Alabama to perform 1st nitrogen gas execution

[NeverMarryAStripper 21907]

Helium seems to be the popular gas for those that want to off themselves

[Herbie Hancock 7348]

This is off topic, but nobody is offing themselves with helium.

They take a bucket to their car and dump some lime-sulfur in it, then dump a jug of Muriatic acid in the jug and shut the door. Takes at most a couple minutes and the H2S rises to toxic levels. Not the way I would choose as it’s very violent and unpleasant, but to each their own I suppose.

[Captainant 27675]

15 minutes ago, Herbie Hancock said:

This is off topic, but nobody is offing themselves with helium.

They take a bucket to their car and dump some lime-sulfur in it, then dump a jug of Muriatic acid in the jug and shut the door. Takes at most a couple minutes and the H2S rises to toxic levels. Not the way I would choose as it’s very violent and unpleasant, but to each their own I suppose.

Lol "just damage your lungs until they fill up with fluid and you drown on dry land!" That's some serious FAFO you're slingin

[TwiceHorn 31481]

22 hours ago, hobbes2702 said:

I don’t think life in prison is a harsher penalty than death but I do think it’s insane that we allow the state to kill people based on the opinion of 12 regular ass morons.

 

21 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

….but…and this is important…we also cannot let 12 of THAT EXACT SAME POOL OF MORONS award money damaged against someone, because that’s too important! Runaway juries! Tort reform!
Even better? The overlap between the group of people who support the death penalty and those who support taking damages awards out of juries’ hands is around 99%.

I think, as a general proposition, that juries get things right more often than they get things wrong.  And this is coming from someone who practices in an area where the subject matter of many or most trials is virtually incomprehensible to a huge percentage of the general public, including pretty educated and sophisticated folk, including often the trial judge.

Juries get just enough of "the facts" most of the time to keep their decisions tethered to reality, but their decisions seem to be largely based on credibility evaluations and a sort of "common-sense" and/or "intuitive" evaluation of the witnesses, the parties, their lawyers, and the case.

When juries explain their verdicts to the trial lawyers in incomprehensible IP cases, they often raise an issue as important or dispositive that neither side considered important.  At first it seems like crazy bullshit, but as you contemplate it over time, you often see the wisdom of it.

One of the problems in criminal cases is that the facts can be so horrific that a jury gets overwhelmed with negative sentiment that can negatively affect the rationality of their decisions.  And, human psychology, understanding why and how someone gets mentally broken enough to commit a horrific crime is a) a relatively new science and b) poorly understood by almost all, including a lot of its practitioners.

So, juries may be uniquely unsuited to making these determinations.  If you make any attempt to be nuanced about it, these are very difficult decisions in any case.

Still, though, sentencing juries can be surprisingly lenient, as apparently was the case here (voting for LWOP only to be overridden by the judge).

[Captainant 27675]

47 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Still, though, sentencing juries can be surprisingly lenient, as apparently was the case here (voting for LWOP only to be overridden by the judge).

This sort of thing where a judge can unilaterally overrule a jury to order a man killed - over the decision of a jury of his peers - does seem really fucking backwards. Once an execution sentence is served, you cannot de-escalate or appeal that sentence. If someone has LWOP, you can always escalate from that sentence or if new evidence is found it can be taken into consideration for their sentence. 

We've seen way too many "oopsie poopsie" exonerating pieces of evidence unearthed after the defendant is 6ft under. It's outrageous on its face to overrule a jury decision to escalate the punishment to death.

I don't like the death penalty, but it wouldn't be so objectionable if it were at least a jury decision

[Pato del Muerto 52499]

And what is a judge but a lawyer in a silk sheet

[The Earl of Texas 3132]

I think a good compromise is to only execute people who do Horns Down

[Mighty fine 169]

I bet the Swiss entrepreneurs developing those suicide pods are getting nervous

[YChang 3446]

6 minutes ago, Mighty fine said:

I bet the Swiss entrepreneurs developing those suicide pods are getting nervous

Now I'm picturing a keurig-like machine with dif poisson pod flavors. 

[RDCanecutter 26446]

Le poisson? Quoi?