You know, a giant skull-crusher might actually be the preferable form of execution. Imagine one of those big hydraulic pile driving hammers. Just imagine a human skull at the impact point. Imagine not literally using one of those machines, but an execution device built around such a mechanism.

Grizzly as hell, but honestly, I don't think we should factor the comfort of the execution audience into this. The state is murdering someone. The law may have judged this person worthy of being murdered, but they are still being murdered. Let it be as physically gruesome as it is morally.

And why the giant head-crusher? Because it would be the perfect method from the condemned's point of view. It's instant and completely painless. The skull is flying apart like Gallagher's watermelon before the pain signal can even be processed. This beats even the guillotine, which gave the victim a few last seconds of horror, as they experienced the pain of the blade and the experience of being a head falling into a basket. Also, it's pretty much idiot proof. You don't have to worry about a clumsy sheriff-playing-as-doctor to administer a cocktail of medications. You check if the machine runs before the execution, but otherwise there's no real way to fuck it up.

In theory nitrogen asphyxiation is the ideal way to do things. No pain. Just a gradual tiredness followed by sleep and death. But then you have to worry about nitrogen leaking out of a chamber and asphyxiating the observers.

Or Hell, if we really could get over ourselves, the ideal method would probably just be massive doses of opioids. No real way to screw that up. In terms of fuck-ups, worse that happens is they get underdosed, they don't stop breathing, and you dose them again while they're asleep. But we don't like the idea of murderers being able to die in a state of medicated bliss and permanent sleep, so that's right out.

Honestly, a giant head crusher would be far more humane than our current methods.