[Drizzt]

Old and bloody tradition revived as Utah prepares firing squad
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
23 May 2003


Utah is getting ready to execute two convicted criminals by firing squad, an old and bloody means of execution that is likely to stir renewed debate about the cruelty of capital punishment in the United States.

The two men, a serial killer and a white supremacist who stabbed a fellow inmate in a vicious murder captured on videotape, are scheduled to die on consecutive nights at the end of next month.

Under Utah's laws, any prisoner sentenced to death has the right to choose between lethal injection - the preferred method of almost all US states that practise the death penalty - and a firing squad. The firing squad tradition is rooted in Mormon custom, which holds that blood must be shed for the crime of murder to be appropriately punished. Utah is the only US state to continue the practice, although it has done so just twice since capital punishment was reintroduced by the Supreme Court in 1976.

One of the men approaching their date with the executioner, Roberto Arguellos, a serial killer and rapist, has been begging the court system to put him to death for years. Not only does he want to die by firing squad, he says, but he wants to waive the right to have a hood over his head as it happens.

The other inmate, Troy Michael Kell, a white supremacist, has sworn, spat and wriggled his way through his various court hearings.

Both cases are problematic. A lawyer for Arguellos has filed a motion - against his will - for clemency on the grounds of mental deficiency. Kell, meanwhile, has filed an appeal for a stay of execution, which is likely to be granted.

The executions come just a month after the US State Department roundly condemned Cuba for executing a gang of ferry hijackers - they too were killed by firing squad.

The firing squads will be made up of police volunteers, who will remain anonymous.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=408714

[Correia]

I don't see what the big deal is. The prisoner has to REQUEST the firing squad.

Controversy my butt. An '06 to the chest is just about as "humane" as anything else.

[Pendragon]

As long as the method is quick and effective and not overly grotesque, who cares?

[Mark Tyson]

Yes, I don't know any more humane way to kill someone than a bullet. Why mess around with all these wierd contraptions like gallows, gas chambers and lethal injection?

[CZ-75]

An '06 to the chest is just about as "humane" as anything else.

.30-30, you mean.


Just to assess the agitprop value of the article, notice the comparison to Castro, the way they gloss over the condemned prisoner's wishes and the fact that they've been proven guilty and that there is clear evidence, such as a videotape, in one case. I imagine there's DNA evidence for the other case.

[cordex]

*shrug*
Sounds good to me.

Edit:
found this little tidbit
Utah’s protocol on execution by firing squad.

Executions are carried out at Point of the Mountain state penitentiary near Salt Lake City.
The firing squad is composed of six members who have volunteered for the job.
At the appropriate time, the condemned prisoner is led to the execution area or chamber. The prisoner is placed in a specially designed chair which has a pan beneath it to catch the blood and other fluids. Restraints are applied to the prisoner’s arms, legs, chest and head. A head restraint is applied loosely around the prisoner’s neck to hold his neck and head in an upright position. The prisoner is dressed in a dark blue boiler suit with a white cloth circle attached by Velcro to the area over the his heart. Behind the execution chair are sandbags to absorb the volley and prevent ricochets. Dark sheets are draped over the sandbags.
Approximately 20 feet in front of the prisoner is a partition. This has firing ports for each member of the execution team. There is a platform rest inside the partition, below the firing ports, for the shooters to steady their rifles. 30-30 calibre rifles are used with standard Winchester Silver Tip 150-grain ammunition.
On one side of the execution area is a room for the state's witnesses. On the other side of the execution area are two witness rooms: one room for witnesses selected by the offender; one room for media witnesses.
When the prisoner is restrained, he is asked by the warden if has any last statement to make. When he has finished a black hood is placed over the his head and the warden leaves the room.
The firing squad members stand in the firing position and take aim at the white cloth circle on the prisoner’s chest. On the command to fire, they fire simultaneously. A physician and medical personnel from the Utah Department of Corrections examine the prisoner after the volley has been fired to determine death.
The estimated average length of time that elapses from the time that the prisoner is restrained to the time that death is determined is eight to ten minutes.
Individuals authorised to attend an execution by firing squad include witnesses selected by the offender, the victim’s family, government witnesses, and administrative staff (as determined by the executive director).
It is possible that other prisoners will elect to die by firing squad in Utah over the coming years, rather than choose the lawful alternative of lethal injection.

[alan]

I thought that the choice was amongst three. Firing Squad, beheading and hanging.

[Ledbetter]

I don't think the hood is solely there for the condemned's comfort. Neither do I think the condemned should be able to refuse it, for the sake of the executioners and the witnesses.

[rock jock]

Hey, Correia, between you, George, and pvt pyle, you guys could rent yourselves out for executions. Who is it that owns that .50 BMG?

[shooten]

I thought that another part of the protocol is that 1 rifle is loaded with a blank. I read about this when they executed Gary Gilmore. Anyone else here about this?

Scott

[Feanaro]

I think they still leave one rifle empty, to "ease" the squad's minds. They can always claim they might not have killed 'em.

I don't see what's wrong with it personally. Four shots to the heart will end it all pretty soon. And it's their choice.

[Soap]

I don't really have a problem with it. It is not even remotely resembling torture so it is not cruel. And it is a historical method of quick execution, so it is not unusual.

[Standing Wolf]

Messy. Hangings would be less bothersome to clean up after.

[Pward]

READY :what: AIM :eek: FIRE :what:

[Sir Galahad]

I say bring back the 6-at-a-time gallows of "Hangin' Judge" Parker. Or the Wicker Man of the ancient Celts.

[benewton]

There's a lot to be said about gassing them in their sleep.

After conviction, random computer generated number determines just when the ball falls!

Give's them time to think, without a production.

Otherwise, perhaps a single sealed cell, no food or water, and a "lethal device" might be in order: let them do it to themselves.

Were it me, too many "procedures" have made me unafraid of injections. These people must pay an "unusual" penalty, or there simply won't be one, with all that that implies.

[Hkmp5sd]

I forget where I originally heard it, but someone stated that the only humane was to execute a prisoner is to tell him he as been given a full pardon and as he walks out of jail with a smile on his face, shoot him in the back of the head. Guess I'm old school. I think the prisoner should know whats coming and that it is punishment for his crimes.

[Feanaro]

Hanging is very slow and painful if it doesn't snap your neck. People have hung for twenty minutes till they died. Even I have some compassion, get it over with quick.

[sm]

Sounds good to me. Then I'd also allow excecutions to be televised. Watch or not, remotes are made for a reason. Be prone to have inmates watch...might alleviate repeat offenders...maybe.

IMO , more humane than, electric chair,or gas chamber.Seems equal to or more cost effecient as hanging, which I think is fine too.

I wouldn't be against the family , or a member being allowed to pull the trigger, or trip platform on hanging either.

Cold, nope, reality is not always pretty.

[Jim March]

Take 'em to a hospital, knock 'em out with standard sodium pentathol or whatever, and once zonked, "part 'em out". Blood-type 'em ahead of time, have all the sick in need of said parts lined up ready to go.

[sm]

Jim, I'm all for organ donors.

I have been in the OR when the harvests and transplants performed.

Somtimes I think for the victim's and families sake,closure is just as important. Hate to say it, but maybe moreso. Violence for violence, eye for an eye...cultural, religious...

[Jim March]

Hey, if you give away land just south of Portland, does that make you an Oregon Donor?

:neener:

[CZ-75]

I thought that the choice was amongst three. Firing Squad, beheading and hanging.

No state has ever beheaded anyone that I'm aware of as a method of execution.

The article was also wrong about Utah and the firing squad, as Idaho has it on the books also. Oklahoma has it as a fallback should lethal injection or electrocution be ruled unconstitutional.

Utah used to have a machine that took several pre-sighted rifles and hooked them to a single triggering mechanism that had several strings attached, all but one a dummy.

Messy. Hangings would be less bothersome to clean up after.

Wrong. The condemned often vacate their bowels and bladders as they dangle. Decapitation (complete or nearly so) is a possibility, hence massive blood loss.

the Wicker Man of the ancient Celts.

What is this?

Hanging is very slow and painful if it doesn't snap your neck. People have hung for twenty minutes till they died. Even I have some compassion, get it over with quick.

The English "Long Drop" may not be anymore painful and cruel than what some attribute to lethal injection. The cervical vertebrae usually dislocate with between 1000 and 1200 ft-lbs. of force applied, causing instant unconciousness, with death following in around 10 minutes.

As hanging is practiced in Iran and most of the Middle East and Central Asia, a case can be made for its cruelty. Iran has been known to hoist the condemned into the air with cranes. Most countries in the region use the "short drop" relying solely on strangulation.

Too bad WA used the "long drop" on Wesley Alan Dodd.

[sm]

Jim...you're pulling another all-nighter --right? Don't give up the day job:D

[Jim March]

I think hanging is a pain in the neck.

The best execution method is to set up a box around the condemned party's head, sealed at the neck, and introduce a swarm of angry Africanized bees to sting the guy to death.

This is known as "beeheading".

:neener:

[Mike Irwin]

Ah, the least loved of the executioner dwarves gets to come out to play...

Sleepy, Sparky, Smokey, Dancer, and Boomer...


The Wicker Man was reported by Julius Ceasar as a Britainic Celt practice of making a huge man-shape out of reeds and wicker, loading slaves or prisoners into it, and then torching it.

The Wicker Man is thought by some to have been Julius just busting the Celts chops. There's apparently no known Celtic source material, or anything else from around the same time frame, that indicates that the Britanic Celts did this.

Was it supposed to be a method of execution, or some pagan rite where prisoners were just toasted?

For anyone who hasn't seen it, there's a movie by this name from the late 1960s/early 1970s starring, IIRC, Christopher Lee.

Pretty good, I saw it MANY years ago. Damned scary to a pre-teen. :)

Ah, here we go...



The Wicker Man (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0070917)

[Tamara]

"Any last requests?"

"Yeah, could y'all aim for my melon instead? I'd like this over with as quickly as possible."

[Byron Quick]

Firing squad messy? I don't think so. I've worked on several people who were shot in the heart with 9mm or larger pistol calibers. There was no blood worth mentioning...a spot about the size of a quarter if the heart is hit squarely. Apparently what was in the heart drains into the thoracic cavity. The perforated heart looks similar to a deflated balloon on a chest X-ray.

I would expect the damage to be much more severe from a rifle cartridge and maybe some more blood simply due to the size of the exit wound. But this is basically blood that is blown out by the bullet not pumped out by the heart.

I've seen a hog decapitated by a katana. Based on my observation, I believe that hog head was alive and conscious lying there on the ground for about ten seconds. It was gnawing the ground and its eyes were blinking. Thus, I don't believe decapitation to be that quick or painless. I bet ten seconds is a damn long time with your head in that bucket.

[geekWithA.45]

I don't even want to know why a hog was decapitated by katana, unless it shouted "There can be only one!", at some point. :scrutiny:


Anyway, that checks with all the literature on decapitations. Apparently the human head has about 10-15 seconds of "fuel" available to the brain once circulation is interupted, and it seems to be generally considered by medical folks that loss of consciousness isn't always immediate. There are plenty of annecdotes from beheadings of "blink" communication, and apparently, the whole thing hurts like hell.

I always wondered why they never considered execution by instant obliteration by say, dropping a 50 ton slab of steel on the condemned....

[winwun]

How about on the 50 yard line at Super Bowl Half-time ?

How about a locking collar made of TNT with a randomly computer generated detonation time. Keep the guest of honor in a 1 acre pen until bye-bye time.

How about making the big game hunts more interesting by affixing the above mentioned collar, turning the naughty boys loose in the woods on opening day, give them a machete and tell them that if they don't report in with a rifle and an orange vest before sundown the collar goes off.

Hmmmm -- better add a cowbell to that collar.

[OF]

The executions come just a month after the US State Department roundly condemned Cuba for executing a gang of ferry hijackers - they too were killed by firing squad.Gotta love that journalism. As if the reason for the outrage at Cuba was the fact that they used a firing squad. If they'd executed the highjackers with injections, well, OK then. The implication being that if allow these prisoners to choose firing squad as their method of punching out, we're no better than Cuba.

Gag.

- Gabe

[Ledbetter]

Now that's funny. "Bee-heading?":scrutiny: :uhoh:

[Shalako]

I don't even want to know why a hog was decapitated by katana, unless it shouted "There can be only one!", at some point.

Oh great. Now I'm busted. When a guy busts out laughing that hard in a cube-farm you know I'm not working. :D

I think the condemned ought to have one last hoorah before quittin time. Load up a pack of offenders and set em down on one of those new fangled roller coasters. The kind with the flip down collar safety bar. Give em a real hum dinger of a ride. Then somewhere after the loop-dee-loop have a low hanging strap....


Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

Voila!

[Country Boy]

George Carlin has an act about executions. Funny stuff.


Oregon donor - Cracks me up :D

[P95Carry]

Jim March .. boy, are you on form buddy!:D

[Byron Quick]

I don't even want to know why a hog was decapitated by katana, unless it shouted "There can be only one!", at some point.

The hog was about to be slaughtered by having its throat cut before butchering. With the permission of the owner, a katana was used instead of a knife.