit of a trial.

Roof, as far as I know, has given no indication that he regrets his crime or would not do the same again given the opportunity. To the contrary, he has expressed disgust with people who have reformed themselves from being white nationalist criminals. In short he has given us ample reason to believe that he would commit similar crimes if he had the opportunity. There is one sure way to deny him that opportunity and I favor using it.

The idea isn't that it will deter other hate crimes. The idea is that it will prevent an unrepentant, violent, hateful criminal from committing future hate crimes.

[Edited on May 16, 2019 at 12:16 AM. Reason : ]

5/16/2019 12:15:02 AM

^^ I'm not any wild advocate for the death penalty, but i support executing OBL and Dylan Roof regardless of any prevention of hate crimes or terrorist attacks, either by them or anyone else, because fuck OBL and Dylan Roof.

if you meet a certain threshold, "fuck 'em" is a good enough reason for me...and generally, if you aren't so bad that no reason is needed beyond that (even if practical reason may exist, as in a case like OBL), then maybe you don't need to be executed to begin with.



i am simultaneously skeptical of the death penalty and not squeamish about killing people who suck. It's sort of like what GrumpyGOP was alluding to halfway up this page. I wouldn't say I'd poll as anti-death penalty, but I'm lukewarm on it and think the way we administer it is problematic. I also don't buy some of the justifications for it (deterrence, etc)...but if I could be offered legal and civil immunity, I'd go smite the shit out of some people personally. People like Dylan Roof? The government could feed him alive to hogs for all I care.

[Edited on May 16, 2019 at 12:34 AM. Reason : it should be only for really, REALLY above and beyond horrific crimes, where guilt is certain.]

5/16/2019 12:20:52 AM