In a Utah courtroom Friday, 25 years after he was sentenced to death for killing a man during an escape attempt, he declared his preference to the judge: “I would like the firing squad, please.”…
This is from a surprising story in the New York Times today about a man opting for the firing squad rather than lethal injection because “It’s so much easier … and there’s no mistakes.”
According to Wikipedia of the 1,028 executions in this country from 1976 to 2010, only 2 were by firing squad. An additional 3 were by hanging, 11 by gas chamber, and 157 by electrocution. These four alternative methods to lethal injection are still allowed in some states today.
I had just always presumed that people would prefer lethal injection. But the fact that some prisoners prefer different methods begs the question of whether prisoners should have free choice of their death penalty method. If we are going to take someone’s life away, letting them choose how seems to be the least we can do for them. Should there be limits though? Should a prisoner be granted a request to be drawn and quartered? To most libertarians the primary goal is eliminating capital punishment altogether, but should some energy should be spent on fighting for death penalty choice?
9 comments
Comments feed for this article
Saturday ~ April 24th, 2010 at 12:59 pm
RickRussellTX
“To most libertarians the primary goal is eliminating capital punishment altogether”
Curious. Where did this come from?
RR
Saturday ~ April 24th, 2010 at 1:27 pm
Adam Ozimek
I may be presuming too much here, but do you disagree that the majority of libertarian’s are against the death penalty? This is only my impression, I don’t have any hard data, so I am open to persuasion.
Saturday ~ April 24th, 2010 at 4:55 pm
drscroogemcduck
i’m in favour of a hidden death penalty. we have mock executions and the condemned are sent to a hidden prison camp. everyone who isn’t part of the conspiracy thinks the condmened has been executed. this way we get the deterrent of the death penalty without actually killing anyone.
Saturday ~ April 24th, 2010 at 6:06 pm
jazzbumpa
The most compelling reason to eliminate the death penalty is that sometimes the executee is innocent.
Lethal injection is not humane at all. It can go very badly wrong: paralysis, lack of anesthesia, and a suffocation death event that can drag on for tens of minutes. Actually makes the guillotine seem not so bad.
DrScrooge’s solution requires too much government involvement, even for my taste.
Also, if harsh penalties were deterrents, wouldn’t places with the harshest penalties have the least crime?
But the death penalty is very popular here in the U.S. Of course, we also like torture . . .
Alas,
JzB
Saturday ~ April 24th, 2010 at 6:19 pm
Nick
Death injection by firing squad is only available in Utah and Idaho I believe. It is very much tied into the concept of ‘blood atonement’ in Mormonism, a sin so large that only if one’s blood is spilled and mixed with the earth that there is the possibility of atonement. It is more likely that a Mormon dominated govt would give this as an option and more likely that a Mormon defendant would choose it. Didn’t Gary Gilmore go this way?
Saturday ~ April 24th, 2010 at 7:56 pm
Adam Ozimek
That’s very interesting. The article didn’t discuss whether or not this guy was Mormon, but it did mention Gary Gilmore, who I am unfamiliar with.
Thursday ~ April 29th, 2010 at 5:38 pm
Niklas Blanchard
I wonder if people should be allowed to choose death at any time.
For instance, I would rather be put to death than spend 50 years in prison. Prison has very little to do with punishment, and almost everything to do with simple segregation…so it seems permanent segregation would be a Pareto optimal solution if our laws really do reflect our attitudes as a society.
Call it “voluntary capital punishment”.
Thursday ~ April 29th, 2010 at 6:03 pm
Adam Ozimek
I worry about the incentive that gives to suicidal criminals:
“Hey if I want to die, I might as well rob a bank and have some fun on the way out. Then I won’t even have to kill myself, the state will do it for me.”
What suicidal person wouldn’t prefer that to killing themselves?
Thursday ~ May 13th, 2010 at 6:18 pm
Death Penalty Conspiracies and Lotteries « Inthehut
[...] By ben This is a follow up to the post Recidivism and Expectations. I recently read a post on Modeled Behaviour about how a prisoner wanted to be executed by firing squad instead of lethal injection and this got [...]