South Carolina Supreme Court rules state death penalty including firing squad is legal.

I say the death penalty is itself inhumane, focusing on the technical problem misses the point. Killing people you have a high degree of confidence committed murder means on a long enough time span, you're virtually guaranteed to kill innocents. The process required to minimize these false positive killings makes the death penalty more expensive than life in prison, on average. As far as I can tell, there's no upside to the death penalty, unless you're firmly convinced that the criminal justice system needs to focus on retribution.

The only humane option I see is to let them live out their lives in a context where they won't reoffend.

Nitrogen gas, hands down. Plenty of others gases, except CO2, would work but NO2 is cheap. We don't have "low O2" sensors, we have "high CO2" sensors. I remember a teen couple making love in a helium filled store balloon/display. They died clueless.

The reason for the very publicized failure last time it was tried was using a mask. Simply put the condemned in a small room and flood it, just like astronaut's hypoxia trainings. Going out silly and stoned would be about as nice as it gets. And having said that, I have no idea why we don't OD prisoners on opiates. Seems like a no-brainer.

As to the firing squad, I feel that's fairly "humane", would be my third choice if it was me. The condemned just slump and die. Hollywood doesn't do the nature of gunshot wounds justice. People mostly just drop, strings cut. The lack of drama is far more horrifying than getting knocked through a window. Unfortunately, I saw a video of Mexican police shotgunning a protesting student at 1-2'. The victim looked a little stunned and fell like a sack potatoes. Original cowboy movies showed death like that, but audiences didn't feel it was realistic.

Rifle rounds setup a shock wave that rearranges your chest cavity. And they're not using some wimpy bullet such as an AR-15 chambers. Something like a 30.06 or .308 is a monster round. Add up 4-5 hits like that, you won't know what hit you.

I oppose the death penalty, but not because I think it's wrong to kill some criminals. I am perfectly fine with ending people like Tim McVeigh or Susan Smith. My problem is that I don't have confidence courts can reliably tell who deserves and who doesn't.

They always say the death penalty is for the "worst of the worst", but many arbitrary factors can make the difference. The race /social class of the criminal/ victim. The ambition of the prosecutor. The location of the crime.

Steven Fry interviewed people involved with execution in different parts of the South. It turns out that they think that the executee deserves to suffer

Pure nitrogen, assuming they don't fuck it up like one of the states did recently

Edit: It's called an exit bag. You want ethical euthanasia? Talk to suicidal people, we have ideas.

the guillotine might actually be a really bad way to go. scroll down to "History of the Debate"

I think hanging w/ long noose is probably one of the more humane ways. Instant CNS damage.

If people are worried about traumatizing the executioners, boo fucking hoo you literally applied to a job killing people.

Is this what you're pretending people are upset about regarding the death penalty, vs. the part where it's state-sanctioned murder where 3-5% of the convicted are innocent?

The death penalty should be abolished.

There's not lots of bullets, there's one. Multiple guns is so most can be blank loaded and all fired at the same time but no one will know which shot actually killed the person. Supposedly so the shooters don't feel as guilty but that's absurd, any rational person would feel guilty pulling the trigger and simply assuming they're the killer.

the firing squad is still designed for the comfort of the observers. otherwise, they'd be shooting them in the head