BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns

Subject: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Wesley S
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 07:57 AM

Just when you thought the world couldn't get more nuts:



Utah Lawmakers Vote to Allow Firing Squad
SALT LAKE CITY — Mar 11, 2015, 12:48 AM ET

By KELLY CATALFAMO and MICHELLE L. PRICE Associated Press

Lawmakers have passed a bill that would make Utah the only state to allow firing squads for carrying out a death penalty if there is a shortage of execution drugs.

The passage of the bill by the state Senate on Tuesday comes as states struggle to obtain lethal injection drugs amid a nationwide shortage.

The bill's sponsor, Republican Rep. Paul Ray of Clearfield, touted the measure as being a more humane form of execution. Ray argued that a team of trained marksmen is faster and more humane than the drawn-out deaths that have occurred in botched lethal injections.

The bill gives Utah options, he said. "We would love to get the lethal injection worked out so we can continue with that but if not, now we have a backup plan," Ray told The Associated Press.

Opponents, however, said firing squads are a cruel holdover from the state's wild West days and will earn the state international condemnation. "I think Utah took a giant step backward," said Ralph Dellapiana, director of Utahns for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. He called firing squads "a relic of a more barbaric past."

Utah is one of several states to seek out new forms of capital punishment after a botched Oklahoma lethal injection last year and one in Arizona that took nearly two hours for the condemned man to die. Legislation to allow firing squads has been introduced in Arkansas this year. In Wyoming, a measure to allow firing squads if the lethal drugs aren't available died. In Oklahoma, lawmakers are considering legislation that would allow the state to use nitrogen gas to execute inmates.

Whether Ray's proposal will become law in Utah, a conservative state, is unclear: Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican, won't say if he'll sign the measure. His spokesman, Marty Carpenter, did issue a statement this week acknowledging that the method would give Utah a legitimate backup method if execution drugs are unavailable.

Utah American Civil Liberties Union representative Anna Brower said the organization is still holding out hope that Herbert will not sign the bill. The legislation would make Utah "look backwards and backwoods," she said.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Musket
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 08:24 AM

Keep banging the rocks together.

Isn't it ironic that on Mudcat, its Americans who "moderate" the behaviour of Europeans?

😎

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: SINSULL
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 08:28 AM

Given a choice between electrocution and a firing squad, I would go with the bullet. Quick and efficent.
Now lets debate the merits of a death penalty.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Greg F.
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 08:39 AM

The state of Utah is probably doing this in honor of the centennial of its judicial murder of Joe Hill (Joel Hägglund) on 19 November, 1915.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/27/us/27hill.html?pagewanted=all

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 08:44 AM

If they can't get execution drugs, wouldn't this be a good time to abandon the barbarity of state-sponsored murder and join European nations in the 21st century?

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Rapparee
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 08:45 AM

It was always there as an option to the condemned. It is also an unused option in Idaho and some other States.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Greg F.
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 08:48 AM

Joe Hill

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: GUEST,#
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 08:53 AM

It took the UK two thousand years to abolish the death penalty. The Americans have been at it for about four hundred years. They do have a ways to go. I expect they'll catch up in the next sixteen hundred years.

For cost efficiency, plastic bags over the head. They could be recycled, too. Always trying to be helpful.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 09:38 AM

Q: If states insist on killing people by lethal injection, why not do away with the crap they're using and just administer massive overdoses of heroin?

A: Because heroin is illegal and, therefore, immoral! States can't use an immoral substance for a highly moral purpose like an execution!

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 09:41 AM

Beheading ?

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Charmion
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 10:08 AM

An important factor in today's widespread loathing for capital punishment is that somebody has to do the deed, and our modern societies lack untouchables who can be forced to undertake such heinous work. The firing squad dodges this problem with a cute little tradition: one of the rifles -- no one is supposed to know which -- is loaded with blank rounds, so all the shooters can choose to believe, privately, that they are not personally responsible for the death.

Me, I think that no servant of the state should be expected to do work that I would refuse to do myself on moral grounds. I know I can attain a fairly high standard of marksmanship with an ordinary military rifle, so I have actually thought this through. I can understand why so many jurisdictions in the United States have retained capital punishment, and why so many Canadians would support the return of the noose (we never went in for the fancy stuff). But I sincerely wonder just how many sentences could be carried out without great difficulty in locating capable executioners?

Utah firing squads are traditionally made up of prison officers, if I recall correctly. Like police and military personnel, modern correctional staff (not prison guards any more) are far more professionalized than their predecessors of even a generation ago, when Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad in Utah. Could prison officers trained to be case managers and supervisors of rehabilitation programs bring themselves to shoot down a restrained prisoner, even one condemned to die?

I know plenty of soldiers who couldn't, and wouldn't, do it.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: GUEST,#
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 10:09 AM

And then there was the guy who was transporting trained seals over a state line for immoral porpoises.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 10:23 AM

look at this way.....if they're busy shooting people , at least they're not knocking on your door.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Greg F.
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 11:27 AM

T-Bird, is it absolutely necessary for you to PROVE time and time again that you're an idiot?

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: olddude
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 11:27 AM

Imagine the entertainment value if they just threw them off a building. People could take bets on what part hits first

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Wesley S
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 11:30 AM

Of course not. That would be barbaric.

They would shout "Heads or tails".

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Ed T
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 12:00 PM

Hanging  

Regardless of the form, and appearances, IMO, the various forms of capital punishment mostly have the same result. In fact, I may be more beneficial to openly show it for what it is, mostly vengeance (versus deterrence) - rather than sanitizing it through drug injection.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Musket
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 12:35 PM

I take back the comment about banging the rocks together.

After all, we can't take any moral high ground whilst Terribulus is scraping his knuckles into threads... yeah, sadly, our education system slips the odd one through the net too...

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 01:12 PM

Treat the condemned with dignity.
Give them a glass of brandy and a cigar, and a pistol loaded with only one bullet.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Ed T
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 01:19 PM

Oddly enough, those facing capital punishment are often placed on suicide watch before they are executed. Coukd it be to ensure the executioner is not let down?

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 01:21 PM

Well, don't do anything that would get you a ticket!
Dead is dead.

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Ed T
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 01:57 PM

"Dead is dead", except in Oklahoma;)

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 04:05 PM

No death penalty.

gnightgnu

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 04:28 PM

in the land of the latter day saints
they do folks in, in a way that's quaint
don't need a gurney or needle in Utah
Just a chair and the old six shooter

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Rapparee
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 05:40 PM

Actually, rifles are used. Five, if I remember aright...four with bullets and one with a blank, preloaded and then mixed up by someone who didn't do the loading. Utah, with a Mormon majority, originally believed in the idea of "blood atonement." The LDS Church tossed this idea along with polygamy, but there may still be (probably are) those in Utah who believe it and want to show their "repentance and salvation" by shedding their blood.

I guess it beats Saudi Arabia's beheading and crucifixion as death penalties....

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Greg F.
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 08:11 PM

Five, if I remember aright...four with bullets and one with a blank...

Yep. All ya gotta do, Rap, is count the holes in Hill's chest in the photo, above.

I guess it beats Saudi Arabia's beheading and crucifixion as death penalties

How so?

And it ain't just the Latter Day Saints that push "blood atonement" by any stretch.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 Mar 15 - 08:16 PM

yeh i knew it was rifles - just poetic licence. i had mine revoked a while back.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Musket
Date: 14 Mar 15 - 01:21 AM

Call it puerile fascination but I was reading an article on this subject where some of those interviewed were discussing the alternatives on the basis they agreed with state murder as a concept.

Rather chilling from our vantage point;










Civilisation.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Mar 15 - 02:25 AM

I do get fed up with people who go on about how abolition of the death penalty is a mark of 'civilisation'. The ancient Jews, Chinese, Greeks, Romans, &c were all 'civilised'. There has been 'civilisation', in any reasonable definition of the term, throughout Europe and most of Asia, for thousands of years.

Yet until, at earliest the late-18C/early-19C, not one of these 'civilisations' ever even suggested a legal, judicial, forensic system which did not include capital punishment for certain specified offences; and it was C20 before any such actually came into existence ANYWHERE.

It seems to me the height of arrogant self-regard to postulate our own particular fashionable-for-the-nonce set of practice and principle as being the only modus vivendi worthy of the "civilisation" sobriquet; and to deny the epithet to such states as still retain cap-pun -- are not Malaysia or the United States, or any of the Middle-Eastern bloc who top people like there's no tomorrow, to be admitted to the fellowship of the 'civilised', then?

Oh, shut up!

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Musket
Date: 14 Mar 15 - 03:24 AM

Notwithstanding that one word can, according to that lass on Countdown, have multiple or abstracted meanings. Hence the word "Civilisation" to mean a subjective view of your society's standing. As in "act in a civilised manner" or "be civil to your newsagent and don't enquire as to the whereabouts of his nephew "

Get nurse to explain it to you.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Thompson
Date: 14 Mar 15 - 03:35 AM

One of the problems with the English invasions of Ireland in the 16th and 17th centuries was the difference in philosophy on how society should approach murder.
(I'm writing about this at the moment, part of a book I'm working on, so it's at the forefront of my mind.)
In Ireland, the Brehon Laws, like the Scandinavian law of the time, required that an 'Eiric' be paid by the extended family of the murderer to the family of the victim.
This was a pretty good method of stopping a) murder and b) vengeance, because it spread the responsibility out, and caused the family to put pressure on their errant member.
In England, then suffering the religious mania of the Reformation, the attitude was that a murder was an offence against God, and under the biblical injunction "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth", it should be "a life for a life", and the murderer should himself or herself be killed.
It seems strange to me that the religious idea is still current 600 years later.
State execution is not an effective way of stopping murders, and seems an odd method to use; it's a bad example. If the state's a murderer, how does that make murder wrong.
If Utah wanted to end murder, the best way would be to study what states (by which I mean countries, of course) have the least murder, and what they have in common.
Of course, we're not even getting into the question of countries like China and Indonesia which execute people for things like smuggling and fraud.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Greg F.
Date: 14 Mar 15 - 08:11 AM

The ancient Jews, Chinese, Greeks, Romans, &c were all 'civilised'.

Um - but that was then and this is now. But what's a few thousand years, eh?

And then, there's civilization.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Mar 15 - 09:00 AM

The Carthaginian civilisation sacrificed their first born children. The Aztec civiisation waged war to get prisoners to sacrifice to the sun god. The Roman civilisation crucified all the slaves belonging to a master who had been murdered by one of them. The Jewish civilisation executed women for adultery. The European civilisation of the 16th and 17th centuries had thousands of people burned as witches. Civilisation is an incremental thing, and what was best practice then is unacceptable now. Ragusa in the 16th century had the death penalty, but it was inflicted extremely infrequently. The executioner was recruited from elsewhere, the city shut down for the day and citizens remained at home, and after the sentence was carried out, the executioner was paid handsomely, sent home, and ordered never to return. That was a shinig exemplar for then.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 14 Mar 15 - 09:07 AM

And now the state of Utah, full of nutty mormons, will be no better than IS.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: GUEST,#
Date: 14 Mar 15 - 09:11 AM

Looking at the world we have created, we are in no position to judge what's meant by civilization. And certainly the people who could bring it about are by and large making an economic killing off it. When movie people mean more than the guy or gal who grow the oats we eat, we have a problem Houston.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Stu
Date: 14 Mar 15 - 11:16 AM

Beautiful state Utah though. Zion is a truly incredible place, the desert is wonderful and the paleontological sites are fantastic.

"and it was C20 before any such actually came into existence ANYWHERE"

Abolishing state murder means more than proclaiming your credentials as a civilised society (a hypocrisy that most cannot afford to expose). It does however show that a society has started down the road to acknowledging killing people, however unpleasant and applying their crimes, is not the way to deal with them and collectively we're not going to condone further human suffering.

In this respect abolition of the death penalty is similar to the abolition of slavery; it's a fundamental rejection of a certain mindset. Just because it's always been done that way doesn't make it right, and stopping state murder and kidnapping, selling and owning human beings is one way of expressing a deeper compassion and desire for a better, more progressive society.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: pdq
Date: 14 Mar 15 - 11:52 AM

In the US, 32 states have a functioning system for capital punishment.

We have 50 states, despite Obama's claim that there are 57.

Of the other 18 states, only 5 have enacted the ban in the correct way. That is, by having it proposed and passed by the House, approved by the Senate and signed (into law) by the state's Executive.

The other 13 states are in some form of disfuction due to judicial activism. Having two or three activist judges throw out an initiative that was passed buy 80% of the voters is tyrany, plain and simple.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Thompson
Date: 14 Mar 15 - 11:54 AM

I have a theory © that Gary Gilmore holds the record as the US's greatest serial killer…
Oh, wait, I'm not including warmonging presidents in that. But outside of them.

… because by breaking the constitutional ban on execution as "cruel and unusual punishment", his lawsuit allowed states to kill people ad lib for decades afterwards.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Mar 15 - 01:09 PM

judicial activism.

Ah, yes, that old shibboleth, PeeDee. Of course, when that "activism" benefits the conservative, fundagelical Tea Party knuckledragger agenda, that's perfectly OK with you, innit?

Different day, same BS.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: John P
Date: 14 Mar 15 - 03:32 PM

Having two or three activist judges throw out an initiative that was passed buy 80% of the voters is tyrany, plain and simple.

You may want to consider reading the Constitution and/or taking a jr. high school civics class. Or, put another way, what percentage of the voters in the south were in favor of slavery before the Civil War?

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Greg F.
Date: 14 Mar 15 - 04:56 PM

No chance, John. PeeDee lives in a fact-free environment, and has always been proud of the fact.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 14 Mar 15 - 05:03 PM

salt lake city
a town without pity
they wear funny underwear
tie folks to chair
so they don't think of sin
when they're doing you in.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: olddude
Date: 14 Mar 15 - 08:37 PM

It is just so wrong. I cannot understand why it still continues. It is revenge that is all it is and a great society should not be in the revenge business. Just so sad it still continues

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Joe Offer
Date: 15 Mar 15 - 02:39 AM

Musket (click), while it's true that most of the people who moderate Mudcat are Americans, I don't think any of them support capital punishment.

So, your point is what?

Moral: even liberals should judge individuals as individuals, not by their nationality or race or gender preference or religion. To do otherwise is called "prejudice," a vice even ever-so-politically-correct liberals may be guilty of at times.

-Joe, Radical Moderate-

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 15 Mar 15 - 02:55 AM

Not so surprising really, in a nation that's perfectly happy to allow its citizens to have the right, and means, to unilaterally choose to inflict the death penalty without trial on another citizen who breaks into their home to steal the TV, or who 'looked funny, like he might attack me ', or who is a black youth walking through a 'white neighbourhood', or any number of other feeble excuses.

You live in a very violent society, that permits it's citizens the means to inflict extreme and lethal violence. It's hardly a surprise, therefore, that your authorities treat offenders with extreme and lethal violence.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 15 Mar 15 - 02:56 AM

That was a reply to oldude, Joe, not to your post.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Joe Offer
Date: 15 Mar 15 - 03:01 AM

Then again, Backwoodsman, opinions in the U.S. on Capital Punishment, Gun Control, and a number of other things are close to an even split. If just a few more voters would see things my way, the United States would be a Shining Beacon of Justice for the Nations.

As it is, we look rather like savages....

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 15 Mar 15 - 03:22 AM

Not savages Joe, I've spent time there (admittedly only Texas) and been very happy, although I was always nervous walking the streets of an evening, and seeing cops with guns scared me to death.

But I can't help but feel that there's a correlation between the gun-culture over there and the continued belief in the death-penalty.

What I do find especially uncivilised, though, is the length of time that those sentenced to death can languish on death-row. In many cases, while awaiting the result of appeals etc., they serve an equivalent prison sentence to that which a murderer would receive in Europe, and then are put to death at the end of that time. Now that is truly inhumane, IMHO.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Musket
Date: 15 Mar 15 - 04:27 AM

My stereotyping was with a purpose.

We all have laws and practice that not all agree with.

But killing prisoners transcends peculiarities and different approaches. It marks a country out on the scale of decency. The position on the scale for The USA somewhat precludes the self appointed exporting of values.

Is the place run from Washington or Hollywood? Buggered if I can tell the difference.

We only have one law that is a stain on the principle of civilised behaviour. The established church (and no other) is allowed to discriminate on sexual orientation and deny them a marriage service, and can sack gay employees for getting married.

You will notice that rather than accept it, all three Muskets, of which only one of us is gay, tend to shout about injustice rather than say it isn't my fault so stop lumping me with my compatriots.

Back on subject. This Musket helped unearth a doctor over here who had assisted in executions in Kuwait. He was struck off and his visa revoked. Sometimes, shouting just isn't enough. The British Medical Association keeps a list of doctors around the world, including The USA known to be involved in judicial executions. This helps ensure they cannot work in The EU. Australia / NZ or many other countries nor have papers published as their contravention of the hippocratic oath precludes their registration being recognised. Mind you, the list can contain errors and doctors on it have either confirmed their involvement or refused to respond.

You see. you can do something about it. We prosecute firms who supply drugs or other goods for the purpose. We will not extradite people at risk of being killed.

You know, if those opposed to it in The USA got off their arses rather than complain every time more progressive countries look down on them, you might just get somewhere.

Subject: RE: BS: Utah: The Firing Squad returns
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 15 Mar 15 - 08:17 AM

What percentage of USAian people own a passport I wonder ??