Monday morning probably isn’t the time to debate the question of whether a state should impose the death penalty on those convicted of brutal and heinous murders. And you can’t decide that anyway after reading just a few sentences written on an opinion page of a daily newspaper.

But the death penalty debate continues, particularly in Nebraska, where that state’s Supreme Court ruled that using the electric chair as a method of execution was cruel and inhumane punishment. Now state officials are debating whether the ruling commutes death sentences to life imprisonment or whether condemned inmates should be executed by another method.

The ruling affects 10 inmates on the Cornhusker State’s death row, including two men who were convicted of first-degree murder in nearby Richardson County.

The most notable inmate is John Lotter, who was convicted in 1995 of killing Teena Brandon, Lisa Lambert and Phillip DeVine in a rural farmhouse near Humboldt, Neb., in 1993. Brandon was a female who lived as a male in Falls City and was killed after she reported that Lotter and Tom Nissen raped her a few days before.

In 1999, a movie was made about Brandon’s life, “Boys Don’t Cry.” Hillary Swank won an Academy Award for Best Actress for portraying Brandon.

The other inmate is Michael Ryan.

Back in the early 1980s, Ryan ran a white supremacist compound near Rulo, Neb. He was convicted in 1985 of torturing and killing James Thimm, a member of his group who was also an FBI informant.

Nebraska is debating whether these two men should have their sentences reduced to life in prison or simply killed another way, probably by lethal injection.

Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning says that yes, absolutely, another method of execution should be imposed. “They’re still sentenced to death,” Bruning told the Associated Press recently. “Their punishment remains death, and the punishment has not changed.”

True, but then how do you kill them? Neither the state’s governor nor the Legislature has proposed a different method.

Again, this is not a debate about whether capital punishment should exist. Most polls I’ve seen show that a majority of people in Nebraska — and Missouri — favor it as the ultimate punishment.

Face it, death is here to stay.

The problem always comes when it’s time to decide how to carry out the sentence. Most states, the U.S. military and the federal government, use lethal injection. Basically, you strap the inmate to a gurney, insert an IV, and inject three drugs. The first causes unconsciousness, the second paralyzes the muscles and the third stops the heart.

The method is generally believed to be a relatively humane and fool-proof way to snuff out the life of another human being. Unfortunately, reports of botched lethal injection executions have cast doubt on just how effective this method really is.

The crux of this debate is that the standard of executions — that they be not cruel and not inhumane — may be impossible to attain. Is there a humane way to end someone’s life? I doubt it. Killing is messy business. Every person reacts differently to drugs coursing through their veins or an electric current shot into their brains.

You get the feeling that requiring executions to be humane is just window dressing to make us feel better about killing. In the end, the guy’s dead, but we can take some solace in the fact that “he didn’t suffer” or that the state showed more humanity than the criminal did to his victims.

John Lotter says he believes lethal injection is no more humane than other methods. He told the AP that a drug that paralyzes the body is just a way of covering up the suffering.

Of course, Lotter doesn’t believe he should face death anyway. He was convicted based on testimony by Nissen, who since has allegedly recanted and admitted that he shot Brandon, Lambert and DeVine.

“You put a cover over it,” he said. “How is that humane? Being dead is dead.”

True enough, John Lotter. On the day after your execution, you’re still dead.

And the rest of it, the details about how and by what method the state of Nebraska uses to kill you, are just a way the rest of us can live with ourselves.

Steve Booher’s column runs on Mondays.