🚀 go-pugleaf

In <C0E7pF.9yv@bcstec.ca.boeing.com> sjm2458@bcstec.ca.boeing.com (The Steve-meister) writes:

>While I can appreciate and even agree with the arguments put
>forth by death penalty proponents, there are several things 
>I find very disturbing about it all, and here they are in no 
>particular order.

>o  The ritualistic aspect of it all- the military handbook, the boiled
>   and waxed hemp, the hood, the last words, the sillhouette.

Using a decent reference manual and preparing the rope properly
hardly strike me as ritualistic, any more than using a cookbook
and sifting the flour when baking a cake.  Playing it by ear,
skipping the manual and using the wrong rope, can make for really
botched hangings that would certainly be ruled inhumane.  Either
you'll strangle the victim slowly, or you'll rip his head off.
Both have been known to happen when proper procedures weren't
followed.

The hood and the silhouette strike me as attempts to
depersonalise the person hanging on the end of the rope.  Sort of
like the blindfold for someone before a firing squad.  It also
preserves some dignity for the person if he can't hold his
composure at the very end.  It is strange how this varies with
different forms of execution -- a long, slow death process like
lethal injection seems to be done in the open, ditto gas
chambers.  Hanging and firing squads are concealed.  How about
electrocution?

Last words may be an old ritual, but I'd hate to deprive even
someone like Dodd of one last opportunity to apologize, confess,
or curse the world for killing an innocent man.
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