We know it takes very little fent to stop the heart and breathing. Why not just inject 10x that and have the person slip off in opium land? Seems straightforward and foolproof.
Michael Douglas in Falling Down: “Take shooting lessons, asshole.”
It’s a lesser point but still…
At less than five meters they managed to not hit his heart but they did manage to hit his pancreas and liver.
This is two people aiming at a static target, a human being, not moving, and you still managed to get that far off
For the gun touting maniacs that they are, Americans really suck at aiming
Who says they wanted to hit the vital spots?
Shit like this is going to be used as valid justification for nuking the colonies off the face of the Earth and I for one think that’s great
They’re doing firing squad executions still?
Jesus Christ.
Recently some states have brought it back specifically. No points for guessing which way those states lean politically.
it’s meant to be less shitty than the lethal injection etc.
of course, unless they fuck it up
It’s meant to be cheaper, not better. Finding and paying for the drugs has become more difficult.
no, as in the pain and etc is meant to be better.
Of all the ways to die, getting shot is among the quickest and least painful ones. I’d honestly probably choose that over drugs.
The article stated that there were three shooters, and only two gunshot wounds. I seem to recall from the early '70s that firing squads of five people or so always secretly loaded one weapon with blanks. That way the shooters could all convince themselves that they were the one who had the blank if their conscience bothered them. Maybe these guys did the same thing but with only three shooters…
I think if you can’t find someone with the fortitude to put a hole in the victim’s brain stem at muzzle contact range (let’s ask the people who pushed for this punishment, for example), and you have to go through all this procedure to alleviate “guilty consciences”, maybe the whole idea isn’t so great?
While I agree with the conclusion, making a moral judgment based on a random persons guilty conscience isn’t very reliable.
We should switch to execution by strangling to death by hand. The judge has to conduct the execution.
That is the protocol in Utah for firing squads, but not South Carolina
As for why Mahdi’s body showed two wounds from the execution rather than three, a doctor noted in the comments section on the autopsy commissioned by the state that “it is believed that” two bullets went through one wound. Whereas in Utah, not all members of the state’s firing squad shoot live bullets, in South Carolina, the rifles of all three shooters were supposed to be loaded with ammunition.
The two wounds on Mahdi’s body were described in the autopsy as being almost exactly the same size. Pathologists who reviewed the report expressed doubt that two bullets went through precisely the same, small hole.
“I think the odds of that are pretty minuscule,” Wigren said
Maybe their firing squad line up behind one another?
Which is dumb because you can clearly tell whether you had the blank or not from the amount of recoil.
Three shooters just isn’t enough.
Funny, I think it’s three too many.
This shows a number of things. First, how barbarian and backwards death penalty is. Second, Americans are not even good at shooting.
it’s out of their culture’s preferred shooting range, the elementary school
Come on, everyone always mentions the elementary schools, but we have plenty of other gun ranges. High schools, colleges, workplaces, shopping malls…
movie theaters to really make the action come to life?
. . . Concerts, thrift stores, department stores, clubs . . .
Officials placed a hood over Mahdi’s head before the staff fired, according to an Associated Press reporter, who was a witness. As shots were fired, Mahdi cried out and his arms flexed, and after roughly 45 seconds, he groaned twice, the AP said. His breaths continued for around 80 seconds, then a doctor examined him for a minute. He was declared dead roughly four minutes after the shots.
The article mentions only noticing 2 hits on the body. My understanding is that there is always 1 blank in a firing squad execution, to leave some amount of doubt in the minds of those pulling the trigger. I would point to that as to why there were only 2 bullet holes, but I would also expect everyone, from those quoted to the journalist writing the article, to know that, so now I have to second guess whether or not that is the case after all.
This would only work if the people in the firing squad had never shot a gun before. There’s no recoil with blanks. You’d be able to immediately tell.
I would ask for any kind of source on that, instead of just repeating it like an urban legend. That’s probably why they didn’t include it in the article.
A’ight. Here you go.
If only they were told it was a bad idea of a multitude of reasons.
They don’t care. Suffering is the point. They don’t want to understand how both revoking due process and allowing cruel and unusual punishment will eventually bite them in the ass.
And in other news, South Carolina introduces bill for executions by dynamite to begin later this year.
Is there any good reason why the rifles aren’t firmly fixed to a stand so they point directly at the heart, with the shooters only pulling the trigger?
Even with something like that, going for the heart is just prolonging suffering, which is usually the point
People are different height and don’t stand still just to name a few.
Lol, Americans can’t even use their guns right
I’m pretty sure people sentenced to death get to choose their execution method, so this guy chose firing squad?
Wouldn’t everyone just choose old age or snu snu?
The death penalty is barbaric no matter how it’s done, but if the state was going to put me to death then bleeding out in five minutes by firing squad seems a lot better than drug-induced tortured breathing for an hour.
Why were they not aiming for the head? 2 headshots would have put him out of his misery instantly even if the 3rd person missed.
It’s either because they want to pretend it’s a civilized execution method by making it look better or because they want to keep the option of doing it wrong and making the victim suffer longer.
