why is it when they are going to execute someone they always do it at midnight.....i dont see the point?

Answer 1

The execution process is at best, a stressful one; therefore, most of the officials overseeing the process like to let off a little steam afterwards. By having the execution at midnight, it ensures that the clubs will be hoppin' when the officials leave the prison.

Answer 2

Why wait?

Everyone executed has a day that they are supposed to die. That day starts at midnight. By law the execution must be completed by the end of that day, the following midnight.

Generally people want every last Minuit to see if the governor grants a pardon. So they wait till midnight.

Answer 3

Yes, Sean Sellers should have been "executed" seconds before he killed his first victim; or immediately upon finding him and identifying him as the murderer.

Older law books sometimes stated that a sentence of death would be carried out by "hanging by the neck until dead at sunrise on the date no later than fourteen days after his conviction, unless an appeal is then pending."

Answer 4

Tradition? I don't really know but I suspect it is the 1st minutes into the day of the execution that it can be carried out!

You know, I really am getting the feeling we are as bad as any nation we complain about! And it makes me sick. Is this what we have become?

Midnight Shame -- USA Executes Child Offender

WASHINGTON - February 4 - The execution of Sean Sellers shames the USA and is a further sign of its selective contempt for the international human rights standards it so often claims to support, Amnesty International said today.
Sean Sellers was executed by lethal injection in Oklahoma State Penitentiary just after midnight on 4 February, for crimes committed when he was a 16-year-old boy.

International law prohibits the use of the death penalty against those under 18 at the time of the crimes. It is a principle that is now so widely accepted that no country is exempt from it.

"The USA's repeated claims that it is the most progressive force for human rights in the world are contradicted by its blatant flouting of the global moral and legal consensus that killing people for their childhood crimes is wrong," Amnesty International said.

"By executing Sean Sellers, the US authorities have turned their clock back 40 years to the last time a US prisoner was put to death for a crime committed at 16. This cannot be defined as a progressive act."

The Organization of American States, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Defense for Children International, the American Bar Association, and Amnesty International were among those who appealed for the execution to be stopped.

On 27 January, the day the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board rejected Sean Sellers plea for clemency, Pope John Paul II challenged the USA to reject the cruelty of the death penalty. However, Oklahoma's Governor, a Catholic, welcomed the clemency rejection. In television interviews on 3 February he said that the Pope was "wrong" about the death penalty.

"In the end, international law and the global moral consensus was ignored to satisfy perceived domestic opinion," Amnesty International continued.

"In doing so the authorities have done nothing but deepen the culture of violence in US society. It is time to seek constructive solutions to violent crimes, including those committed by children."

The execution of Sean Sellers has confirmed the USA as the world's leading perpetrator of the execution of people under 18 at the time of the crime. It has now executed 10 child offenders since 1990, one more than the rest of the world combined. The nine others killed in the USA were 17 at the time of the crime.

Answer 5

I want to answer cantcu, not the midnight thing. Sean Sellers murdered a convinience store clerk for not selling him beer, and because "he wanted to see what it felt like". 6 months later, he murdered his mother and stepfather, and then tried to rig the crime scene to shift blame to an intruder, rather than himself. So what if he was 16. He killed 3 people. He originally only wounded the clerk, but chased him down and shot him again. It took 14 years of appeals to execute that SOB, he was 30 when he was put to death. I'm sorry Americans aren't as "enlightened" as the rest of you people about this, but if the price of that "enlightenment" is letting sick pieces of s*** like this guy live, I'm glad we aren't.

For the life of me, I can't understand why anyone would waste pity on that piece of crap.

Answer 6

Because they want to make sure the guy has had a full day beforehand. Also, they get nightshift pay, which is always more.

Answer 7

the prisons locked down at midnight....if somebody wants to riot....they have to do it by themselves..........in their cell........

Answer 8

Electric is at its cheapest rate per kilowatt.