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US Executions Threaten Supply of Anaesthetic Used For Surgical Procedures
ananyo writes "Allen Nicklasson has had a temporary reprieve. Scheduled to be executed by lethal injection in Missouri on 23 October, the convicted killer was given a stay of execution by the state's governor, Jay Nixon, on 11 October — but not because his guilt was in doubt. Nicklasson will live a while longer because one of the drugs that was supposed to be used in his execution — a widely used anesthetic called propofol — is at the center of an international controversy that threatens millions of U.S. patients, and affects the way that U.S. states execute inmates. Propofol, used up to 50 million times a year in U.S. surgical procedures, has never been used in an execution. If the execution had gone ahead, U.S. hospitals could have lost access to the drug because 90% of the U.S. supply is made and exported by a German company subject to European Union regulations that restrict the export of medicines and devices that could be used for capital punishment or torture. This is not the first time that the E.U.'s anti-death-penalty stance has affected the U.S. supply of anesthetics. Since 2011, a popular sedative called sodium thiopental has been unavailable in the United States. 'The European Union is serious,' says David Lubarsky, head of the anesthesiology department at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in Florida. 'They've already shown that with thiopental. If we go down this road with propofol, a lot of good people who need anesthesia are going to be harmed.'"
They are switching drugs in Missouri, while adding a team of compounding pharmacists, so the drugs will be made on site and therefore not subject to Europe's politics. Also some of the European flexing here is a direct result of NSA wiretapping.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Capital punishment is barbaric. Leave it back in ye olde days. Or maybe it just appeals to your blood lust?
Agree completely. I must point out (again) that the automatic appeals process costs taxpayers at least $2 million dollars, therefore life in prison/no parole is economically cheaper for taxpayers. And if the convicted prisoner wants to have any perks of prison life (TV/Radio/ better food/extra time out of cell, etc), those perks need to be earned by paying off their debt to society and the victim's families. But killing for the sake of a sense of revenge puts us at the same level of the criminal's mindset when they killed their victims. It doesn't make us any better. (posting AC due to moderating comments here)
Apparently a combination of regulations and manufacturing problems. See here:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/37403276/ns/health-health_care/
Now that is old news (2010) and apparently both Teva and Hospira are going to restart production ... slowly. However, unless and until they get a significant output going (not soon), Fresenius is the sole supplier, more or less. See here:
http://www.in-pharmatechnologist.com/Processing/Propofol-Lethal-Injections-Blocked-as-Teva-and-Hospira-Re-Enter-Market
Actually there were numerous incidents where it did miss or didn't cut all the way through and they had to crank it up again and redrop it or wait for the guy to bleed to death. It wasn't really all as merciful as it was supposed to be...
If the EU position were a principled one, they would not be sending the same drugs to Iran. In fact, the policy remains popular among citizens in Europe.
#-#
Ad Astra Per Aspera
A rough road leads to the stars
Lifetime imprisonment is actually less expensive than the death penalty. California could save $1 billion over five years by replacing the death penalty with permanent imprisonment. California taxpayers pay $90,000 more per death row prisoner each year than on prisoners in regular confinement.
Source: http://www.deathpenalty.org/article.php?id=42
Also see: http://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=001000
I do not believe you understood the GP. The suffering in suffocation results from buildup of carbon dioxide, not the absence of oxygen. As far as we can tell or reasonably surmise, that would not happen in a room filled with pure nitrogen.
Nonaggression works!
An interesting fact about firing squads is one person has a blank.
"One of the sharpshooters is secretly armed with a blank round, which means that each shooter can rest comfortably in the knowledge that there is a 20% chance that she never shot the prisoner."
Firing Squad History
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
that argument no longer holds water, now that we have the DNA testing and other advanced forensics that set those people free.
Those techiques are only as reliable as the people who do them, which is to say that they can, and do, go wrong.
I disagree with this because the role of a jury is to determine guilt.
No, the role of the jury is to judge both the facts and law. John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court wrote, "It is presumed, that juries are the best judges of facts; it is, on the other hand, presumed that courts are the best judges of law. But still both objects are within your power of decision⦠you [juries] have a right to take it upon yourselves to judge both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy".
If what you propose were the case it may sway someone to vote not guilty even when it's been proven beyond a reasonable doubt the person is guilty simply because they don't want to execute the sentence
That is exactly the purpose a jury is supposed to serve. If the community, as represented by a jury of peers deems a punishment unconscionable, they not only have the right but the moral obligation to acquit. If the government wants the people to sign off on its punishments, the government must levy punishments that the community can accept. The jury is supposed to be a check on the legal system.
It's almost as if you're trying to punish the judge / jury for making a decision of guilty. It wouldn't have any positive impact that I can see and only negative ones.
The only way this would be punishment for the jury is if they didn't think the punishment actually fit the crime. If that's the case, they damn well should be discouraged. That's a very positive result.
The US injustice system is draconian enough. We are a "free country" that imprisons more people than than any other country in the world. We still use the death penalty despite the lack of any evidence that it makes our country safer. We are in dire need of reigning in the vindictive and authoritarian nature of our injustice system.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
In any room sized to comfortably hold a at least one person, that person will become unconscious if the room is anoxic long before the CO2 level rises enough for the body to detect it.
By the way, in anoxic conditions, the oxygen saturation doesn't gradually decrease. Instead, it plummets, since oxygen exchange in the lungs is reversed - the blood actually gets deoxygenated. Once the deoxygenated blood arrives in the brain (takes 10-20 seconds) it's lights out almost immediately. The brain doesn't take too well to having no oxygen, even for the briefest amounts of time.
Are you aware that it costs more to the tax payers to kill prisoners than to keep them incarcerated for the rest of their life?
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
That only applies to countries with bad justice systems based on vengeance, such as US.
In most civilized countries, life sentence means something between 10 and 30 years, long enough to count as severe punishment that completely changes person life without the downsides you mention.
Deserve? What does deserve have to do with this?
Capital punishment does have defensible justifications. There are some people who are simply too dangerous to release and have no chance of rehabilitation - in which case execution may be a far more efficient use of resources than many decades of expensive prison time at taxpayer expense, especially if they need to be kept in isolation.
But that isn't the reason so many people support the death penalty. The main reason seems to be a sadistic desire to see 'evildoers' suffer, covered up under the polite excuse of 'justice.' Wrong has been done, and only by inflicting equal or greater suffering upon the guilty can the demand for vengence be satisfied.
Though the practice is not uniform, many (most?) U.S. states require that, if a death sentence is to be imposed, that it be imposed by a jury. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/us-supreme-court-ring-v-arizona But I agree that this is mostly irrelevant to your point.
caritj.org
> life sentence means something between 10 and 30 years
There is nothing "civilized" about this kind of doublespeak.
The OP kind of misstated the nature of the criminal sentence, which is why it looks like doublespeak.
In Canadian law, for instance, there is very much a life sentence. Attached to the sentence, however, is a minimum period of time before which a convict can apply for parole; this period of time tops out at 25 years for the most serious offences (things like first-degree murder).
There is no guarantee that parole will be granted. I a convict is paroled, the life sentence remains in effect--they can be monitored more closely than a regular private citizen, and can be returned to prison if they violate the terms of their parole.
What doesn't exist is a life sentence with no opportunity for parole--which is where you get the 'lifers' in the U.S. system who have no motivation not to shiv their fellow prisoners.
~Idarubicin