God’s law allows killing an aggressor to prevent him from doing harm. A person who has committed a capital crime is an aggressor, an enemy soldier in an army of one, a soldier who has made war on society. As such, he may be legally killed in defense of society. He is a casualty of war.
And in war, we Americans do not torture enemy soldiers. We may kill them, but we do not torture them. When we must kill, we kill dispassionately, as one might kill a germ or a dangerous animal, but we do not make our enemies suffer for the sake of watching them suffer. The tradition of the American defender of home and hearth is to give our enemies a “clean”, quick death whenever possible. In capital cases, the rope and the bullet allow us to do so.
The electric chair, however, does not provide a “clean”, instant death. It often takes minutes to kill its occupant, minutes spent in agonizing pain. It may be that a given criminal deserves such pain, but vengeance is God’s job, not ours. Our sole moral duty is to eliminate a threat to society, not to exact revenge, and that is all that we may morally do.
In my opinion, the electric chair is an instrument of torture. It should not be used to kill condemned men when alternatives exist.
All men are endowed with unalienable rights, among these being life and liberty.
But you can lose those rights. He who takes another’s life loses his own moral right to life, just as he who infringes on another’s liberty loses his own moral right to be free.
Pretty simple, IMO.
BTW, I agree about the guillotine. The Bic of execution methods. Works first time every time.
Also replacing the air in the execution chamber with pure nitrogen would result in quick unconciousness and death within a few minutes.