On Wednesdays, I teach a three hour class on state and local government. Tuesdays are spent preparing for the class, so that's why I disappear for a couple of days a week.
Teaching State and Local Government requires a deft hand. It can so very easily turn boring -- a recitation of some really dull studies and memorization of trivial pursuit.
What saves this class is the news of the weird. There are the lovely corruption stories. There are wackjob legislators introducing bizarro legislation. In February, Mississippi legislators introduced a bill to bar fat people from restaurants. Throw that stuff into a lecture and you'll wake them enough to discuss the four ways to amend a state constitution.
We were talking about state courts yesterday and some recent decisions.
The states are having trouble figuring out how to kill their prisoners. The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that the electric chair is cruel and unusual punishment. They have no problem killing their prisoners; they just don't like shaving a guy's head, slapping on an electric helmet, and jolting his body with 2000 volts of juice. Go figure. But they won't switch to lethal injection because the US Supreme Court may rule that Kentucky's lethal injection program cases undue pain.
So, the states don't know how to kill their prisoners. Now, I'm again capital punishment, but if pressed, I think I could come up with lots of painless way to kill people. There's the Heath Ledger drug cocktail. Defenestration - I am not sure if it is painless, but it is such a great word that I think we ought to consider it again. the guillotine was very efficient. I just think that there are alternatives out there that should be considered.
The "pain" issue is a wedge, right? to convince people who like the idea of capital punishment but find it disgusting when they think about it too hard to reconsider.
I think you're wrong about "painless ways to kill people." The key is whether they want to be killed or not. If they do (Heath Ledger cocktail), it's no biggie. There are a fair number of ways to do painless euthanasia. On the other hand, there's no "pretty" way of killing someone who doesn't want to die. At some point, coercion, physical and mental will be required. Leading a person, unwillingly, to their death, is going to involve some physical distress.
People consider this issue in a less fraught context when thinking about killing animals. Animals are easier to kill in non-distressful ways than people, because you can trick them into cooperating. And, if you think it's OK to kill them, but not to hurt them, you figure out ways of tricking them to get your desired result.
The same operation doesn't work for humans. Result: pain, inevitably.
bj
(yeah, I'm against state-sponsored death, too.)
Posted by: bj | March 27, 2008 at 11:01 AM
Didn't the man who invented the guillotine say he did so because he considered hanging an ugly and/or needlessly cruel way to execute people?
Posted by: Russell Arben Fox | March 27, 2008 at 01:28 PM
here's one for your file next week:
Lobbyists try to keep milk information from consumers
http://tinyurl.com/24vyh8
(this link will expire in a month or so)
and the actual bill
http://tinyurl.com/26unx2
Posted by: LisaS | April 02, 2008 at 05:32 PM