Utah Attorney General Tweets Execution Order 556
Kilrah_il writes "In an all-time low for Internet use, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff used Twitter to announce to the public his approval of the execution of convicted murderer Ronnie Lee Gardner. 'I just gave the go ahead to Corrections Director to proceed with Gardner's execution. May God grant him the mercy he denied his victims,' the attorney general wrote. The AG's 7,000 followers retweeted the message further on and soon many replied concerning the awfulness of tweeting the execution of a human being. 'Mr. Shurtleff was doing nothing unusual; politicians and news organizations now routinely send out tweets to alert people to the latest developments. But as Twitter users digested endless breaking news flashes alerting them to the death of a man by firing squad in the United States, for some Mr. Shurtleff's remarks stood out from the rest.'"
Re:Dignity. (Score:2, Interesting)
There's more dignity in being shot than there is in the needle, IMHO anyway. Particularly if you believe the criticism of lethal injection that suggests the anesthetic wears off before the condemned man is killed -- then the poor bastard wakes up to a paralyzed diaphragm and suffocates to death while awake.
If I had to pick between the two it wouldn't even be a hard call.
Re:An all time low? I disagree (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, I noticed that just immediately after I posted. You always miss the *one* thing...
Anyway, my mistake comes from living in Texas (long enough for the cumulative brain damage to be noticeable), where the governor's signature does, rather infamously [wikipedia.org], go on execution orders.
Re:Dignity. (Score:5, Interesting)
Hanging has more potential for error than the firing squad but I would still take it over lethal injection. If it breaks you neck then it's quite humane -- if it doesn't then it's a rather lousy way to exit the world. Of course the same could be said for the firing squad if the marksmen screw up but the odds of four men all missing the kill zone with rifles at 30 feet (or whatever laughably short distance is used) is pretty low.
Re:Dignity. (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed, hanging is actually very tricky.
Set the drop to be too short, and they guy's neck doesn't break and you have to wait 15 minutes while he chokes to death - not pretty.
Set the drop too long and the head pops off. Better for the guy dieing, as he doesn't suffer nearly as long (a couple minutes until brain death, but as the spine is severed he likely feels nothing). However that's not exactly a dignified death.
If you don't mind popping heads off, why not go back to the guillotine? If well built it's flawless, and far, far cheaper than injection.
All capital punishment is hard on the executioner. You basically have to be some level of sociopath not to be affected by it, which, incidentally, is probably a good use for sociopaths.
If I were to die, I'd want it to be by firing squad - that's just awesome (though really hard on the executioners).
Re:For the record (Score:3, Interesting)
Ronnie Lee Gardner didn't die "before he hit the ground" [ksl.com], and the shots were very accurate. From the linked eyewirness account:
I'm not arguing it wasn't comparatively humane, but he didn't die within seconds.
The message was serious. (Score:5, Interesting)
whether you agree with capital punishment or not, you have to agree that the state should not take its power to kill its own citizens very lightly. even if those citizens are scumbags.
Absolutely. But the message was not light, it was professional and serious in every way.
Just because YOU happen to think of Twitter as a channel of pure entertainment, does not mean it can only be used that way forever. It is a raw channel for information of ANY type.
That's the sign of a good tool, that in the end users are using it in ways the people that built the tool never dreamed of.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not an "all time low" (Score:3, Interesting)
the jury found him guilty and found the death penalty appropriate
It was the only option offered, something the jururers complained about
Re:whoopie (Score:5, Interesting)
or for that matter, "thou shalt not kill"?
The word "kill" is widely held to be a mistranslation, to my understanding. The more proper translation would be "murder", which means that certain forms of killing may or may not be allowed by such a statement.
Re:"Why do they hate us?" (Score:3, Interesting)
And Americans wonder why the rest of the civilized world looks at them and shakes their head in disbelief.
Apparently, you consider it more civilized when government officials do unpleasant things quietly so that nobody is disturbed by it. I suggest you look at the history of 20th century Europe for how well that worked.
Nor, for that matter, is the belief in European moral superiority anything new; that existed ever since the US was founded. While French, German, and British intellectuals were pointing their fingers at the US over slavery and Indian issues, the militaries that supported their upper middle class lifestyles were busy slaughtering natives all around the world (or minorities at home, as the case may be); but it was all oh-so-civilized because they didn't really talk about it much.
Thanks, but I prefer being part of the uncivilized world then.
Re:Dignity. (Score:5, Interesting)
Singapore, Japan, Taiwan and India aren't "civilized countries"?
I was in Singapore for a week. It was like Chinatown without news stands -- if you can imagine such a thing. I couldn't find a copy of the Asian Wall Street Journal anywhere.
The Asian WSJ had written critically of the Lee Administration's policies of censoring the opposition by bringing frivolous libel suits against rival politicians and bankrupting them (people who are bankrupted aren't allowed to serve in the Singapore congress -- clever). So the Lee Administration sued the Asian WSJ for libel.
The WSJ abandoned its principles and published a groveling apology. As a result, they could send a fixed number of copies to Singapore, but it was like trying to find an uncensored American magazine in Soviet Russia.
Finally, the concierge at a 5-star hotel got me a copy of the Asian WSJ. It reported that an Indian playwright had gone to jail because she insisted on performing a feminist play that the Singapore government had censored.
(I also read in the WSJ that the "paddling" which outsiders treated as a joke is actually a brutal beating which Lee used against his political opponents.)
I was in Singapore for a scientific conference, and on the positive side I was charmed by the high school and college students reading science textbooks everywhere, and their love for science and education. Lee is rightly proud of bringing his people out of medieval poverty and illiteracy into modern education and civilization. So is Fidel Castro. They both did it at the expense of human rights.
Civilized? I'd give them a C. Work harder on human rights.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:whoopie (Score:5, Interesting)
What if you had a wedding, and the bridal march was done by some guys farting, or your Masters Degree was on a post-it note?
Some forms of communication are just not considered to be appropriate for some types of information.
Re:I love religious hypocracy. (Score:3, Interesting)
*hypocrisy
not the same thing, really. They ask that God grant him mercy for his soul in the afterlife, but they themselves do not grant mercy on this earth for his life. Two separate concepts.
You can criticize religion for a lot of things, but at least recognize when they are being consistent within their own worldview.
Re:So ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, get your worries in perspective.
Re:Not an "all time low" (Score:3, Interesting)
Compared to lethal injection or the electric chair, I'd choose the firing squad for myself any day of the week.
Re:whoopie (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure it's a mistranslation as much as a change in the English language since the KJV was translated 300 some years ago. People "got it" then, but now our use of the word kill has slightly different connotations. You're right; modern translations do use murder there.
Re:"Why do they hate us?" (Score:3, Interesting)
Why? Cops go to work every day knowing that they've taken on the solemn responsibility to use deadly force, if necessary, to protect other people. They are also frequently the ones that get to watch some innocent person - a victim of some violent person - die right before their eyes. They are frequenly the poor guys who have to go knock on a family's door to tell them that their loved one was just killed by somebody else for no good reason. Police officers see death all the time. They are acutely aware of how precious life is, and how capriciously it can be taken away. And when a guy like the murderer in question personally decides to kill innocent people, and a jury finds his motives and actions to rise to the level of unforgivable, why shouldn't a skilled police officer volunteer to be one of the people that gets the job done correctly?
The officers that volunteered for that duty are carefully screened, and undergo significant training. They consider it an important responsibility, doing it right. It's in the service of the families of the people that murderer decided to kill. It's in the service of the non-murdering working citizens of Utah, who had to work just a little bit, every day, to pay some taxes to buy this guy years of meals while he strung out his appeals process
Re:So the residents of Utah (Score:3, Interesting)
The only way that Mark Shurtleff is going to fail in a re-election bid is to get caught sleeping with a minor (male or female.... take your pick), committing some other felony, or voluntarily stepping down from office. Only cannon fodder will even run against him within the Republican party, so he doesn't even have any real threat in terms of getting re-nominated.
The major opposition to him has been with the polygamous communities in southern Utah, as he has been enforcing the anti-polygamy laws. He feels that older men making babies with 14 year old girls is something that is wrong and should be prosecuted as statutory rape, and organizations which encourage that behavior should be dis-incorporated with assets seized by the state. For myself, I happen to agree with him and am glad that he is doing that prosecution.
Re:whoopie (Score:2, Interesting)
Considering electronic communication "low" is absurd and it's time to change that.
It's Luddite to reject efficient communication for archaic communication just because archaic communication used to be the only game in town.
"What if you had a wedding, and the bridal march was done by some guys farting, or your Masters Degree was on a post-it note?"
I got married by civil union, I didn't need a ritual. I don't need ritual for other things, and even ditched my last promotion ceremony (I made the rank, which was what I did care about).
Gimme the outcomes, not the fucking ritual.
Re:To die or not to die? (Score:1, Interesting)
Did you ever consider that if he hadn't had a very good reason to try to escape, like a death penalty coming his way, he might not have done in guy no.2? After all, life is all you've got, and once the powers that be says it's "forfeit", you don't really have have anything left to lose. You might just as well keep killing those who try to stop you.
Re:So ... (Score:3, Interesting)
The Utah AG was 'tweeting' while the murder was 'twitching'? This case received a lot of publicity (as most executions do) and he was just spreading the news as it happened. He's now qualified to work for one of the big networks.
Twitter is primarily a means of efficiently transmitting trivia. The fact that a life was taken by the State should not be considered trivial.
... most of us don't really have anything worthwhile to say.
Now, having said that, I can also state that pretty much all forms of modern telecommunications are used for mostly trivial purposes. Let's face it
Re:whoopie (Score:4, Interesting)
Most, including myself, consider the death penalty to be justice.
Re:whoopie (Score:3, Interesting)
Huh? Surely the question of how best to translate an ancient Hebrew text into modern English does not depend on what faith or lack thereof you subscribe to or don't as you so choose. Furthermore, an "apologist", as any classicist will tell you, is anyone who defends a position by the systematic use of reason.
Yeah, I can tell.
Re:Oh, fuck off (Score:3, Interesting)
Looks like a list of people who didn't actually get executed.
Yes, and the reason is that evidence came in later which overturned the jury's verdict. Kind of makes me wonder how many thousands of others there have been who never got a chance at a retrial before they were executed, or who lived and died in a time before DNA evidence could show that the circumstantial evidence against them was wrong.
Re:So the residents of Utah (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Dignity. (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, really? Yet, that is exactly what is implied by your posts.
The implication of my posts is in your mind. It wasn't in my posts. If you see that implication, that's your problem with reading comprehension.
Name them.
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/executed-possibly-innocent [deathpenaltyinfo.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Todd_Willingham [wikipedia.org] is the best-documented
False dichotomy.
I said that my first objection to capital punishment is that innocent people are executed. You accused me of believing that the life of a murderer is worth more than the lives of his victims. How do you go from my statements to your conclusion?
First a guy loses his children in a fire (at least sometimes through no fault of his own). Then, on top of that tragedy (and losing your child is the worst tragedy in the world) the district attorney falsely accuses him of murder, prosecutes him, gets a stupid jury to convict him, and executes an innocent man for arson.
Appeal to fear, appeal to emotion, and hypothetical worst case scenario which is a form of cherry picking.
I'm afraid and outraged that innocent people have been executed. What's wrong with an appeal to fear and emotion? Prosecutors do it all the time to get convictions in those same cases. It's not hypothetical; many such cases have been documented with evidence stronger than the original conviction. The worst case happens frequently. If citing the cases with the strongest evidence is cherry picking, then there's nothing wrong with cherry picking.
You sound like someone who read a popular book on "How to Argue." I recommend that, after you graduate high school, you take a college freshman English course. If you've already taken a college freshman English course, I recommend that you demand your money back. If you're home schooled, there may be no hope.
Alternately, you could become a Tea Bagger and run for Congress. In that case, your inability to distinguish between fact an opinion, and your lack of understanding of logic and argument, will not be a problem and may even be an advantage.
The rest of your post is based on those false premises and outright lies.
You are unable to cite a false premise or lie, because there are none. As I say, you don't seem to understand what a fact is. When you disagree with someone, you just throw out a lot of inflammatory language.
And, even if he doesn't face the death penalty, he would still prosecuted.
Or, do you suggest that we not prosecute anyone, ever, because they might be innocent?
I suggest that we not execute anyone, ever, because they might be innocent. They have been innocent, many times.
Re:whoopie (Score:4, Interesting)
Most, including myself, consider the death penalty to be justice.
Justice is when the offended party is made whole. You steal $100 from me, you give back my $100, possibly with interest. You can not make whole a person who is dead. You can't make the victim's family whole by killing the murderer. The death penalty is about revenge. It's about hoping the murderer experiences the same suffering and fear that the victim or victims purportedly felt, and that sentiment is reflected in nearly every statement I've ever read by a death penalty supporter. If you're going to support state-sponsored killing, at least be honest about what you're supporting. Revenge killing doesn't have the same antiseptic ring to it as the death penalty but at least it's truthful.
Re:whoopie (Score:4, Interesting)
"Justice" that you can't take back when DNA evidence exonerates the convict.