The United States is the only G7 country that permits capital punishment, and it remains the only established western nation that permits such. While not every State of the union, permits capital punishment, it is still the law in 30 States and those convicted of crimes and sentenced to the death penalty in those States are subject to that sentence being carried out. While there are all sorts of debates about the death penalty, itself; and an awful lot of hullabaloo about those being sentenced to die, being executed in a civilized and humane way, all of this misses the point -- that if the United States insists upon embarrassing itself to the world at large, by its bloodlust for what all other established western nations have already abolished, than why not just embrace that bloodlust, itself?
That is to say, those convicted of heinous crimes deserving of capital punishment by a jury of their peers, have obviously committed a crime, that in most cases, has at least one victim, if not more. While in some or perhaps in a majority of those cases, that victim is dead; that is definitely not the case in all of such cases. Additionally, most victims are survived by relatives, so that, when it comes time to execute a given criminal, there is almost always some representative of the victim or victim’s family or its relatives that are present or allowed to be present for that execution.
But why should that victim or its relatives, have to just sit there and basically watch the convict, die through a passive lethal injection, which would not appear to be all that cathartic, whatsoever, but would seem more akin to watching someone just go to sleep? Rather, there should be law, mandated in all of those states, stipulating that when it comes time for that execution to be carried out for the death penalty, that the victim or the next in line as designated through court documents, has to execute with their own hand, the convict, their own self.
Not only that, but the execution, could only be carried out through the thrusting of a knife through the body of the convict, of which the convict would be strapped to some sort of containment frame, that would not allow the convict to move or to protect their body, and a State issued knife would be provided to the victim, with some rudimentary instructions on how to use it as well as being provided with the knowledge of the areas of the body of which such knife thrusts would be especially damaging. Additionally, this person would be given a time limit in order to carry out the execution, of which, after that time, if the convict was still living, that convict would be given appropriate medical attention and would thereby be confined to life imprisonment for the duration of their natural life.
While some might argue, that this would be the epitome of “cruel and unusual punishment,” the response by some clever lawyer would be that it is only the federal government that is precluded from exacting “cruel and unusual punishment,” so that that the victim of an especially heinous crime deserving of the death penalty, should be afforded the reasonable opportunity to enact an “eye for an eye” in response. In any event, such a law, would seem to richly satisfy the bloodlust that defines Americans, and therefore would be quite apropos.