Can't Believe this Headline: Witness: Executed man's 'head just snapped off'

[spanone]

This is on the CNN webpage. Jeez, seems we've become so desensitized to killing and death...

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/01/15/iraq.executions/index.html

[itsmesgd]

1. whoops, I hate it when that happens

my pet bird's head keeps falling off as well.

Sure we believe the "news". It was an accident. Accident #__________?

[BayCityProgressive]

2. it is disgusting

I nearly threw up when i read the description. How could someone even do this?

[itsmesgd]

3. how could we do half the stuff that we have done?

we are some seriously evil people and we will get ours one day soon. not a threat, but a fear

[spanone]

4. Why can't we teach the Iraqis a more humane way to kill people...oops an oxymoran

[cdnwannabe]

7. Yep, we'll get ours....karma's a great big....

bitch, especially for BushCo!

[Midlodemocrat]

5. I nearly threw up when I read the description of the two

shaking with fear. Yes, I know they were bad men, but state sanctioned murder turns my stomach.

[frogcycle]

8. actually

this is a significant risk in hangings. part of the reason there were professional hangmen back when it was much more common. The length of the fall has to be calculated pretty carefully based on the weight, to ensure they don't just hang there turning purple for several minutes if they don't fall far enough, and that this doesn't happen if too far. Design and placement of the noose is critical as well. Ghastly topic, but an actual high-skill avocation. When the US military hanged convicted Japanese war criminals in Guam after WWII, they brought in a hangman from the Philipines - one of only two remaining at that time in the US military. My dad had to locate him.

[roamer65]

6. I hear all of this and it really makes me...

thank the cloud beings that I live in a state that ended the death penalty 160 years ago. It is just sickening, gruesome and wrong.

Michigan was the first English speaking government to ban the death penalty in 1846, and has had no executions since statehood in 1837 and we are going to keep it that way!

[frogcycle]

11. agreed, sort of

I still harbor a desire to eliminate "the worst of the worst". I don't know if its vengeance or what, but given that i don't harbor any particular allusions about the "sanctity of human life" vs that of animals, plants, and the ecosystem as a whole, i look at it as a pragmatic solution to the need to "cull" the worst. Sure, locking them up forever is an option, but what's the point of that?

We euthanize nearly 10,000 unwanted pets a day and think nothing of it.
I think it is stupid and somehow lacks finality that we continue to house and feed John Gacy and the like. But if the majority are willing to foot the bill vs just jabbing him with a needle and being done with it, so be it. Just don't tell me it is somehow "morally superior."

Anyway, for argument's sake, if you stipulate that you are going to kill some, then the big deal over "humane" ways to do it is much ado about nothing. There is nothing "humane" about killing someone. It should not be messy and disgusting in my opinion, should not be a spectacle, because that can and will have negative influence on the observers. The lethal injection approach seems better than most, in that the subject is rendered unconscious (when done right) and then the actual death is without overt physical violence. If it is a pragmatic decision by a society to kill rather than warehouse, then the euthanasia approach seems preferable. You cannot prevent them knowing it is coming, and "suffering" with anticipation. And once they are dead, whatever negative experience they had is gone, just like with those drugs that make you forget the experience of surgery. If you don't remember it, then you didn't suffer, or so the conventional wisdom goes. Well the dead guy doesn't remember that he felt something and grimaced, does he?

So the whole thing about being "humane" is really a matter of minimizing the disgust and general angst of the observers and participants. In our sanitized western world, we are disgusted by such spectacles as dragging bodies through the streets, putting heads on pikes, etc. The Iraqis have a tradition of abusing the body of a slain enemy. They aren't disgusted by it - it is satisfying to them. Some Native Americans took scalps of their enemies.

Our efforts to impose our views of whether/how to execute people are as stupid as our efforts to impose our form of government. 'tain't gonna work, folks. get over it. might as well try to convince a crocodile to be a vegetarian.

[JitterbugPerfume]

9. is it less humane than lethal injection?

electric chair? firing squad etc?

The death penalty ITSELF is barbaric.

[Virginia Dare]

10. Good thing we're so much more civilized now than we were..

thousands of years ago....:eyes:

[TahitiNut]

12. The rope allowed a drop of 8' when about 6' was needed.

The drop charts are NOT rocket science. Every jurisdiction with hanging as a form of captial punishment has had them. For a guy that weighed about 175 lbs., a drop distance of about 5'11" or 6' was called for. According to reports, they used 8'. It was, then, inevitable that the victim would be decapitated. Inevitable. Even amateurs should know better.