Florida Rep Wants The Firing Squad Back

[Hyena Dandy]

You don't think publically killing someone isn't a step backwards? Are you serious?

I think its wrong, not backwards.

[linguist]

I'm getting tired of prisoners getting coddled they need to have a no bullshit speedy punishment and get them out of the way.

and so what if that no bullshit speedy punishment gets a few innocents out of the way, too. collateral damage. they were probably guilty of something, after all.

[Gravekeeper]

I think its wrong, not backwards.

Again, I don't understand how you can't view it as backwards. Killing someone in public, and the spectacle that will undoubtably go with it, is most certainly less civilized and more barbaric then we currently are in western civilization.

[Andara Bledin]

I would think that whether a killing were public or private would not really affect the level of civility involved.

However, the presentation of such a thing would matter very, very much.

^-.-^

[Gravekeeper]

I would think that whether a killing were public or private would not really affect the level of civility involved.

However, the presentation of such a thing would matter very, very much.

You know they'd be selling tickets to it within 6 months.

Public or private matters, because you have fuckheads lining up to volunteer for the private ones. Imagine the kind of shit that would crawl out of the woodwork for a public one. When you legitimize the crazy, it stops hiding in the basement and starts wandering the streets thinking its crazy is the norm. That's the US's entire political problem right now. ;p

[PepperElf]

Wow, i see many people didn't bother reading up on the FDA, hospira, and sodium pentathol.


i already provided links. you can take a horse to water... but if the horse wants to drink the funny tasting koolaid in stead, ain't much you can do to stop it.

[FArchivist]

Wow, i see many people didn't bother reading up on the FDA, hospira, and sodium pentathol.

i already provided links. you can take a horse to water... but if the horse wants to drink the funny tasting koolaid in stead, ain't much you can do to stop it.

I repeat:

The FDA has NOTHING to do with this. Your links? Are wrong.
If the FDA allows anyone but Hospira to make the sodium pentothal, the FDA is breaking patent law.
Allow me to repeat that: You are saying that you want the FDA to break patent law.

So why do you want the FDA to commit a criminal act?

[Gravekeeper]

Wow, i see many people didn't bother reading up on the FDA, hospira, and sodium pentathol.

i already provided links. you can take a horse to water... but if the horse wants to drink the funny tasting koolaid in stead, ain't much you can do to stop it.

Not sure if serious. Are you being willfully ignorant or just messing with us? >.>

[PepperElf]

:rollseyes:

o yes i forgot... there's no attempt here to use the FDA

news reports are always wrong if they don't agree with liberal agenda

[Hyena Dandy]

Again, I don't understand how you can't view it as backwards. Killing someone in public, and the spectacle that will undoubtably go with it, is most certainly less civilized and more barbaric then we currently are in western civilization.

I don't see it as less civilized than killing them in public. Its different, but I don't think its backwards. I don't like to see 'civilized' as on a backwards-forwards scale. I consider it just as bad. I consider it odious either way.

[Gravekeeper]

I don't see it as less civilized than killing them in public. Its different, but I don't think its backwards. I don't like to see 'civilized' as on a backwards-forwards scale. I consider it just as bad. I consider it odious either way.

Except the definition of "civilized" is basically a backwards-fowards scale. Upon which killing someone in a public spectacle is definitely less morally advanced then killing them privately. Though you are correct in that both are odious.

[Canarr]

So what, exactly, is the problem? Is there some sort of crippling shortage of lethal chemicals in the US? Have you run out of deadly stuff to kill people with, that withholding sodium penthatol is such a threat?

[PepperElf]

actually yes there is a shortage.

http://www.google.com/search?num=100...w=1033&bih=533

States have been stockpiling for over a year now. So some states are currently seeking other methods, and other medications to use in lieu of SP.

[Gravekeeper]

So what, exactly, is the problem? Is there some sort of crippling shortage of lethal chemicals in the US? Have you run out of deadly stuff to kill people with, that withholding sodium penthatol is such a threat?

Sodium penthatol is an anasthetic. Its not meant to off people, obviously, and the company that makes it objected to it being used that way as does the Italian government, where it was manufactured. It's also patented.

Think of it like this: Apple makes iPods, they play music. States decide they want to execute people by bludgeoning them to death with an iPod and only an iPod. Apple objects to the product being used this way and refuses to sell them anymore iPods.

They can't get anyone else to make the iPod, because its an Apple product and its patented. So they have an iPod shortage because they're using them up bludgeoning people to death with them and the iPods have a one year shelf life. -.-

[Canarr]

Yeah, well... most of the articles in your link deal with a shortage of this exact drug last year, due to production problems. The newest article in that search is from January this year:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/us/22lethal.html

It states that

The manufacturer, Hospira Inc., of Lake Forest, Ill., had originally planned to resume production of the drug, sodium thiopental, this winter at a plant in Italy, giving state corrections departments hope that the scarcity that began last fall would ease.

But the Italian authorities said they would not permit export of the drug if it might be used for capital punishment. Hospira said in a statement Friday that its aim was to serve medical customers, but that “we could not prevent the drug from being diverted to departments of corrections” and the company did not want to expose itself to liability in Italy.

Hospira does not have domestic facilities that can make sodium thiopental, said Daniel Rosenberg, a spokesman, and has decided to “exit the market.” No other American companies manufacture the drug, which has largely been supplanted by alternatives in hospitals but is used by 34 of the 35 states that use lethal injection to carry out the death penalty. An average of 55 executions have taken place annually over the last 10 years, with 46 last year and 52 in 2009, virtually all of them by lethal injection.

No mention of the FDA or any other form of federal interference. And apparently, changing the drug would be possible, but (still same article):

In many states, adopting a new protocol for lethal injections requires formal proposals, public comment and often challenges in court — a process that can take months or more, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. But in others, switching drugs might be done more quickly, by administrative fiat.

Still, since that article is seven months old, one would presume they'd managed to make the necessary administrative changes by now, wouldn't one?

Also enlightening was this article on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethal_injection

according to which the drug in question is merely the anesthetic, anyway; it's not even used to kill directly.

So, my question remains: what, exactly, is keeping the death penalty states from simply using a different anesthetic in the executions? How can the threat of not supplying this particular drug be so severe that it would inhibit states' rights to execute people?