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March 19, 2005
Deliberately Painful Executions.
Eugene Volokh has caused something of a storm by putting forward the idea that there are certain crimes so horrendous that they not only deserve the death penalty but a deliberately painful death as well. The whole story, all attendant posts, can be found here. Given my own opposition to the death penalty (about the only thing on which I am in agreement with the Euro political elite) of course I reject what he says about the executions, but the deliberate infliction of pain part causes some thought. First, two minor points.
Maimon points to George Orwell's criticism of what he saw as the unduly
painful hangings of some Nazis after World War II. I find much to
admire in Orwell, but I don't share his generosity here (I speak here
of the Nazi leaders generally, though recognizing the possibility that
some lower-level military officials deserved to live, or even deserved
to die painlessly).
I recently read the autobiography of Albert Pierrepoint, perhaps the most famous of Britain’s hangmen, and one who dealt with several of the Nazis. (It’s amazing what you’ll read if you live in a non English speaking country, the shortage of decent material leading to oddities such as this being perused.) He was extremely critical of the American methods used, insisting that they were more likely to produce strangulation than the neck snapping which was the British ideal.
The second is that I don’t actually think that even neck snapping hangings are "easy deaths". Now this may be purely an error on my part, a lack of knowledge about physiology, but a little thinking about brain death makes me think it a particularly horrible way to die. In an electrocution or injection scenario, unconsciousness is the first thing to happen. The Russian style nine grams in the back of the head of course stops the brain thinking before the heart stops beating. There are those reports where heads dropping from the guillotine still blink their eyes, and this is the sort of thing I mean. Certainly, a properly conducted hanging snaps the neck at the sixth (?) vertebra, the heart and breathing stop instantly. But the brain, as we know, keeps going for three to five minutes without new blood and oxygen getting to it...so while hanging on the end of that rope, while the doctor checks the heart beat and pronounces death, the brain is still in there, the person is, screaming at the end of its world. I would even submit, that as hearing is the last of the senses to fade, that the dying executionee would hear the chaplain stop his prayers and whatever joke he makes to the executioner, perhaps, in the case of some American states, hear the audience comment.
No, I can’t say I do think that a well conducted hanging is an easy death.
The major point that occurs to me concerns the very basis of what the Professor is putting forward. That for certain crimes death is not enough, there must be pain too. Which leads to the uncomfortable thought (in the Professor’s view of the world) that perhaps there are crimes which are so heinous that death itself is undeserved, that such evil was perpetrated that the release from pain by dying is not to be allowed. In essence, permanent torture, a daily or hourly application of pain, with medical treatment, food, refreshment and care, so that the infliction of it can be continued in the next hour, tomorrow, next month. A sentence handed down of a week’s torture before release from this world, a month, a year.
Ridiculous? Perhaps, but I can’t see the fault in the logic, if we accept that there are some crimes that deserve the death penalty, some worse ones which deserve a painful death, then there will be some that deserve a more painful death and so on ad infinitum until a Stalin or a Hitler must be kept alive so that we can inflict yet more pain.
As at the top, I don’t accept the contention that there are crimes that deserve the death penalty, so fortunately I don’t have to accept the latter part of the argument either.
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Tracked on Mar 20, 2005 12:02:16 PM
Comments
The notion of unspeakably awful means of execution is thoroughly old hat. Our illustrious forebears in England were there long before in medieval times: http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/hdq.html
The thought process was surely simple enough - if most crimes were potentially capital crimes on conviction after due process, something extra special was required for especially terrible crimes, such as treason or plotting against the person of the monarch, otherwise, the old adage applied, "you might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb."
On a more encouraging thought, the ever fascinating: London Encyclopaedia (1993) reports the outcome of a public execution at Tyburn of hanging, drawing and quartering that was interrupted part way through by the unexpected arrival of a pardon:
"In 1447 five men had already been hanged, cut down while still alive, stripped and marked out for quartering when their pardon arrived but the hangman declined to give them back their clothes [which were an agreed perk of the job] so they had to walk home naked."
By many accounts, public executions in those times were events of popular entertainment, presumably on the rationale that the public spectacle enhanced the deterrent effect, a consideration that seems to have eluded Eugene Volokh.
Posted by: Bob B | Mar 19, 2005 4:06:15 PM
It's an interesting (and slightly uncomfortable) question as to how long the decapitated maintain consciousness. The French scientist Lavoisier, sentenced to the guillotine, promised that he would blink after his head was severed until he could blink no more - he blinked 11 times.
Interesting discussion here: http://www.aarrgghh.com/no_way/beheading.htm
(Especially unsettling is the story about Languille)
Posted by: David H | Mar 19, 2005 9:58:26 PM
It's important to remember that with any crime there is always the possibility - indeed, inevitability - of wrongful convictions due to human error, misleading evidence, or malice. How many people would be willing to accept the risk, however remote, of being tortured to death for something they hadn't done? How many would be happy for their children to face that risk? As soon as one wrongful conviction was exposed, public revulsion at the suffering of an innocent person coupled with the realisation that it really could happen to them would discredit the whole system.
Posted by: Andrew Zalotocky | Mar 20, 2005 1:09:47 PM
There's no mention of the blinking thing in biographies og Lavoisier.
Anyway, the rather massive drop in blood pressure when the head is severed would induce unconciousness immediately.
As for painful executions - I'm not opposed to the death penalty (though I'm not really for it either) but it doesn't seem to work as a deterrent any better than life imprisonment.
Posted by: Agammamon | Mar 20, 2005 7:14:58 PM
I'm reminded of a short Sci-Fi story called "I have no mouth yet I must scream" By Harlan Ellison, where the super intelligent computer alters the last remaining humans to keep them in the most pain.
Posted by: Rob Read | Mar 20, 2005 8:26:01 PM