Just by looking at the title of the piece, I knew it was one of yours, Josh.

I disagree with the tone here.

It's not a "proud day" when an unelected judge does what the people, through their elected representatives, refuse to do.

Further, the best medical science on general physiology and the workings of the nervous system strongly suggest that the most "humane" form of execution would involve simultaneously severing the spinal column at the neck and physically destroying the brain. Something along the lines of the old British colonial practice of binding a condemned prisoner across the mouth of a cannon and blowing his head off. Short of that, it's hard for me to work up much interest in "improving" the methodology of death. All we're really doing here is choosing the method of torturing the condemned to death that is least visually discomforting to witnesses -- and in the process making the death penalty more socially palatable.

Agree completely with Rhubarbs.  If you want a quick clean kill, bring back the guillotine (whose inventor , I believe, intended it to be just that, a thoroughly painless death compared with hanging).  The whole idea of lethal injection is just to insulate society from the reality of its own cruelty.

Rhubarbs, are you sure Nebraska's justices aren't elected?  Here in North Carolina, the entire s/c bench are elected just like the governor and all the legislature.

"It's not a "proud day" when an unelected judge does what the people, through their elected representatives, refuse to do."

First of all, it is impossible to have an independent judiciary when you elect judges.  Judges should never, ever be elected.  Period.

Secondly, it is the role of the judge, elected or not, to review the constitutionality of a statute when a statute is undergoing judicial review and its constitutionality is at issue.  Whether the people want it or not, if a statute is unconstitutional, as the Nebraska death penalty statute seems to be, the court has the duty to strike it down.   Just because the people favor a particular statute does not make it constitutional.  If they want to kill people in a cruel and unusual manner, they will need a constitutional amendment to do it.  Fortunately, those are hard to come by.

I would say without reservation that Nebraska should be proud of its judiciary for doing its job.  

tnmats, of course you're right: Nebraska's SC judges are initially appointed, and then stand for periodic reelection. Still, my point is not that it's wrong for judges to rule as they have here, but that it's not evidence of general improvement when this sort of thing is done by the judicial, rather than the legislative, branch. Even elected judges really only answer to their own consciences; legislators answer to the consciences of the people. No improvement in the moral conduct of the state is secure unless it rests on a popular consensus, and that seems not to be the case here.

"But it is the hallmark of a civilized society that we punish cruelty without practicing it."

Did anyone tell our current federal administration this?

I'm actually against the death penalty....technically.

And my family is from Nebraska.

But I haev to admit, I'll miss the electric chair. It's kind of funny.

Can't agree on the guillotine adaglas.   There is good reason to believe that a severed head retains consciousness for up to 30 seconds after a beheading.  Of course there's no way to prove this, but in the cardiac catheritization lab it is not all that uncommon for a conscious patient to have his or her heart stopped for brief periods of time, and in those circumstances consciousness is often retained for tens of seconds after cerebral blood flow drops to zero.

Of course a way around this would to be pack a helmet with plastique, flick a switch and kaboom!  But that would probably be too messy.  Better by far to retain the current, tasteful practice of administering death via general anesthetic (plus potassium), and thus maintain the fiction that capital punishment is consistent with advanced civilization and humanity.

walt, good God!!! thanks for sharing. Ever think about being a Hollywood slasher filmwriter?