PerspectiveWhy the Guillotine May Be Less Cruel than Execution by Slow Poisoning

Published 16 October 2019

Concerns about the drugs used for executions are being raised again after the federal government announced it will once again execute inmates convicted of capital crimes almost 16 years after the last execution was carried out. while the death penalty is the ultimate punishment meted out by the state, it is not meant to be torture. The guillotine remains a quick method of execution – it takes about half a second for the blade to drop and sever a prisoner’s head from his body. Although the guillotine may be the bloodiest of deaths, it does not cause the prolonged physical torment increasingly delivered by lethal injections. Should the U.S. consider using the guillotine to administer capital punishment?

Concerns about the drugs used for executions are being raised again after the federal government announced it will once again execute inmates convicted of capital crimes almost 16 years after the last execution was carried out.

Janine Lanza writes in The Conversation that while the death penalty is the ultimate punishment meted out by the state, it is not meant to be torture.

She writes:

From the stake to the rope to the firing squad to the electric chair to the gas chamber and, finally, to the lethal injection, over the centuries the methods of execution in the United States have evolved to make execution quicker, quieter and less painful, both physically and psychologically.

It wasn’t always so. And there are, perhaps, lessons in history that could provide an answer to current concerns about the unusual cruelty of execution methods in the U.S.

The guillotine remains a quick method of execution – it takes about half a second for the blade to drop and sever a prisoner’s head from his body.

While the moment of execution could be nothing but terrifying, that second of suffering was brief in comparison to the 43 minutes it took for Lockett to die after lethal drugs were administered.

Although the guillotine may be the bloodiest of deaths – the French used sand bags to soak up the blood – it does not cause the prolonged physical torment increasingly delivered by lethal injections.

Should the U.S. consider using the guillotine to administer capital punishment?

It has advantages – no secret recipes for lethal injections, no botched placement of IV needles, no conflation of medicine and execution.

While the guillotine provides a death that is not easy to witness, the death it delivers to the condemned is quick and does not cause the extended pain of bespoke lethal injections.

Could such a death, as bloody as it is, pass muster with the Eighth Amendment’s mandate against cruel and unusual punishment?