Last Meals of Prisoners

[chitoryu12]

From what I understand, firing squad's been deemed cruel and unusual punishment by several states.  Why? Because it was traumatic for the FIRING SQUAD.

Know how they did it? They put the real bullet in one guy's gun at random, everybody else got blanks.

So... yeah.  The entire squad would think they were the one that killed him and wind up with mental issues, so they stopped doing it.  Why they don't just get hardened military meatheads who have no problems slaughtering folks, I dunno.

The "some guys have blanks and some guys have live rounds" thing has been used, but it's always done differently. Some groups simply never used blanks and just expected everyone to tough it out. A lot of them only had one blank among them, usually with a wax bullet to provide similar recoil to a live round, so that nobody knew for sure who fired a fatal shot. I think part of the problem is that modern methods of execution have people assigned to the duty who are trained in pulling the levers and pushing the buttons that end a man's life, but a firing squad is taken from people who haven't ever been trained to directly point a gun at someone and pull the trigger. If your execution  is simply throwing a switch or pushing buttons in the correct order, it's impersonal. You can feel like you didn't "really" kill them.

But then, as Sigmaleph said, fast methods of execution are often dirty. A bullet to the head sprays blood and bone, and a guillotine will always be messy and rather traumatic to watch and clean up after. They may kill instantly or almost instantly with a minimum of pain, but they don't look as clean on camera and make people start to dislike executions more. Using lethal injection may be loaded with potential mistakes that cause someone to spend hours dying in agony and unable to express this due to the paralytics they're pumped with, but fewer people feel bad when they just watch someone gradually stop breathing while strapped to a table. You don't need to think about it.

[mellenORL]

I never understood why when gas chambers were in use, it wasn't something simple, cheap and basically painless, like carbon monoxide? It's still used for euthanizing small animals, and considered humane.

But, no, US gas chambers mostly were about putting potassium cyanide pellets in a jar under the condemned and then pumping in
sulfuric acid over those to release hydrogen cyanide gas clouds into the chamber. While instructing the condemned to breathe it in to avoid prolonging the process.

Carbon monoxide is odorless and invisible, the subject (animal or human) would fall asleep, go into a coma, and asphyxiate by blood oxygen depletion in that state. Other than causing an extreme "blush" to the skin (looks purple-ish on dark skin,  pink to red on light skin), it leaves a fairly peaceful looking corpse. The condemned could also be helped by a strong sedative, such as Versed ("vehr-sehd"). No wonder so many suicides have chosen carbon dioxide.

[R. U. Sirius]

From what I understand, firing squad's been deemed cruel and unusual punishment by several states.  Why? Because it was traumatic for the FIRING SQUAD.

Know how they did it? They put the real bullet in one guy's gun at random, everybody else got blanks.

So... yeah.  The entire squad would think they were the one that killed him and wind up with mental issues, so they stopped doing it.  Why they don't just get hardened military meatheads who have no problems slaughtering folks, I dunno.

I thought the point of that exercise was so everyone could tell themselves that they WEREN'T the ones to fire the actual shot.

[MadCatTLX]

The reason Utah still has the option of firing squad is because of some Mormon doctrine that says something to the effect of "if you spill the blood of another the only way to redeem yourself is to have your own blood spilled". Of course this is interpreted in the most literal sense that blood actually has to spill from the body.