Posted on 03/18/2022 3:28:57 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina has given the greenlight to firing-squad executions, a method codified into state law l ast year after a decade-long pause in carrying out death sentences because of the state’s inability to procure lethal injection drugs.
The state Corrections Department said Friday that renovations have been completed on the death chamber in Columbia and that the agency had notified Attorney General Alan Wilson that it was able to carry out a firing-squad execution.
Lawmakers set about tweaking state law to get around the lethal injection drug situation. Legislation that went into effect in May made the electric chair the state’s primary means of execution while giving inmates the option of choosing death by firing squad or lethal injection, if those methods are available.
During South Carolina’s lengthy debate, Democratic state Sen. Dick Harpootlian — a prosecutor-turned-criminal-defense lawyer — introduced the firing squad option. He argued that it presented “the least painful” execution method available.
State officials also have created protocols for carrying out the executions. The three shooters, all volunteers who are employees of the Corrections Department, will have rifles loaded with live ammunition, with their weapons trained on the inmate’s heart.
A hood will be placed over the head of the inmate, who will be given the opportunity to make a last statement.
According to officials, Corrections spent $53,600 on the renovations.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
This is stupid. Everyone knows it will get struck down by the courts for whatever stupid liberal reasons they can come up with. These types of controversies are just kept up by the political class to keep everyone riled up about something that is of no real consequence.
If you want to have executions, it is so brain dead simple to set up that even a liberal could do it.
1. Build an airtight enclosure.
2. Wheel the condemned into the enclosure strapped down on a gurney.
3. Pump the enclosure with pure nitrogen. Put oxygen sensors both inside and outside of the enclosure.
4. Wait 15 minutes.
5. Vent the enclosure to the roof of whatever building you are in while cycling in ambient air.
This is no-muss no-fuss execution. The condemned won’t even know he’s dead when he passes. 78% of every breath you take is nitrogen. There are no unusual chemicals, poisons, or anything else to get people riled up over. No doctors must violate their hippocratic oaths.
Every industry that deals with nitrogen in any volume understands the safety requirements you have to put in place so that people do not enter a pure nitrogen atmosphere. A person in such a situation will simply collapse and die without warning because nitrogen saturation does not trigger an asphyxiation response in the body.
Some will doubtless complain that the condemned will not suffer, and while that is true, it is also true that he will definitely be quite and fully dead, which I figure is the point of the exercise.
Using anything else is just stupidity. You don’t even have to do anything special to the room/enclosure afterwards, because the only thing that was in the room was normal air. Just be sure to check the oxygen sensors before you walk in.
“Least painful” needs a sliding scale considering the nature of the crime.
IMO the execution should match the crime.
For instance, a victim is stabbed 78 times. Each stab wound should be mapped out and programmed into a computer so a robot can precisely stab the perp. Same for gun shots, blunt force trauma, etc.
Thanks for the ping, upchuck.
“The victims family members should be allowed in the firing squad.”
The execution site should be a prison’s exercise yard. (To help reduce recidivism).
You’re welcome.
+1
A firing squad is too good for convicted traitors (civilian or military), who should be publicly hanged, and their carcasses left to rot off the noose.
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