2 Responses

  1. VA Justice says:

    Actually the fellow from Emporia serves as an alternate witness, called up only when another witness does not show.

    It’s an eye-opening experience, I can say, from being there first hand, in the past. Solemn, serious, but certainly memorable.

  2. mike says:

    I oppose the death penalty on evidence goals: when applied widely or narrowly it seems to have failed as a deterrent to crimes both serious and mundane. It therefore serves no useful purpose beyond satisfying emotions relating to personal or mediated vengeance, and that is not a business that a State should be involved in. There is also the problem of imperfect judicial outcomes.

    In any case, I find the US methods of execution troublesome. Either you execute someone slowly and deemonstrate their suffering (as in lethal execution, where death comes through slow suffocation) or quickly without suffering (using long-drop hanging or the most humane method yet invented, the guillotine). The mendacious use of relaxants during lethal injection betrays an essential dishonesty at the core of the process: the victim is being suffocted, yet drugs are administered to cosmeticise the process and make it appear as if they are relaxed and there is no suffering. This is an inauthentic spectacle.

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