flamingsword | Capital punishment is legal; mercy killing is illegal? FAIL.

I don't believe that capital punishment is correctly named. Punishment implies that a lesson is being learned, but . . . death. Kinda final. Not so much with the correction of behavior. So when our system is forced to admit that it cannot fix someone, that what they have become is beyond our power to deal with, we should not try to make their death a horrible thing because of our failure in this lose/lose scenario.

That being said, the way we do things currently is barbaric and inexact. Lethal injection is slow, painful, horrible to watch, haphazard to accomplish, and reviled by physicians so strongly that many competent and compassionate professionals resign rather than be involved.

New plan for death row: asphxia by nitrous oxide overdose. Painless, fast, efficient, effective. The victim's families don't get any kind of grisly thrill from watching someone drift blissfully to unconsciousness and then death. And the tone reminds everyone that this, too, is a mercy killing. And that our failure as a people to practice rehabilitation and resocialization is also to blame.

And while we're at it, let's legalize assisted suicide. Let's prioritize preserving the quality of life over preserving the length of it.

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Nitrous oxide has always been one of my favorite options, but I like Carbon Monoxide better. Does the same thing except they don't get to enjoy it as much.

Death-row gladiator battles with giant robots out?

Because bread and circuses worked so well for our predecessors.

Actually, CO doesn't feel like anything. You're lucid for the first several minutes, and then sleepy and dizzy a few seconds, and then you lose consciousness and die.

The trouble is that you'd have to seal the chamber the dying man was in, let the gas react out of the air for about 5 hours and then have an automated machine inside test the air occasionally to let you know when it was safe to go back in. Even relatively tiny amounts of carbon monoxide are very bad for you.

I have reason to know.

Is that how the Neanderthals went out, fighting giant robots? Not a bad way to go, I guess.

You're right. I used a little hyperbole there. What I meant was "they both kill easily and painlessly," not "they do the same thing." You'd have to follow similar procedures with N2O as well, they'd just be based upon the fact that usage of N2O is regulated instead of the fact that CO is dangerous in small amounts.

Your "handlers" would just have to wear oxygen respirators like firefighters have.

In the end, I think I'd be able to drum up more support for a CO death sentence than a N2O death sentence. Most people who support the death penalty would probably argue that N2O was too much fun.

Where's the good in making how we kill someone emotionally easy for us and hard for them?

But my way you'd get free publicity for how dangerous huffing and whip-its can be, since they're using it to kill people. And it would force the state to seek futher rehabilitative measures and try everything they could to NOT use the death penalty. That we have corporal punishment and use it seems logical to us only because we've been doing it that way for so long. Changing our attitudes towards it might open up dialog on several related matters, which spurs social progress.

I have to admit I still think that hanging or the guillotine is the way to go. Done correctly, death is instintanious with both methods.

But the gory death makes people feel justified, adds to the ability to emotionally divorce from the fact that a person who needs help is being killed because we can neither help them nor deal with them.

It makes people rest easily that the bad person was punished instead of taking action to fix them. And it may be a long road between there and fail . . . but it is there.

Capital punishment is legal; mercy killing is illegal? FAIL.

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