If a man dies when you hang him, keep hanging him until he gets used to it.
Condemned and executioner with aren't coupled in a primitive rite.
So the thing that bothered me most was that the condemned man had to hope the machine would work the first time.
As the warden of San Quentin, I presided over four executions. After each one, someone on the staff would ask, 'Is the world safer because of what we did tonight?' We knew the answer: No.
What you do to these men on California's Death Row, you do to God.
Because Utah is largely Mormon country, the firing squad's a little different. You're blindfolded but no cigarette.
Now in Utah if you get the death sentence, they have the firing squad. In Russia, they call that early retirement.
Make your way to death row and speak with the tragic victims of criminality. As they prepare to make their pathetic walk to the electric chair, their hopeless cry is that society will not forgive. Capital punishment is society's final assertion that it will not forgive.
Before they give you a lethal injection, they swab your arm with alcohol. It's true. Well, they don't want you to get an infection, and you can see their point. They don't want some guy go to hell and be sick.
