NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Due to lethal injection drugs produced in Europe becoming increasingly scarce, the Tennessee Senate is sponsoring a bill to allow those on death row to be beheaded with a guillotine. The bill’s sponsors believe they were left with no choice, as European firms have lodged moral objections to their products being used for state-sanctioned executions.
State Sen. Ken Yager believes that the bill, if passed, would be a win for all parties.
“Tennessee will get to continue capital punishment,” Yager boasted, “but now we will be able to do it in an eco-friendly way, and we won’t have to rely on those moralistic, preachy Europeans anymore.”
This is not Tennessee’s first attempt to circumvent the dearth of lethal injection drugs currently on the market. Yager has also sponsored a bill to bring back the electric chair, which was last used by the state in 2007. The state has also changed to a single-dose lethal injection formula to allow more executions to proceed.
Of all the proposals, however, Yager is fondest of the guillotine.
“Sometimes the old-timers really do know best,” Yager explained, “Who needs all these fancy drugs when you can build a perfectly good guillotine with a little hard work and a 20-minute trip to Home Depot?”
While Tennessee would become the first state to use a guillotine, it would not be the first state to have tried. Georgia House Rep. Doug Teper proposed a bill in 1996 that would have switched the means of capital punishment in his state from the electric chair to the guillotine.
Teper, reached for comment on the Tennessee bill, said he still supports executions by guillotine. “It’s a messy way to do it, sure,” Teper said. “But nothing deters crime like a headless body shooting blood around the room.”
