You highly overestimate the amount of compassion the average person has. If you torture people to death in public people will sell tickets for the best seats. The Romans built a whole damn arena for this purpose.

What Foucalt gets wrong here is that historically, civilians just enjoy it. They don't find it barbaric or inhumane.

Like there wouldn't be some national conversation about "what have we become" - it'll just be a fun thing people do.

no suffering

Person fucking dies that's like the ultimate suffering i can think of, holy fuck killing people can't be made humane no matter how many different methods are used

Because cruelty.

That sounds like the plan they have already just with an entire room rather than just a small mask. It's the same thing except your plan requires more gas and a bigger dedicated gas chamber with more failure points.

Why use a mask: because it's cheaper, and helps secure the people nearby (in case of a room leaking, that's a lot of displaced air, while a mask or similar leaking is significantly less of risk in case of uncontrolled release). But I bet mostly because it's cheaper - and remember, it's never been done before (by them, for this purpose).

No, that would be to moral. Unchristian even.

It doesn't matter. We don't do eye for an eye here.

This isn't the Old Testament, fool

Actually, yes. this is Kenneth Eugene Smith, who was convicted in a 1988 murder-for-hire slaying of a preacher's wife. Elizabeth Sennett, 45, was found dead on March 18, 1988, in her home in Alabama's Colbert County. She had been stabbed eight times in the chest and once on each side of neck.

In all actuality, there is no information saying that he did or did not allow this, but I did learn a lot about this case. Turns out two guys were hired to kill this pastors wife because the pastor had an affair (doesn't make sense but it is what happened). These two guys, one of them stole things to stage a burglary. He was put to death in 2010 and his last words were to her sons, "I'm sorry. I don't ever expect you to forgive me. I really am sorry."

The other, currently on death row, agreed to beat her, but apparently did not intend to kill her.

After the pastor became a suspect, he drove to the gathering, told his sons what part he had played (hiring a crew to kill his wife and himself having an affair), then got into his truck and shot himself.

It's a waste of life. Terrible decisions from three people that ultimately led to a severely somber outcome for everyone involved.

Probably not. But remember that ~4% of all death row inmates are innocent, so it may be that he didn't kill anyone.

Also, shouldn't the state be better than a murderer? Shouldn't the mere fact that we believe we, as a society, are civilized mandate allowing a death row inmate respect before they die?

I'm not religious, so I don't think praying and final words will do anything. But it won't harm anyone, and if it makes him more comfortable as he goes out, especially in light of the likelihood he didn't that to his victim, I'm not against it.