What's the best way to kill someone?

I don't mean on the battlefield, or in a mob hit. Not in self-defense. I mean as the state. What's the best way for the state to execute a prisoner who has been condemned to death?

The courts are currently wrestling with that question.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the execution of a Mississippi killer only minutes before he was to be dispatched by lethal injection. Lethal injection, it turns out, can be a pretty painful way to die, so lawsuits were filed, and now the lower courts are trying to decide whether that method violates the Eighth Amendment, which proscribes cruel and unusual punishment.

In issuing their stay, the Supremes deftly sidestepped the issue and dumped it on their brethren downstream.

Currently, 38 states in this country employ the death penalty. Of those, 37 either use lethal injection exclusively or offer it as an alternative to another method. If the courts decide that strapping some three-time loser to a gurney and pumping a lethal cocktail into his veins is, indeed, a violation of the Eighth, then there's going to be some serious scrambling to find yet another "humane" way to kill someone.

They won't find one. As sentient beings we want to live, and we fight for life with the last breath in our bodies. Dylan Thomas was merely stating the obvious when he urged us, "Do not go gentle into that good night.... Rage, rage against the dying of the light." Short of croaking in your sleep or while heavily sedated, few people go gently. (Incidentally, Thomas drank himself to death, so maybe the Department of Corrections should consider installing taverns on death row.)

There seems to be no way to end someone's life deliberately and prematurely without pain or discomfort. So if the courts strike down lethal injection, where does that leave us? With the rope, the gun, the chair or the gas.

Were I doomed and given a choice of the existing methods, I'd probably opt for the firing squad. There's a certain military glamour attached to it, for one thing. I like to think I'd forgo the blindfold and stand against that wall on a misty dawn, my chest thrust forward, my greatcoat flapping in the breeze and a cigarette dangling from my lips, gazing unconcernedly as the riflemen filed out to discharge their grim task.

(The reality of modern, bureaucratic firing squads, of course, is somewhat more prosaic. You're strapped into a chair and immobilized. A hood is placed over your head, whether you want one or not, and even if you had the choice you'd never see the guys who shoot you. They're behind a canvas screen, firing through gun slits. The only nod to tradition is that one of them is given a blank.)

Death, however, may not be instantaneous. Even with five .30-caliber rounds slamming into your chest, you might end up bleeding to death, which I can only assume is an uncomfortable process. There is no officer of the guard to administer the coup de grâce with his pistol. More's the pity.

Of the remaining methods, hanging is the oldest. Having choked on a chicken bone once, I'm quite sure I wouldn't enjoy that.

Besides, if the executioner is off by a hair on his weights and measures, your neck might not instantly break the way it's supposed to and you could end up strangling to death. In an extreme case, that could take as long as 45 minutes. Cruel and unusual? I think that qualifies, yeah.

When you go to die in the gas chamber, you're told to breathe deeply to speed things along. Naturally, most inmates, being only human, do just the opposite. Now they're struggling, and they don't pass out right away, and things just get downright unpleasant.

Unpleasant enough, anyway, for a federal judge in California to strike it down as cruel and unusual. For the nonce, the Golden State relies on lethal injection to do the deed.

How about electrocution? "Let's see. If we strap the guy into a chair, attach electrodes to his head and leg and slam a couple of thousand volts through him for about 30 seconds, that should do the trick."

Well, it'll kill you all right, but only someone who can't count to "Eighth" would think that "riding the lightning" is remotely humane. The condemned is literally broiled to death, or nearly to death. (The attending physician has to wait for the body to cool down before checking for a heartbeat. He often finds one, meaning they have to zap the poor sod again.)

The amount of vomit, drool and fecal matter typically expunged by the dying inmate – often accompanied by movements so violent that bones are dislocated – would seem to indicate some sort of negative reaction. And that's when things go smoothly. When they don't … well, remember Old Sparky? Just a warning, this ain't pretty.

Let's face it. All of these methods are deeply flawed. All fail to pass muster with the Eighth Amendment.

So how about reviving some discarded classics, like drawing and quartering, or the guillotine?

Umm, no.

Of all the ways to formally execute someone, drawing and quartering is probably the grossest violator of the Eighth Amendment. Drawing and quartering is all about cruel and unusual punishment. It was devised with cruel and unusual in mind. Don't believe me? Check this out.

And as for the guillotine, well ....

It was invented to be humane, to replace atrocities like drawing and quartering. But, again, death might not be instantaneous. Your head is lopped off in the blink of an eye, but you may well remain conscious for up to half a minute while your brain comes to terms with what the hell just happened.

Some physicians present at executions by guillotine have testified that the severed head remains responsive for a brief while. Just nervous twitches? Who's to say?

So that's not for me, either. I don't want to spend the last 30 seconds of my earthly existence being aware that I'm 5-foot-1 instead of 5-foot-9, you know?

Actually, none of these methods, old or new, are very appealing.

We seem to be all out of options here. Well, there is another possibility, one so obvious that I almost hesitate to suggest it. Maybe the United States should rejoin civilization and just abolish capital punishment altogether.

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Tony Long is copy chief at Wired News.

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