If We Use The Death Penalty We Should Use the Guillotine

1. The guillotine, in fact, cannot be conclusively said to be a "painless" method of execution, and it most certainly does not kill "almost instantly". During the Reign of Terror and the French Revolution, use of the guillotine was perhaps the most prominent it has been at any point throughout history. During that period of history, scientists observed executions to determine if, in fact, decapitation via guillotine was "quick and painless". They would ask those condemned to death to blink several times in succession if they were still conscious and alive. Not only were the subjects able to comply, but the blinking would often continue from 13 to 30 seconds after the head had been severed. In addition, in at least one instance, a man was able to call out his friend's name and receive a conscious response. This is the account, from A History of the Guillotine by Alister Kershaw: "It was then that I called in a strong, sharp voice: 'Languille!' I saw the eyelids slowly lift up, without any spasmodic contractions ... Next Languille's eyes very definitely fixed themselves on mine and the pupils focused themselves ... After several seconds, the eyelids closed again, slowly and evenly, and the head took on the same appearance as it had had before I called out." Furthermore, modern scientists have determined that the actual act of removing the head from the body does not kill the brain, and in turn, the person. Instead, death is due to the suffocation to due to oxygen deprivation; cytochromes in the brain can only function for 13-30 seconds without new oxygen and glucose. Thus, the brain is able to experience the excruciating pain of a severed neck in quantities enough to be considered "as cruel and unusual", without actually killing the subject. Hardly humane or "painless". Sources: http://europeanhistory.about.com... http://aintnowaytogo.com... 2. Even if the guillotine were not "cruel and unusual" to enact in the first place, making a public showcase of the condemned is hardly a function of modern democracy. Civilizations and governments that have done so in the past were some of the most ruthless dictatorships of their time. Additionally, the primary purpose of capital punishment it not to "frighten onlookers" into submission. While this may be a side effect of killing those who have committed serious crimes, the primary objective is to deal justice to the criminal. Whether or not someone will be killed after committing a crime should not be a potential criminal's motivation to refrain. A society in which this is the case is a moral failure. As such, not only is the guillotine inhumane, but any attempt to use it as a fear-inspiring device would be doubly so, in addition to being immoral. 3. Here, my opponent seems to imply that it would somehow be moral to take the organs of criminals for use in donation even if they were not organ donors. This is simply not the case. To do so would be to further violate another human being's rights under the law and make those who took the organs and the beneficiaries arbiters of the principle that "breaking the law is okay when the person you violated was 'bad'". However, assuming that the criminal had agreed to be an organ donor, the guillotine is not the only method of execution by which organs could be preserved. Execution by firing squad, which most certainly does kill instantly and is thoroughly humane, would preserve all organs preserved by the guillotine, if not more. To suggest that the resorting to the guillotine would somehow be an improvement over the current system of capital punishment due to its ability to preserve organs creates false dilemma. We do not need to choose between the guillotine and organ preservation or electrocution/injection and damaged organs. There are alternatives. 4. It's really not all that cost effective. We already have electric chairs, guns, and syringes with chemicals. The cost of building ethically- and physically-approved guillotines and jumping through all the governmental loops to institute them as a common method of execution would far outweigh the cost continuing current, alternative methods.