Bring back guillotine instead of electric chair

Bringing back the electric chair is a terrible idea (“The electric chair could make a comeback in South Carolina,” Jan. 11).

I do not understand why people are opposed to the guillotine.

They say it is too gruesome, but what is more gruesome: a prisoner sizzling and quavering as he is fried to death, or one clean chop that leaves little room for error? I would much prefer the latter. The objective of capital punishment is not to cause retributive pain.

Although perhaps electrocution and lethal injection were developed with good intention, questions abound about the humaneness of both. Execution by guillotine, carried out in private rather than as a public spectacle, would prove an advantageous solution, and our legislators would do well to consider it.

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