FL (where else) to investigate 34 min execution

[Lost-in-FL]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061214/ap_on_re_us/florida_execution

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Defense attorneys and death penalty opponents were outraged Thursday over an execution in which the condemned man took more than half an hour to die, needed a rare second dose of lethal chemicals, and appeared to grimace in his final moments.
ADVERTISEMENT

"I am definitely appalled at what happened. I have no doubt he suffered unduly," Angel Nieves Diaz's attorney, Suzanne Myers Keffer, said after Diaz died by injection.

Executions in Florida normally take about 15 minutes, with the inmate rendered unconscious and motionless within the first three to five minutes. But Diaz took 34 minutes to die and appeared to be moving for most of that time.

[WindRavenX]

1. Cruel and imhumane indeed

NT

[theoldman]

2. And how long did his victim move before he/she died.

I find it hard to find sympathy for a murderer.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

3. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I hope it was 34 painful minutes. And then I hope they resuscitated him and killed him again.


Look at me! I'm macho!

[Pithlet]

9. I know. How many posts

before those appalled will be accused of sympathizing with murderers.

[malaise]

19. Really now

that's so humane.

[treestar]

24. It's a judicial killing, not meant to be revenge

It is based on a legal decision and legal standards. The punishment is the death and the anticipation of it, or the purpose to free society of a convicted murderer. But it is not meant as a revenge killing and can't be, since those wouldn't be just (equal punishment for the same behavior). If the death penalty is a part of the justice system, then it has to be the same for anyone subjected to it.

[scarletwoman]

27. Society is "freed" of a convicted murderer when the murderer is imprisoned for life.

Killing the murderer is nothing BUT revenge, and no amount fancy semantic and legal tap dancing changes that. It's strictly "eye for an eye".

sw

[scarletwoman]

4. They ought to use a guillotine. Very quick, guaranteed successful results.

I mean, really. If you're going to have a death penalty then you ought to go with the most fool-proof method. Shouldn't be any problem keeping the blade sharp enough when you're just executing the occasional convict, as opposed to taking out hundreds of supposed enemies in an afternoon.

So quit fooling around with lethal injections, just get the job done quickly and cleanly. Get a guillotine.

sw

[Solon]

5. Guillotine isn't foolproof...

Citizen Louis Capet, the former King Louis XVI of France was guillotined during the French Revolution, it took two attempts to sever his head.

[scarletwoman]

7. Yes, but that's probably because the blade was dull from over-use.

That's why I specifically pointed out in my post that the intermittent nature of criminal executions -- as opposed to a wholesale slaughter of victims, one after another all day long -- should afford ample opportunity to keep the blade suitably sharp.

Is that not self-evidently logical? :shrug:

sw

[Solon]

8. Actually, I heard it was because his neck was too thick...

he was, I guess you could say, big boned. I heard that the first hit severed his spinal cord, paralyzing him, but wasn't enough to sever the Jugular Vein or neck Arteries, so he was still conscious when the second hit occurred. I even heard that after the second hit, his head was still attached to his body with just a couple of strips of skin near his Adam's Apple and his windpipe. They had to push down to complete the severing.

[scarletwoman]

10. Wow, that's a thick neck! Even so, with his spinal cord severed, he probably couldn't

feel any pain. As for him being conscious for the second hit -- weren't people always conscious anyway, until their heads were actually severed?

sw

[Solon]

11. He was only numb from the neck down...

Think about that for a moment. Also, SOME folks maintained consciousness up to five minutes after their head was severed, most, however, most likely entered shock immediately, and then unconsciousness.

[Pithlet]

12. I'd heard Anne Bolyn's eyes and mouth moved afterwords

for a few moments after the swipe of the sword. Eye witnesses claimed it looked like she was trying to speak. :shudder:

[scarletwoman]

13. I have to ask, is this an area of study for you? How could anyone know

if someone who has been beheaded is maintaining consciousness? How would that consciousness manifest itself -- as opposed to purely reflex activity?

I witnessed someone cutting off the head of a rattlesnake once; the body of the snake continued to writhe and coil for some minutes afterward, but it would never have occured to me that it was other than random firings of the snake's nervous system. Certainly not continued "consciousness".

I'm just asking out of curiosity, btw.

In any case, it's probably time I fessed up. I posted my guillotine proposal as mostly tongue in cheek -- although I do think that if you're determined to execute someone, you ought to do a quick, efficient job of it. But in actuality, I'm not a supporter of the death penalty at all.

Thanks for the interesting conversation, though.

sw

[Solon]

17. A French scientist, at the time of the Revolution, was condemned to death...

by Guillotine, his name escapes me for the moment. At the time, there were reports of heads that are severed where, when they are held aloft, would look over the crowds, mouths would move, etc. So he asked his best friend to witness his execution, he said he was going to blink his eyes as fast as he can after being beheaded, and asked his friend to record how many times he blinked. All I remember is that he blinked well over 20 times.

There is precedent as well, a man was recently beheaded here in the States, in a car accident, EVERYTHING was severed except for his spinal cord. They were able to reattach the head, and he suffered no brain damage, nor any lingering aftereffects beyond having some difficulty talking(vocal cords suffered severe trauma), and a really curious scar that stretches from one ear to the other around his neck, like a Frankenstein monster or something.

There is a distinct difference between the way a body reacts and the way the head reacts to a beheading. Generally, the brain has a tolerance level for oxygen depletion before it enters unconsciousness. This varies from person to person, but the kicker is this, blood REMAINS in the brain after a severing, especially a sudden one, the heart is cut off from the heads circulatory system, so blood, and oxygen, can remain in the head for quite a few minutes. Therefore, consciousness can persist in that time.

The body is a different story, during the same situation, the heart is till pumping, and blood pressure is up, unlike what you see in movies, the blood from the stump of the neck doesn't leak out slowly, but spurts out, with quite a bit of force. The body may convulse, and do other, many random things, due to the misfiring of synapses throughout the body because it is no longer being directed from the brain.

Imagine being beheaded in the Guillotine manner, you are forced to rest you neck on the wooden brace, the upper brace closes around the back of your neck. You he a rope pull, and a quick swoop sound. You, all of the sudden, feel dizzy, as your head falls in the basket you were looking at just the second before. You felt a quick prick of pain, and you neck feels as if it was on fire. You feel a tug on your hair, and hear the roar of the crowds, as your head is hoisted up by the executioner, for the crowd to look at. You look at the crowd, then the view changes abruptly, as the executioner moves your head to see the body, and you see your own body, blood gushing all over the blade of the guillotine, twitching like some animal. You may even have a "ghost feeling" of your body, similar to how amputees can sometimes feel their missing limbs, and then the world slowly goes dark as you fall asleep, never to awaken.

[scarletwoman]

21. Wow. Ugh. I'm glad I didn't read this before bed last night.

Thanks for your reply (I think). That's very fascinating in a gruesome horrible awful way. I guess I won't write any more tongue in cheek guillotine posts in the future. (and I don't think I'm going eat lunch anytime soon, either...)

As I said, I'm opposed to the death penalty. My hope was, by advocating execution by guillotine, that the whole bloody-mindedness of state-sponsored murder would be rendered more starkly barbaric and loathesome.

What I see now is that I clearly had no idea just how truly loathesome it could be.

My sincere thanks for the education. (although not so much for the images that I will probably be carrying around in my mind for the rest of my life...)

sw

[Solon]

22. If you want to go with the most barbaric and loathesome...

then Drawing and Quartering may be the best example. Make it public, hell, force KIDS to see the executions, and I would say that most folks would be against the DP really quick, or they will demand more blood, Gods only knows what motivates some people.

[scarletwoman]

25. I honestly fear that more people would enjoy watching such a spectacle than would find it abhorrent.

I am of the opinion that we live in an extremely sick culture. We consider depictions of the most heinous violence "entertainment". We slaughter living creatures for "recreation" (as opposed to any actual need for food and survival).

We are a country of greedy, bloodthirsty, heedless barbarians. We already let our kids take in a constant barrage of images of violence, why wouldn't we be just as willing to allow our children to witness an actual drawing and quartering? Empathy and compassion are considered weaknesses in this culture. We are a wholly desensitized people. Spectacle and sensationalism trumps all.

sw

[jmowreader]

23. France used the guillotine right up until the DP was abolished there

They kept the guillotine, rather than changing to something more "humane" like lethal injection, because it was easy to talk a jury out of a guillotine execution unless the convict did something REALLY heinous--John Wayne Gacy action comes to mind. If someone was actually sentenced to die by decapitation, the president of France could (and usually did) overturn the jury and sentence the condemned prisoner to life-without-parole without much--if any--public outcry. Lethal injection is a whole 'nother kettle 'a fish, kids--the perception is that they give the prisoner a shot and he goes to sleep forever. They don't tell you the part about the prisoner waking up from the first drug while the second one is suffocating him.

This might be a reason to change the method used in the US to something like guillotining, seppuku or Saudi-style beheading. The convict would have to be a grade-A nightmare to justify cutting his head off.

[scarletwoman]

26. Thank you for pointing this out! Excellent points!

Your post sort of validates my original position. Make the actual implementation of the death penalty so horrific that it becomes unacceptable.

Thank you,
sw

[leftchick]

18. I agree and make them public executions as well

so people can see the killing of another human being instead of hiding it behind closed doors. Perhaps then more americans would rethink the death penalty.

[rug]

6. That's big of them.

[Selatius]

14. If you're going to have a death penalty, do it the Chinese way:

One bullet to the head. Or, if you prefer, multiple in front of a firing squad.

If you're going to have a death penalty, dispense with the bullshit humanity. If you're going to kill, then kill; don't pussyfoot around the issue. What difference does it make how a person is executed? He's going to end up dead regardless.

:sarcasm:

[Ron Green]

15. Or just send them over to FR and let them die of apoplexy.

[scarletwoman]

16. "If you're going to kill, then kill" -- exactly how I feel.

Which is why I suggested using a guillotine (above). Maybe people will like your suggestion better...

sw

[BreweryYardRat]

20. If we're going to talk humane killing methods...

Why not just a 10-gauge shotgun blast to the back of the head. That'd be instantaneous and probably painless.