It would be for sure. (Not that that stops explicit murder from being the number-one box office attraction in U.S. cinema.) But the point is that not I, not you, but a disgusting vicious madman is responsible for committing the crime, unbearable to watch certtainly but not our fault; whereas you and I as taxpayers and voters are responsible in common for performing the execution.
I'm one to talk! since I am in favor of the death penalty for clear cut convictions for first-degree murder, but my feeling is that the electric chair, the gas chamber, lethal injection are all too bureaucratic, responsibility-free, mechanical, distant and inhuman. The leather head-mask, how revolting. If I were dictating the laws, I would offer a choice of self-administered poison or a firing squad. That way the subject of the execution would stand up straight and look his killers in the eye.
Yours WDK - WKiernan at concentric.net