we should at least know who we’re killing

I’m not a big fan of the death penalty. That said, if we DO practice the death penalty, I’m against it being so hush-hush. Hey, if we’re going to take somebody’s life on behalf of everybody else, everybody should know about it! It should be on front page news. The hanging should be live-streamed, like Felix’s Stratosphere jump. We should post information about the crime, and the dead-to-be should be allowed to say a few words, which should be easily accessible to the general public.

If you’re going to kill someone in my name, I should at least know who the fuck they were. That was a human being we snuffed out, for our supposed well-being. We should at least know.

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I find that we have an out-of-sight-out-of-mind policy with regular death, too, which is why I think people are so much more terrified of it than they used to be a couple of hundred years ago, where dead bodies lay about in the streets. Going to hospitals is always depressing for me because you see all the people you don’t see in the streets- sad, tired, weak, injured…

is policy about protecting the convict’s family? really? Singapore so compassionate one meh? I was under the impression that we’re trying to maximize deterrence. I think the spectacle of it would maximize deterrence further. Make your whole family suffer. That’ll deter drug barons from preying on naive uneducated kids; appeal to their compassion.

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http://jonmillward.com/blog/psychological-subtleties/death-in-texas-analyzing-the-last-words-of-478-death-row-prisoners/