Utah Attorney General Tweets Execution Order 556
Kilrah_il writes "In an all-time low for Internet use, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff used Twitter to announce to the public his approval of the execution of convicted murderer Ronnie Lee Gardner. 'I just gave the go ahead to Corrections Director to proceed with Gardner's execution. May God grant him the mercy he denied his victims,' the attorney general wrote. The AG's 7,000 followers retweeted the message further on and soon many replied concerning the awfulness of tweeting the execution of a human being. 'Mr. Shurtleff was doing nothing unusual; politicians and news organizations now routinely send out tweets to alert people to the latest developments. But as Twitter users digested endless breaking news flashes alerting them to the death of a man by firing squad in the United States, for some Mr. Shurtleff's remarks stood out from the rest.'"
So ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So ... (Score:5, Insightful)
What worries me is the notion that politicians might begin to use twitter and other internet communication as a way to avoid interacting with the public(and the risk of being heckled or having a shoe or two thrown at 'em).
Re:So ... (Score:5, Insightful)
What worries me is the notion that politicians might begin to use twitter and other internet communication as a way to avoid interacting with the public
They are already doing this. Notice how there aren't too many House Democrats doing town halls [cbsnews.com] this summer? Why face our Consistency and justify our agenda when it's much easier to hide behind the Congressional leadership?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not sure why that was modded troll, since the link was informative and even mainstream, but I digress. Besides, I'm sure both sides of the aisle are doing the same.
I'm sure there are plenty of politicians that want to use the easy and cheap method of blogging and tweeting information since there is no rebuttal, except on different pages/sites. Now they can be even MORE disconnected from the rest of us. To be fair, there are plenty of bloggers that attack politicians, and often what they are blogging abou
Re:So ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Notice how there aren't too many House Democrats doing town halls [cbsnews.com] this summer? Why face our Consistency and justify our agenda when it's much easier to hide behind the Congressional leadership?
They say that the townhalls were taken over by people screaming at them, not giving them a chance to respond, justify, or even interact with the protesters. The videos that I saw seemed to back them up. I expect elected officials to answer to the voters, I don't expect them to waste their time being screamed at by people who quite clearly are there just to prevent any discussion.
That goes for both sides of the political spectrum. Whether its a republican or democrat politician talking, doing shit like that should get you tased.
Re:So ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, get your worries in perspective.
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So what happened to... not infringing on God's right to judge who goes to hell and who doesn't... or for that matter, "thou shalt not kill"?
I'd take sunscreen to the grave, just to be on the safe side.
Re:whoopie (Score:5, Interesting)
or for that matter, "thou shalt not kill"?
The word "kill" is widely held to be a mistranslation, to my understanding. The more proper translation would be "murder", which means that certain forms of killing may or may not be allowed by such a statement.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:whoopie (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:whoopie (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:whoopie (Score:4, Interesting)
Most, including myself, consider the death penalty to be justice.
Re:whoopie (Score:4, Interesting)
Most, including myself, consider the death penalty to be justice.
Justice is when the offended party is made whole. You steal $100 from me, you give back my $100, possibly with interest. You can not make whole a person who is dead. You can't make the victim's family whole by killing the murderer. The death penalty is about revenge. It's about hoping the murderer experiences the same suffering and fear that the victim or victims purportedly felt, and that sentiment is reflected in nearly every statement I've ever read by a death penalty supporter. If you're going to support state-sponsored killing, at least be honest about what you're supporting. Revenge killing doesn't have the same antiseptic ring to it as the death penalty but at least it's truthful.
Re:whoopie (Score:4, Interesting)
"Justice" that you can't take back when DNA evidence exonerates the convict.
Re:whoopie (Score:5, Insightful)
Well considering that god then goes on to tell the Israelites to murder other tribes and rape their women, I'd say the translation is pretty much irrelevant anyway. The Ten Commandments should have been called "The Ten Things You Should Not Do, Unless You Really Want To".
Re:whoopie (Score:4, Insightful)
Shouldn't that be "The Ten Things You Shouldn't Do Unless You Do Them At My Insistence Or In My Name"?
Re:whoopie (Score:4, Insightful)
"As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves." - Deut. 20:14
"So that is what the Benjamites did. While the girls were dancing, each man caught one and carried her off to be his wife. Then they returned to their inheritance and rebuilt the towns and settled in them." - Judges 21:23 (read the preceding chapters to get a context, as well)
"Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man." - Numbers 31:17-18
I'm sure all those virgins were quite willing after being kidnapped or watching their families being slaughtered.
Then again, this is the same religion that said that rape could be used to get yourself a wife, as long as you were willing to pony up some cash to daddy for taking his property without asking.
"If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay the girl's father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives." - Deut. 22:28-29
And what do you do with rape victims?
"If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death—the girl because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man's wife. You must purge the evil from among you." - Deut 22:23-24
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure it's a mistranslation as much as a change in the English language since the KJV was translated 300 some years ago. People "got it" then, but now our use of the word kill has slightly different connotations. You're right; modern translations do use murder there.
Re:whoopie (Score:4, Informative)
If a married person has sex with someone else's husband or wife...
If a married couple has intercourse during the woman's period...
Being a fortune teller...
Working on Saturday...
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Especially if you consider the Bible to be internally consistent, the same God wouldn't say to both kill and not kill, therefore they must be different acts.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:whoopie (Score:5, Informative)
Widely held to be a mistranslation by whom?
By linguists. The Hebrew word "hariga" means killing, whereas "retzach" means murder. "Retzach" is the word used in the ten commandments. You're welcome to dislike the Bible, but this particular complaint is unfounded.
Re:whoopie (Score:4, Informative)
Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. -Romans 12:19
To me belongeth vengeance and recompense; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste. -Deuteronomy 32:35
Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the LORD. -Leviticus 19:18
The bible's take on the subject is pretty clear. Reinterpreting scripture to get what you want isn't exactly a new phenomenon.
Re:whoopie (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, please. Get over this nonsensical idea that there is such a thing as "the Bible's take" on any subject. Romans, Deuteronomy and Leviticus were written by different people with different agendas at different times to different audiences in different contexts.
Even most mainstream Christian scholars will tell you that.
Re:whoopie (Score:5, Interesting)
What if you had a wedding, and the bridal march was done by some guys farting, or your Masters Degree was on a post-it note?
Some forms of communication are just not considered to be appropriate for some types of information.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Didn't someone say "the medium is the message?"
cool strawman, dude (Score:5, Funny)
Re:whoopie (Score:4, Funny)
Who the fuck are you to decide that he should be banned. He's probably innocent anyway. Maybe you should spend a few years posting on slashdot before you finally go to hell you worthless sack of shit.
So the residents of Utah (Score:5, Insightful)
Follow their AG on twitter in order to stay in touch with their government, but they don't want to hear the icky stuff? Is that right?
Re:So the residents of Utah (Score:4, Insightful)
So the residents of Utah follow their AG on twitter in order to stay in touch with their government, but they don't want to hear the icky stuff? Is that right?
Put out a press release and everyone will hear about it on the nightly news or in a print/online paper.
Twitter just doesn't have the gravitas (yet?) to be considered an appropriate venue to announce an execution.
Re:So the residents of Utah (Score:5, Insightful)
Who decides that? Who do we consult to find out if it's appropriate to read something on the Internet opposed to printed media?
Re:So the residents of Utah (Score:4, Insightful)
Who decides that? Who do we consult to find out if it's appropriate to read something on the Internet opposed to printed media?
The large numbers of Twitter users who spoke up to say how tasteless the AG's tweet was?
If you want to commission a formal poll, go ahead.
But the public has already spoken up on the matter.
You can go read their responses 140 characters at a time.
Re:So the residents of Utah (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, you can't use the number of people who "spoke up" as evidence of public outcry because there's probably just as many who didn't speak up in their agreement because it's rather "uncool" to tweet cheers to such a tweet. I'd say it's far less acceptable to tweet something like: "Good! He deserved it!" than it is to tweet: "That's terrible."
Since you probably follow people of your same mindset, you likely saw a bias representation of the event and assume it's "public outcry." The BBC post isn't any better.
There's a bit too much sensationalism going on here, including you.
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The only way that Mark Shurtleff is going to fail in a re-election bid is to get caught sleeping with a minor (male or female.... take your pick), committing some other felony, or voluntarily stepping down from office. Only cannon fodder will even run against him within the Republican party, so he doesn't even have any real threat in terms of getting re-nominated.
The major opposition to him has been with the polygamous communities in southern Utah, as he has been enforcing the anti-polygamy laws. He feels
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If the Attorney General's tweet was tasteless, what does that say about the fact that he'd just signed an order commanding agents of the state to kill a human being? People are okay with executions as long as they don't have to hear about them.
Re:So the residents of Utah (Score:4, Insightful)
Although not a perfect analogy, what if he signed documents for the execution using a big red crayon instead of a pen? Equivalent functionality by no means implies equivalent meaning.
Re:So the residents of Utah (Score:5, Insightful)
I still don't understand how Twitter is a "Big Red Crayon" and The Utah Times is somehow "A Fine Calligraphy Pen."
The amount of sensational journalism that happens (including the summary) makes me feel Twitter is just as respectable as any other news outlet.
Re:So the residents of Utah (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think anyone would be offended at the "icky stuff" if he would just save it for the press conference or some other formal communication instead of twitter.
Re:So the residents of Utah (Score:4, Insightful)
(responsible in the sense of "in charge", not as in "to blame").
There's a difference?
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Interesting, violence is just fine, as long as it is meted out against those you've decided "disrupt orderly society"?
How very humanitarian of you.
Of course, we are infallible, and no innocent man has ever [innocenceproject.org] been sent to his death.
You'd have no problem with being on the firing squad of one of those executions, too, I get the feeling.
"An acceptable cost for an orderly society", most likely...
Re:So the residents of Utah (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd cheerfully join a firing squad or spring the trap on a gallows.
Hey, look, it's Internet Tough Guy!
Lots of people like to brag about how easy they'd find it to kill people under various circumstances (execution, war, and self-defense are the most popular ones) but in the real world, most people who have to kill their fellow human beings under any circumstances are deeply affected by it. And those who aren't? They're psychopaths, and there's a good chance they'll be on death row themselves one of these days.
So which one are you: naive or nutcase? I'm betting on the former.
An all time low? I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a good thing, regardless of your stance on capital punishment.
The most important aspect of the internet, in my opinion, is that it shoves transparency down the throat of government.
For better or worse, this Governor's name and decision is now tied irrevocably to his decision to sign the execution order. He is accountable and his constituents and other voters around the country know what he did.
This is as it should be.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How on Earth is this a good thing?
Tweeting something like this puts it on the same level as the idiot twittering "I just took a huge crap LOL WTF!!111oneone!"... it's NOT appropriate.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, I noticed that just immediately after I posted. You always miss the *one* thing...
Anyway, my mistake comes from living in Texas (long enough for the cumulative brain damage to be noticeable), where the governor's signature does, rather infamously [wikipedia.org], go on execution orders.
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It's called "principles" - you don't give them up under special occasions, or else they're just whims.
Nice editorializing (Score:5, Insightful)
Tweeting a legal and properly appealed capital conviction is the "all-time low for internet use", but I suppose that using the internet to distribute Jihad snuff films like Daniel Pearl or using the internet to recruit racial and religious hate is just fine.
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When you have a radical, religious, fascist fanatic writing blogs all over the Internet, you do not expect him to show some decency. From the AG of the great democracy, USA, I expect a bit more. That is why I wrote "all-time low". Not because it's the worst we've seen, but because I still believe that the taking of someone's life, no matter your stance on capital punishment, deserves a bit more than 140 characters in Twitter.
Re:Nice editorializing (Score:5, Insightful)
I still believe that the taking of someone's life, no matter your stance on capital punishment, deserves a bit more than 140 characters in Twitter.
Why? I mean, I'm against capital punishment (not to argue the propriety of it, but so that you know which side I'm coming from when I say this), and I have to ask why? I mean, one, it was simply a due notification of a previously established sentence being carried out. It wasn't announcing that he was officially sentenced. It wasn't a eulogy for the man. It wasn't even announcing that he was dead. And lastly, it's not like this is the sole coverage the event will receive. Not every communique needs to be a grand pronouncement, even if it relates to a human life.
If it had been a tweet saying "RLG now dead. RIP." You might have a case. But it wasn't. Sorry, but it was a hyperbolic statement, and not at all warranted.
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I'd say it boils down to the idea that when a government institutionalizes the execution of a citizen, it has some human responsibility to behave in a sober and respectful manner. Basically, everything from the government's mouth should be beyond reproach. Individual people can say whatever they want or sell 'Bundy Fries' on the street corner, but when the big, faceless machine is strapping a guy into a chair and shooting him in the chest, we really ought to do our best to remind everybody that it isn't b
Re:Nice editorializing (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean, like the years and years of exhaustive press coverage this murderer received after he killed innocent people in his failed attempt to break out of custody for other crimes he committed? You mean the thousands and thousands of pages of public records and court documents that accompanied his multiple prosecutions and appeals over the years? Do you mean like the years the murderer himself had to talk about himself and his fate to a wide audience, despite having cut short other innocent people's chances to ever do that? Do you mean the public procedings in his most recent hearings, which go on page after page?
Maybe this topic deserves more than your own short, uninformed ramblings. You may not have limited it to 140 characters, but you sure dumbed it down plenty yourself.
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You treat his death with respect not because he deserves respect, but because you do. If you start treating death with disrespect, you will not deserve respect. Look at the video of the Apache soldiers that shot the people in Iraq. We can argue all we want about whether those shot at were unarmed civilians or armed terrorists, but what dismayed many was how lightly the soldiers treated the shooting.
Gary Gilmore 2.0: "Let's Tweet It!" (Score:3, Funny)
Any Last Words? [about.com]
Not an "all time low" (Score:5, Insightful)
There are many lows on the internet and this doesn't come close. The prosecution in this case chose to pursue the death penalty in light of the crime committed, the jury found him guilty and found the death penalty appropriate. The AG is doing his job, and while this might seem sensationalistic, I'd rather the officials in my particular state be as open as possible using all available avenues of communication, although I personally do not use twitter.
The primary reason this case is so sensational is that he was killed by a firing squad. Remember that he chose that particular method, not the state.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
the jury found him guilty and found the death penalty appropriate
It was the only option offered, something the jururers complained about
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Compared to lethal injection or the electric chair, I'd choose the firing squad for myself any day of the week.
For the record (Score:5, Informative)
I realize this is OT, but it really struck me as odd that Utah was still doing a death by firing squad. Interestingly enough, Washington State still allows prisoners the choice of their method of execution between death by hanging and death by lethal injection.
Re:For the record (Score:5, Insightful)
Firing squad is deemed inhumane in 49 out of 50 states
It hasn't been deemed "inhumane", it just isn't used in those states. Having seen my share of animals that were shot and a handful that were "put to sleep" I would actually argue that being shot is more humane. The ones that were put to sleep seemingly just closed their eyes -- but who knows what really happens? At least with humans, there's a school of thought that suggests the anesthetic used wears off quickly and leaves the condemned man awake but with a paralyzed diaphragm. If this is true you are suffocating to death while awake.
Contrast that to being shot. A well placed rifle bullet will kill you before you hit the ground. No need to sit and watch as they try to find a vein. No danger of them missing a vein and setting your arm on fire with muscular injections of the drug cocktail.
There really isn't any pretty way to end a life but of the available methods that our technology allows I would argue that being shot is the most humane. If the shooters do their job right you will be dead in seconds.
Re:For the record (Score:4, Insightful)
There really isn't any pretty way to end a life but of the available methods that our technology allows I would argue that being shot is the most humane. If the shooters do their job right you will be dead in seconds.
Except there's some evidence to suggest that the rifle shots are seldom that well placed. Quite often, what used to happen was the man leading the firing squad checked the victim, found him still breathing and shot him in the head.
(It's a bit difficult to find evidence for this right now - Google's efficiency at keeping their search engine results is working against me as most searches involving the term "firing squad" bring up stories related to this particular execution - but knowing how fantastically good /.'ers are at finding evidence for a particular POV, I have no doubt that someone with more knowledge will reply....)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The real problem with firing squads and other methods compared to injection is how hard it is on the executioners not the prisoners. A firing squad is a very humane way to kill a murderer, as you noted. However, each member of the firing squad knows he killed the man himself (or at least, he definitely contributed). They try to work around that by making one round a blank. The marksmen know one round is a blank, but they don't know which. This allows them to rationalize that it may not have been their
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Ronnie Lee Gardner didn't die "before he hit the ground" [ksl.com], and the shots were very accurate. From the linked eyewirness account:
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Most animals move [wikipedia.org] after they get shot. That doesn't mean they aren't already dead though. Rifle bullets have enough energy in them to cause [wikipedia.org] traumatic brain injury even with hits to the chest or abdominal cavity. Ever seen an animal hit with a well placed bullet from a high power rifle? Many times it looks as though they were hit by lightning -- they hit the ground, kick once or twice and expire.
Most lay people have no appreciation for just how powerful rifles really are.
Re:For the record (Score:5, Informative)
"He" was long gone. Instantly, in fact. The amount of energy delivered to his chest cavity (with very carefully chosen ammunition) produces a mammoth shock wave. Complete and irreversible instant mega brain trauma, courtesy of - among other things - the fact that major arteries connect the brain to the central plumbing. Out like a light. Don't confused some left-over autonomic nerve/muscle activity (ever seen a chicken quite literally hopping around, minus its head? I have) with him being "alive" in any way that counts.
His victims, unfortunately, didn't die so quickly.
Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah most of that is just rubbish. You have clearly never been put under by professionals (as in for operation), in a split second you are gone. And if they put too much in you don't come back.
Re:For the record (Score:5, Insightful)
Messiness is not a bug, it's a feature. It both allows you to witness that the victim really is dead and, as an added bonus, doesn't hide the reality of what's being done at an execution behind the illusion of a mere medical procedure.
If you don't have a stomach to watch blood splatter from a severed neck, you shouldn't have anything to do with executions. In fact we should televise each and every execution and see how many people are still "though on crime" when they see just what they're voting for.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:For the record (Score:5, Insightful)
In the civilized world, we know that the death of another person is wrong. But sometimes, exceptions must be made for those who've renounced their humanity voluntarily and commit egregious crimes. It doesn't mean that we have to be barbaric in the process of carrying out an execution however.
So Canada, France, Switzerland, the UK aren't civilized? China, Iran, Saudi Arabia are?
The U.S. is in a very select group of nations, could you enlighten us on what other countries are in your "civilized world"?
Re:For the record (Score:5, Insightful)
In what way would showing someone get executed be misleading anyone? Executions are horrific. Or, by "misleading", do you actually mean that they might reconsider their position and pick another one?
This is a flat-out lie. Even if someone has "renounced his humanity" - which is in itself a rather troubling concept, as it basically makes being human dependent on behaving in ways that meet your approval, which is pretty much what every tinpot dictator has used to justify his deeds throughout history - that in no way necessiates his execution. A maximum security prison is perfectly capable of holding an (ex-)human of any level of evil, thus removing the "protect others" argument, leaving only the deterrent and revenge arguments.
And, well, both deterrent and revenge angles would be best served by as gory display as possible.
I'm a firm believer that people who think they're civilized because they performed their human sacrifice rites in the altar of justice in a bloodless manner represent a whole new and fascinating level of self-delusion.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Messiness is not a bug, it's a feature. It both allows you to witness that the victim really is dead and, as an added bonus, doesn't hide the reality of what's being done at an execution behind the illusion of a mere medical procedure.
It turns it into a spectacle. If you throw gore and blood into people's faces, you're assuming that they'll shrink from the horror of it. Through most of human history, people have behaved the exact opposite way.
If you don't have a stomach to watch blood splatter from a severed neck, you shouldn't have anything to do with executions. In fact we should televise each and every execution and see how many people are still "though on crime" when they see just what they're voting for.
That illogic works both ways. If you can't stomach personally witnessing an entire family being brutally murdered by a psychopath, you shouldn't have anything to do with restricting executions.
It's not that bad... maybe... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, at least he didn't order the execution through twitter. Just imagine if that account got comprised, or any account involved in stupid shit like that.
I love religious hypocracy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
*hypocrisy
not the same thing, really. They ask that God grant him mercy for his soul in the afterlife, but they themselves do not grant mercy on this earth for his life. Two separate concepts.
You can criticize religion for a lot of things, but at least recognize when they are being consistent within their own worldview.
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Not enough exposure. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Haha" as a tag? (Score:5, Funny)
What a fine bunch of people you are.
Chiming in.... (Score:3, Insightful)
My sister was brutally murdered and I knew from that point on that killing her killer would not make a difference to how I felt. How I still feel 20 years later... Still, bad deeds must be punished. I only wish her killer was killed by bashing his head in and strangling him like he did my sister. If we did that - kill the killer with the same method they used - it might become a deterrent again.
The main reason why capital punishment is not a deterrent is because we sugar-coat it. We put padded language around it. We get offended by a tweet reporting the go-ahead was made. And then we put them to sleep gently. All because our pussy-ass pacifist socialist education system brainwashes us into discarding any sense of honor, integrity, accountability and responsibility.
Executions should be announced with a media bullhorn and the country should stop everything else while its happening. No, we shouldn't broadcast the actual event. But we should acknowledge and witness when it occurs. We need to make our population instinctively aware that execution is a consequence - that there is a consequence for all our actions and transgressions against others.
And you thought... (Score:3, Funny)
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whether you agree with capital punishment or not, you have to agree that the state should not take its power to kill its own citizens very lightly. even if those citizens are scumbags.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I do agree they should take it very seriously, but his death was a done deal. It was decided, and he had exhausted his (too many) options to appeal it already. So this was not something that makes me think the State was not applying due diligence.
Besides, there's nothing really undignified about what happened as I think about it. Tweeting just seems undignified because it's "new media". When I think of it objectively I see nothing any more demeaning in it than if he had said it in a newspaper interview
Re:Dignity. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure I understand the sentiment that somehow the Internet is different than print media when reporting events.
Putting it on Twitter is not like making a comic strip out of the event and joking about it. It's just another form of communication.
The message was serious. (Score:5, Interesting)
whether you agree with capital punishment or not, you have to agree that the state should not take its power to kill its own citizens very lightly. even if those citizens are scumbags.
Absolutely. But the message was not light, it was professional and serious in every way.
Just because YOU happen to think of Twitter as a channel of pure entertainment, does not mean it can only be used that way forever. It is a raw channel for information of ANY type.
That's the sign of a good tool, that in the end users are using it in ways the people that built the tool never dreamed of.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The state doesn't really have that power since SCOTUS ruled that only a jury can impose the death penalty.
Your splitting hairs. The state asks the jury to impose it, then spends much effort convincing them to impose it, then once its imposed actually conducts it.
Or by analogy, I don't have the power to kill people. My fish does. I ask my fish to issue the kill order... if it hides under the rock I don't kill. If it comes out I do. (Oh, I forgot to mention I put fish food in the tank when I want someone dead
Re:Dignity. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dignity. (Score:5, Interesting)
Hanging has more potential for error than the firing squad but I would still take it over lethal injection. If it breaks you neck then it's quite humane -- if it doesn't then it's a rather lousy way to exit the world. Of course the same could be said for the firing squad if the marksmen screw up but the odds of four men all missing the kill zone with rifles at 30 feet (or whatever laughably short distance is used) is pretty low.
Re:Dignity. (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed, hanging is actually very tricky.
Set the drop to be too short, and they guy's neck doesn't break and you have to wait 15 minutes while he chokes to death - not pretty.
Set the drop too long and the head pops off. Better for the guy dieing, as he doesn't suffer nearly as long (a couple minutes until brain death, but as the spine is severed he likely feels nothing). However that's not exactly a dignified death.
If you don't mind popping heads off, why not go back to the guillotine? If well built it's flawless, and far, far cheaper than injection.
All capital punishment is hard on the executioner. You basically have to be some level of sociopath not to be affected by it, which, incidentally, is probably a good use for sociopaths.
If I were to die, I'd want it to be by firing squad - that's just awesome (though really hard on the executioners).
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Close. Actually, in Utah, only one has a blank, all the others have real bullets. See, e.g., http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100618/ap_on_re_us/us_utah_firing_squad [yahoo.com]
Re:Dignity. (Score:5, Insightful)
"I don't understand why the general public seems to prefer lethal injection to hanging or firing squad as a method, given that the latter two are far, far more dignified."
They are squeamish. They like the idea of killing the bad person but don't want to be reminded of the brutality of it. Lethal injection can be made to look like just another sterile clinical procedure. Hanging, firing squad, and the gas chamber reminds people that a person is being killed. I suspect there is a large segment of people that support the death penalty but could never actually impose the penalty themselves (or would have great difficulty). Hence the preference for "humane" lethal injection.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
General public is bloodthirsty and squemish. Shooting or hanging someone drives home very clearly that it is an execution where someone is killed, while lethal injection looks like a medical procedure.
Basically, the public wants to have their cake - "Die, you murderer, die!" - and eat it - "I am not like bloodthisty mob in Roman times who l
Re:Dignity. (Score:5, Insightful)
Lethal injection as it's done is ridiculous. 3 drug cocktail, a sedative(barbituate), paralytic, and then the heart stopper. You really only need one. When i was humanely putting down rats for research purposes we just used a large overdose of barbituate. Inject 5x the lethal dose intraperitoneally. No fumbling about for a vein, they stop breathing in under a minute, and are gone in a couple more. There's no reason lethal injection has to be this complicated procedure.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you really want, quick, clean and humane, the only choice is death by asphyxiation. Basically you put them in the gas chamber and flood it with carbon dioxide. It kills them quickly with no pain or suffering. The body is in perfect condition afterward and it's basically impossible to screw up. And you can also go with Nitrogen asphyxiation if you really want t
Re:Dignity. (Score:5, Interesting)
Singapore, Japan, Taiwan and India aren't "civilized countries"?
I was in Singapore for a week. It was like Chinatown without news stands -- if you can imagine such a thing. I couldn't find a copy of the Asian Wall Street Journal anywhere.
The Asian WSJ had written critically of the Lee Administration's policies of censoring the opposition by bringing frivolous libel suits against rival politicians and bankrupting them (people who are bankrupted aren't allowed to serve in the Singapore congress -- clever). So the Lee Administration sued the Asian WSJ for libel.
The WSJ abandoned its principles and published a groveling apology. As a result, they could send a fixed number of copies to Singapore, but it was like trying to find an uncensored American magazine in Soviet Russia.
Finally, the concierge at a 5-star hotel got me a copy of the Asian WSJ. It reported that an Indian playwright had gone to jail because she insisted on performing a feminist play that the Singapore government had censored.
(I also read in the WSJ that the "paddling" which outsiders treated as a joke is actually a brutal beating which Lee used against his political opponents.)
I was in Singapore for a scientific conference, and on the positive side I was charmed by the high school and college students reading science textbooks everywhere, and their love for science and education. Lee is rightly proud of bringing his people out of medieval poverty and illiteracy into modern education and civilization. So is Fidel Castro. They both did it at the expense of human rights.
Civilized? I'd give them a C. Work harder on human rights.
Re:So? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So? (Score:4, Funny)
yeah, you got lost and attacked Mexico by mistake, again...
Re:So? (Score:4, Funny)
Pretty soon we will have the pleasure of seeing the president communicating in a similar fashion when starting another (pointless) war.
First, Utah announces a Twexecution. Next, the US president announces another Twinvasion. Rally the Twoops! We're going to Twar!
Re:Oh, fuck off (Score:5, Insightful)
Where are the bleeding hearts for this asshole's victims and their families?
The bleeding hearts have realized that the sentence the man receives does not in any way undo or mitigate the deaths of the victims and doesn't do much for their families. It just adds 1 more to the body count.
Re:Oh, fuck off (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the principles of modern society is that human death is bad.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The truly appalling part to me was that the shooters volunteered. They were not appointed to shoot, they wanted to. It's one thing to have laws saying that killing your own people is ok given the "right" crime and discuss how humane or civilized the killing method is. It's quite another thing to have cops volunteer to kill another human being.
And for those saying "RLG wasn't a human being": civilized parts of this planet have agreed that people - no matter if they are good or bad or white or criminal - are
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why? Cops go to work every day knowing that they've taken on the solemn responsibility to use deadly force, if necessary, to protect other people. They are also frequently the ones that get to watch some innocent person - a victim of some violent person - die right before their eyes. They are frequenly the poor guys who have to go knock on a family's door to tell them that their loved one was just killed by somebody else for no g
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And Americans wonder why the rest of the civilized world looks at them and shakes their head in disbelief.
Apparently, you consider it more civilized when government officials do unpleasant things quietly so that nobody is disturbed by it. I suggest you look at the history of 20th century Europe for how well that worked.
Nor, for that matter, is the belief in European moral superiority anything new; that existed ever since the US was founded. While French, German, and British intellectuals were pointing the
Re:"Why do they hate us?" (Score:5, Informative)
"There is no reliable, scientifically sound evidence that [shows that executions] can exert a deterrent effect.... These flaws and omissions in a body of scientific evidence render it unreliable as a basis for law or policy that generate life-and-death decisions. To accept it uncritically invites errors that have the most severe human costs." (Discussion of recent deterrence studies [deathpenaltyinfo.org]).
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Multiple gunshot wounds to the heart generally cause death (or at least unconsciousness that will lead to death) in a matter of seconds.
Lethal injections take several minutes to kill, and that's if they do them correctly. Remember - no actual doctor will do it as you can't violate the Hippocratic Oath much worse than that. There's been horror stories of paralyzed victims slowly losing the ability to breathe over 30-45 minutes, conscious, but unable to speak or move.
The only reason lethal injection became po