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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.'"
I think a country/state that is very proud of (1) their inalienable right to own and wear guns, and (2) insists on killing people found guilty in a very imperfect process, should have the guts to just shoot those people. Executions aren't supposed to be nice, so just get over the squeamishness and just shoot the buggers.
I think it would be best to have a firing squad composed of the jury that found someone guilty and imposed the death penalty. If you have the guts to condemn someone to die, I think you should also have the guts to execute that penalty.
(and yes, I also think that every non-vegetarian should be willing to butcher an animal)
Maybe it's time for the US to take the hint and stop this barbaric and medieval practice?
Seriously, why does it not bother more Americans that by having the death penalty they find themselves in the illustrious company of countries such as Libya, Sudan, China, Iran, Iraq and North Korea (the "Axis of Evil") and Syria?
Absolutely not! Executions are as much a part of America as slave ownership.
Butchering is gross. I wouldn't mind snapping its neck and hading it off to someone else to butcher, though.
Being grossed out by something doesn't constitute a moral imperative. I'm pretty grossed out by a woman's period but I still have sex with them.
Nitrogen in a gas chamber is probably the most humane way to do it. You just... lose consciousness. There's no distress since carbon dioxide displacement still happens. This is why working with such gasses in an enclosed space always has those warnings etc.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
no, barbaric is letting monsters live who committ their hideous crimes again and again. Murder, rape, child molesting, kidnapping there are hundreds of cases of repeat offenders. don't believe the urban legend lie, putting one of those kinds of crimminals to death saves lives.
Right, because as we all know, there's no such thing as a life sentence without parole.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Best to make sure you actually have the criminal...
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
the idea that somehow by murdering prisoners we make society a better place is as ridiculous as having a doctor whos taken the hippocratic oath commit the execution. To kill a prisoner is to at best wash the states hands of their responsibility to do anything more constructructive, like engage in corrective efforts that beget the name "correctional institution" in the first place. At worst, its incredibly condescending to assume intelligent americans would be comforted with this pittance of "biblical retribution" we call execution.
And it is. Capital punishment is derived from, and entirely indistinguishable in the 21st century from, biblical retribution. The idea that killing the killer will somehow make everything OK is nothing more than a laughably exotic attempt by the state to appease constituents clammouring for a reduction in violent crime.
and there has been a reduction in violent crime in america since the 1970's. its not lauded however. Peace and low crime rates dont win elections. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States
so we gin up the voters with "suburban warzone" rhetoric and the voters insist on ever more stringent "tough on crime" criminal charges. We shuffle ever closer to a police state because we're told to. in turn our elected officials in contestable elections are morally reprehensible when facing a pink slip, so they fuel these flames for their own professional gain. our religious leaders sit idly by, as the notion of murdering the guilty is business as usual to them.
killing prisoners detracts from the big problem. low employment for unskilled labour combined with a gutted public education system and a criminal code designed to ensure everyone can be convicted if necessary is packing prisons to bursting. the 'wars' on drugs and the 3 strikes laws are nothing more than throwing sawdust on vomit. that if somehow we can contrive a repository for anyone not willing to live the life of a subservient peasant working 3 minimum wage part time jobs and living in squalor, then american is OK, freedom is preserved, and that pepperidge farm dream of the olden times punctuated by dean martin and bing crosby can go on unabated in the suburbs. the real problem is as a society, we have not accepted the fact that we cannot just ignore poor people. to do so created a culture, and class of individual that inevitably becomes determined with absolutely nothing to lose, and that person when they emerge will be as remorseless and callous as the hand of the free market under which they toiled.
Good people go to bed earlier.
It's pejorative because it implies greatly hastened judicial process, or a complete lack of it. There's nothing implicitly wrong with merging executioner with either of the other two, because the executioner has no judicial power anyway.
While I'm all for squishing child molesters feet first using a steam roller in the lowest gear the issue is this...
It's confirmed that we've executed innocent people. Wrong place, wrong time, bad lawyers, biased juries. It's happened. People on death row have been exonerated by DNA evidence so often that a couple years ago the Governor of Illinois mass commuted everybody on death row to life without parole.
While it's bad if a guilty man goes free, it's far worse if an innocent man is killed.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exonerated_death_row_inmates#United_States
Best to make sure you actually have the criminal...
Probably a better link is Wrongful Execution:United States where they sure as hell didn't have the criminal, but went ahead and executed them anyway.
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>and yes, I also think that every non-vegetarian should be willing to butcher an animal
I believe that every animal rights nut should be denied any medication or surgical procedure that has been tested on animals...
I disagree with this because the role of a jury is to determine guilt. 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. I think that would be a miscarriage of justice. The jury's disposition to the punishment is irrelevant when determining guilt unless they're doing jury nullification, then they're just not following the law but for a different reason.
Besides, isn't it ultimately the Judge who determines the sentence, not the jury? Maybe it varies on the type of case and such but my point is the same.
I don't see any logical reasoning as to why someone who is determining guilt should have to be the one who executes the sentence. 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.
So if you sentence the guy to thirty years, should the jury have to house, feed and guard him?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
It's essentially allowing said criminals to continue to victimize society by leeching taxpayer dollars that could be spent elsewhere on more deserving causes. Execution is an alternative that is less humane in most cases, but it also permanently ends any further exploitation of society by those who can't be reformed and can't live in said society.
In most countries where capital punishment has been banned, it was done so because there were too many cases where people were later exonerated after their execution. Let's skip the argument over the ethics of executions as they're done in the US, though, because that is a way to a very vitriolic exchange.
The US is a strange case, though. You have an enormous prison population as a proportion of your general population. Money becomes an issue when such a large percentage of the population is incarcerated, but when you have a more reasonable justice system (and a social security net which removes a large percentage of the impetus for crime... insert obligatory link: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/09/24/breaking-bad-canada-comic-health_n_3984793.html ), the increased cost of keeping somebody alive for the duration of their prison sentence is still reasonable.
Until you get people willing to convict someone just for the chance to pull the trigger.
It doesn't. The justice system has nothing to do with us being "better" than anyone else, it exists to
(1) interrupt the cycle of reprisals that "code of honor" systems create("An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind"), by delegating judgement and punishment to a third party held blameless for actions committed in the line of duty.
(2) discourage future crime through a combination of making an example of criminals caught to dissuade others
(3) rehabilitate, imprison, or eliminating those who demonstrated a willingness to break the law to prevent repeat offenses
(1) requires that the punishments inflicted be sufficient to prevent the wronged individuals from taking justice into their own hands. Obviously if the crime is particularly heinous or the wronged often inclined to violence that may set the bar rather high.
(2) requires that punishments be sufficiently unpleasant that people who believe they probably won't get caught still don't think it's worth the risk.
(3) killing someone is the most permanent method to make sure they never commit another crime - the largest problem being that you can't release a falsely convicted person from death.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Or, you know, join the rest of the civilised world and abolish capital punishment.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
You can get interesting responses from people who are staunchly pro-death penalty hearing this the first time. The first is an immediate rejection "It couldn't possibly cost that much." Followed by a statement that it shouldn't cost that much to kill someone. "You could just use an empty syringe, that is like $5."
Upon finding out that it's because of the legal fees, you get people saying "Well then they shouldn't be allowed to have as many retrials."
Not saying those immediate responses say anything relevant to the conversation, everyone suffers from cognitive dissonance and few people are open minded. And most people who are pro death penalty aren't really so because they think it's cheaper. Just it's amusing to me that the first suggestions in favor of death penalty as part of the justice system are "Well, I could kill someone pretty cheap" and "How about we give people fewer chances to prove their innocence before we kill them."
Every society in the world has established that (at least some) rights can be removed from criminals, with due process. If their right to freedom can be removed, there's no reason their right to life can't be as well (in extreme circumstances at least).
The acceptance of removing rights isn't itself a justification for any particular action. Each proposed action should stand on its own merits. We know that custodial sentences can to some extent be corrected for when a convict is later cleared of the capital crime. One can't give someone back 10 years of life, but efforts can be made to make the remainder of their life as pleasant as it can be under the circumstances. The death penalty is kind of final. It's difficult to appeal the sentence when one would be too dead to show-up in court. Appeals can be made prior to the execution - we know that's pretty common, and certainly some people are reprieved, but once dead there's no going back. The best they can hope for is that a surviving friend or relative will clear their name postmortem. That is a pretty big difference.
It's a moral choice to make, and that's fine. But to argue that executions are some absurdity that have no place in a reasonable society is unfair.
We have to ask ourselves a question: What is capital punishment achieving that a custodial sentence wouldn't?
Is it about protecting the public? If so, how are they any more protected by this death than they would be if the person served their life behind bars? Maybe the protection comes from its deterrent factor? If so, is this worth the risk of executing people who are innocent of the crime for which they've been sentenced to death? Is this a utilitarian argument? Better to have 1 innocent person die if it prevents 100 murders? None of that seems reasonable to me. Are there better ways to reduce crime that won't involve executions?
Is it about vengeance for the wronged? If so, then this is a broken judicial system. The law should never have this in mind.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
Or you could just let murderers rot in jail, thus avoiding both trauma and the rather unfortunate idea that life is a privilege that is subject to revocation by the state at its will. It's not like death penalty serves any practical purpose anyway, besides keeping the idea that violence is justice alive and kicking.
Coming to think of it, I wonder if this is one of the reasons why the US has constant problems with mass shootings and serial killers: if it's okay for the state to do it...
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
What are they going to do? Throw the lifer in jail?
Nope, but they can impose even harsher penalties. Two that come to mind?
* removal of privileges (bed linens, commissary privileges, rec yard, etc)
* restricted solitary confinement (23 hours a day alone in a cell, one hour to exercise, shower, whatever in an isolated small confinement area)
* loss of communication rights except to legal counsel (no more letters to/from home, etc).
In some states, it could also mean being sent to hard labor for up to 16 hours each day, every day until you behave (e.g. Arkansas, which has prison farms).
Even a 'lifer' has things that he fears.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?