Friday, March 27, 2015

Is it Good We No Longer Give Lethal Injection?

Many states are having to abandon the strategy of lethal injection as a way of carrying out capital punishment because they can no longer get the necessary drugs from European pharmaceutical suppliers. The reason that States can no longer buy the drugs is because European companies that are opposed to the death penalty don't want their medicinal product to be used for murder.

These companies may have the goal of ending capital punishment but they are not succeeding. The death penalty continues, except states have now reverted back to executions by firing squad. Though I don't agree with capital punishment, if criminals do get charged with a death sentence I would argue that the companies are doing the Nation a favor. I would argue that if capital punishment has to happen, the firing squad is actually a better practice.

Firing squads are a simpler, more efficient solution. As awful as it is to call one murder better than another due to efficiency and cost effectiveness, if criminals have to be executed by law it is better to make it faster and easier. Both the executioners and the prisoner benefit from abandonment of the lethal injection. The executioners in the case of a lethal injection walk away knowing that they have murdered, in the case of a firing squad one out of the 5 marksmen shoots a blank so there is always a chance that you didn't fire the lethal shot.

Criminals in the case of both executions are allowed their last words, standing up. In both cases they get to see who is killing them. In both cases if everything goes right the criminals die very quickly and supposedly painlessly--but lethal injections more often don't meet the last condition. If the executioner misses the correct vein the prisoner will die in a very slow and painful way. A firing squad will almost never fail, and if a criminal has to pay with his life, it is done better with a firing squad.


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