My comment has always been:
“Did the victim get a nice last meal? No? Then eff off.”
We ought to go back to execution by hanging. A Brit, Albert Pierrepoint, perfected the technique in the aftermath of the Nuremburg trials, and was the crown’s official executioner in the UK, offing some 400 convicted murderers in the decade after WWII. The convicted person died instantly at the completion of the drop as the result of Mr. Pierrepoint’s mathematical calculations and meticulous preparation. No suffering; no “cruel and unusual” punishment.
The story of the trial and execution of the last woman put to death in the UK, Ruth Ellis in 1955, is really fascinating and worth a read.
She was convicted in a one day trial at London’s famous Old Bailey courthouse on June 20, 1955. Her appeal was denied on July 11, 1955, and she literally reached the end of her rope shortly after 9 am on July 13, 1955.
http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/ruth.html
Holloway Prison is in close proximity to Arsenal soccer club’s new 60,000 seat Emirates Stadium in north London. Pentonville, which is a men’s prison, is located in the center of London near the bus route between between King’s Cross and Liverpool Street railway stations.