Even if you feel that capital punishment is justified, there is simply no humane way to kill someone who knows they’re going to be executed. Psychological torture is still torture. Knowing you’re going to die by execution, especially knowing the date and time, is psychological torture.
If you could put a condemned prisoner into a room and flick a switch and they died instantly and without pain, you would be torturing them as they waited for the switch to flip.
How do you differentiate what you’re calling psychological torture here from just bog standard negative anticipation?
Is it psychological torture if I tell a child that we’re going to the doctor because they need to get their flu shot? They have to sit and live with that dread for the whole ride over.
If this is in some way a difference of kind, what differentiates them? What is the key characteristic that separates the two?
Is the only difference one of degree? That hurting someone in this way just a little bit is fine, but there’s some amount of damage that makes it unacceptable?
Or is it that the ends justify the means? That it is psychological torture to tell a child about the flu shot, but that the need to get the shot outweighs the negative of the torture? If so, and if someone truly believes that capital punishment is correct in a given case, why would the same argument not be valid?
Sorry, how do you in any way equate getting a temporary thing like a flu shot with “this is the end of everything for you?” The kid knows the flu shot isn’t forever.
