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.'"

Comments

Hangings

[JackieBrown]

We should just go back to hangings. It works for killing Nazis and war criminals.

Re:Hangings

[sycodon]

Firing squads are effective too.

For child killers, burning works for me.

Re:Hangings

[mrvan]

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)

Re:Hangings

[durin]

Why not just pull the warning labels off everything they use and let the problem sort itself out?

Re:Hangings

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely not! Executions are as much a part of America as slave ownership.

Re:Hangings

[Anonymous Coward]

When the term "judge, jury, and executioner" is used, it's usually in a pejorative sense. Merging the latter two positions is a bad idea from a separation of power standpoint.

Re:Hangings

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Hangings

[X0563511]

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.

Re:Hangings

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> Hangings

And with Europe cutting off rope supplies, this is another good reason to invigorate our domestic hemp production.

Re:Hangings

[TheSpoom]

Pure rationality cannot trample human rights. That leads to... unsavory consequences. History is full of dictators who believe they have "purely rational" reasons for genocide.

Re:Hangings

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Hangings

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh sure, then you'll have psychopaths turning up as the only people who can't/won't try to avoid jury duty.

No, they're too busy "creating jobs".

Re:Hangings

[Anonymous Coward]

>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...

Re:Hangings

[Firemouth]

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.

Re:Hangings

[BSDstef]

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

Re:Hangings

[Joey Vegetables]

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.

Re:Hangings

[sycodon]

So if you sentence the guy to thirty years, should the jury have to house, feed and guard him?

Re:Hangings

[realityimpaired]

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.

Re:Hangings

[SJHillman]

Until you get people willing to convict someone just for the chance to pull the trigger.

Re:Hangings

[MBGMorden]

So you're going to give a bunch of people who may or may not know how to fire and/or aim a firearm the job of executing someone? When half of them miss and the other half have bad hits its going to be mighty bad when the prisoner is on the ground screaming and dying slowly.

PS I've never understood the vegetarian quip that more people would be vegetarians if they saw and/or participated in the process of butchering. Vegetarianism is a rather new fad, and until relatively recently most people WERE pretty involved in the butchering process and there was no mass avoidance of meat eating.

Personally having been hunting since I was 7 (and killed my first deer at 9) I've been pretty involved with the butchering process and if you grow up with it its no big thing. I still kill a few deer per year (usually between 2 and 4) and skin/gut all of them myself. Still love eating meat. Heck when I see a cow grazing the first thing I think of is steak and get hungry.

Re:Hangings

[wagnerrp]

Your body does not measure a lack of oxygen. It measures an abundance of carbon dioxide. If you hyperventilate, you can hold your breath considerably longer, not because you actually have any more oxygen in your system, but because you flush out any carbon dioxide in your blood stream, and it takes longer for your body to register that it needs to breathe again.

Re:Hangings

[erikkemperman]

Or, you know, join the rest of the civilised world and abolish capital punishment.

Re:Hangings

[interkin3tic]

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."

Re:Hangings

[MysteriousPreacher]

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.

Re:Hangings

[Hatta]

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.

Re:Hangings

[Golddess]

I can't see any advantage on using chemicals to kill a person, instead of a bullet shot into the head

Less messy, plus chemicals appear more humane. From the perspective of all but the condemned, it looks like they are just going to sleep.

Personally, I'm wondering why they've never tried nitrogen asphyxiation. It gives the same appearance as lethal injection, with the added benefits of being safer to handle and dispose of, and it is actually humane, since the whole "need to breathe" feeling comes about from a build up of CO2, not a lack of O2. If I were a religious person, I'd even go so far as to suggest that nitrogen asphyxiation is God's preferred method of execution. Why else design us with what appears to be such a serious flaw?

Re:Hangings

[erikkemperman]

Well, I am not saying mass murderers should walk free, obviously. The two strongest arguments against the death penalty, in my opinion, are

-- There will be always be some percentage of cases where the verdict turns out to be wrong, and you have murdered an innocent human being (in many cases exactly the crime you set out to punish)

-- Life imprisonment, while costly for society, seems to me the harsher punishment. There's ways you can relieve the burden on society, too.

If you get it wrong there's someone left to apologise to and compensate. If not, they get what they deserve.

Re:Hangings

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Given the alternatives, that's probably pretty sensible.

For what appear to be PR reasons, execution methods that are gory looking and freak out the viewers have been largely phased out (a firing squad, say, or a guillotine, will kill you pretty dead, pretty fast; but it'll leave a heck of a mess, and the more competently it's done, the bigger the mess.

The replacements, by contrast, seem to have been picked more for the appearance of cleanliness, rather than actual swiftness or painlessness (I suspect that the 'brain drain' of medical expertise and moderates in general toward the anti-death-penalty camp, combined with the fact that the "I wish we could make them suffer longer! Unfortunately that isn't constitutional..." camp isn't going anywhere, has lead to expertise being harder to come by, and stakeholder interest in pain-minimization simply being less). If the family dog gets sick, pretty much any vet in the country can euthanize them to a standard of humaneness that people demand for a beloved pet. Execution by lethal injection? Odds are surprisingly bad that the prison-flunky doing the job will even be able to find a vein, and the percentage of kills that actually go quickly and cleanly is unimpressive. Why the difference? Similarly, occupational safety/industrial hygiene types can tell you all about how people can suffocate without even noticing because of carbon monoxide exposure, or oxygen-displacing gas leaks (quirk of human physiology: you can detect high levels of CO2, or mechanical impediments to breathing, and you'll freak out; but you can't detect lack of oxygen, so if carbon monoxide binds all your hemoglobin, or you are working in an ill-ventilated basement and end up breathing pure nitrogen because of an LN2 leak nearby, your CO2 levels will remain in the green, and you'll just black out and die...); but we still can't gas people to death properly... Unless the pro-execution camp can get its technique together, I'd stick with old reliable myself, if I had to choose.

Re:Hangings

[hawkinspeter]

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?

Re:Hangings

[thaylin]

Incorrect. Judges determine the law and undisputed facts, even in the case of juries. Juries only judge disputed "facts". Juries can go outside of the law and will typically not be held accountable because of the above, but the judge of a case is like the moderator. He will decide what issues go to the jury and what do not based on the law.

Also incorrect. Juries dont typically do sentencing, again the judge does that. In addition in the few cases they do if the feel capital punishment is unconscionable they also can do life in prison instead. They have options other than a moral obligation to acquit.

Re:Hangings

[jklovanc]

-- Life imprisonment, while costly for society, seems to me the harsher punishment. There's ways you can relieve the burden on society, too.

Life imprisonment is harsher on anyone who who has to come into contact with lifers. A lifer has no incentive to behave in a reasonable way. If someone says the wrong word a lifer may kill them. The lifer is already subject to the harshest penalty possible. What are they going to do? Throw the lifer in jail?

I lifer is a danger to every guard and inmate they come into contact with. The number of guards and other inmates killed by lifers far outweigh the few innocent suspects killed by the system.

Re:Hangings

[Luckyo]

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.

Re:Hangings

[SuricouRaven]

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.

Re:Hangings

[Luckyo]

This is a US-centric site. Welcome to the reality.

Re:Hangings

[SuricouRaven]

Nitrogen aspixiation is an almost ideal way. It's cheap, very reliable (Survival rate: Zero), needs no people of medical skill, and uses only a commonly available mass-produced gas.

The only problem is that many death penalty proponents consider it insufficiently inhumane. It's actually a pleasant way to die: A period of euphoria, then unconsciousness, then death. So it doesn't do much to satisfy the desire for collective vengence.

Re:Hangings

[SuricouRaven]

There was a BBC program, 'How To Kill A Human Being,' that examined various methods of execution. The presenter concluded that nitrogen was the ideal way. The idea was presented to the director of a pro-death-penalty campaign group, but he rejected it on the grounds that it was 'inhumane to the victim,' because a pleasant death did not satisfy the demands of justice.

Re:Hangings

[jedidiah]

> life sentence means something between 10 and 30 years,

There is nothing "civilized" about this kind of doublespeak.

Re:Hangings

[jedidiah]

There's a lot of history between us and Plato. Their fads don't necessarily have any relationship to our fads.

The idea of vegetarianism as some sort of moral crusade probably at the very least requires a society rich enough to support such a vanity. For everyone else, it's eat what you can get your hands on as you don't have the luxury of being picky.

Re:Hangings

[Penguinisto]

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.

lethal injection is for sissies

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:lethal injection is for sissies

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

The especially weird thing is that a lot of the same people who are big on capital punishment and packing heat also will be the first to bitch about "big government" interfering in their lives with their taxes, healthcare and other "nanny state" regulations. Seems that deliberately, intentionally killing citizens is the most serious form of government intrusion in one's life -- not something to trust to the incompetent, liberal, meddling "gubmint". You know, the terrifying phrase: "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

Re:Hint

[i kan reed]

I don't think you've noticed, but we are a barbaric nation, by-and-large. Less educated, more violent, and more plutocratic than comparable nations. Our barbarism in our justice system isn't a mysterious artifact of unknown origin, it's a reflection of a larger anti-intellectual culture.

We're All Guily

[macromorgan]

How does killing killers make us any better then the killers themselves?

Re:We're All Guily

[Immerman]

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.

Re:We're All Guily

[Jiro]

Does locking someone up in jail make us better than kidnappers? Pr fining them any better than thieves?

Pentobarbital

[mfh]

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.

Re:Pentobarbital

[SomeKDEUser]

No. Europe's position is a longstanding one. And as the EU is a larger market than the US, an EU law forbidding a drug company to help with capital punishment carries weight.

The link with the spying thing is that US companies may be faced with the choice of picking either one or the other market, if privacy directives from the EU come into force. And this is terrifying for US companies, because, again, the EU market is larger.

As good a time as any

[Captain_Chaos]

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?

Re:As good a time as any

[Captain_Chaos]

you are confused on what is barbaric.

Not at all. Human beings have no moral authority to kill other human beings. To do it anyway, premeditated and intentionally, when there is no immediate danger to anyone else, is barbaric. It's what barbarians do. You are lowering yourself to the level of the very people you are punishing.

for example, child molesters and rapists and murderers get out of prison and commit their crimes again.

So lock them up for the rest of their lives. It's cheaper too.

putting down a monster is not barbaric,

They are not monsters, they are human beings. You may be able to lull yourself into acceptance by demonising human beings and pretending that you're in a fairy story, but I don't think that is fair or productive.

it is the merciful thing to do

You are confused on what is merciful.

In addition, you are ignoring the fact that many of these "monsters" of yours turn out to have been perfectly innocent. Fuck you for being perfectly OK with calling them monsters and taking away their lives after years of psychological torture, destroying the lives of their friends and family in the process. And fuck the US for doing it.

Re:As good a time as any

[dcollins]

America is fundamentally punitive and violent. Same reason gun massacres every couple weeks make no impact, the highest proportion of people in prison for any country in the world makes no impact, military expenditures equal to the rest of the world combined makes no impact. Perhaps all empires come to be like that.

Re:As good a time as any

[Captain_Chaos]

We don't kill people for the same reasons as those countries.

That's hardly relevant. The point is that you kill people, not what your rationalisations are for killing people.

The death penalty is up to the states.

No, the death penalty is up to the American people. Apparently most of them are fine with it. In addition, it doesn't have to be up to the states. The federal government could outlaw it (even if it takes changing the constitution). Apparently they are fine with it too.

The reason capital punishment is outlawed in Europe is because all of the countries together (through various European institutions such as the European Union) decided that it was against basic human rights and should not be allowed. If Europe could do it, then so can the US.

Re:Hint

[Anonymous Coward]

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)

Re:Why can't we make it here?

[Too Much Noise]

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

Re:Why can't we make it here?

[IamTheRealMike]

I found an informative article. Summary: It says that essentially the US firm Hospira is unable to proceed due to the FDA not authorizing changes in the manufacturing process. Teva, an Israeli company, exited the business after what sounds like a combination of manufacturing issues and a large number of spurious lawsuits over a hepatitis C outbreak. The drug itself is extremely hard to manufacture, and profits are nearly non-existent so there's little incentive for competitors to enter the market.

Possibly the issue would be resolved if the FDA were to change the regulations, but again, no information on what exactly the problem is were reported.

Re:Hint

[CanHasDIY]

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.

Re:Hint

[clickety6]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exonerated_death_row_inmates#United_States

Best to make sure you actually have the criminal...

Only if you fund your system...

[CohibaVancouver]

I could *perhaps* be convinced of the death penalty if the USA was willing to truly fund its justice system to ensure that trials were fair - And I mean fund to the tune of BILLIONS of dollars. You're never going to convince me of state-sanctioned killing while rich white guys are getting away with murder and poor black guys are being executed.

the entire process is ridiculous.

[nimbius]

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.

Re:Hint

[Mysticalfruit]

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.

Re:Hint

[OzPeter]

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.

Misleading

[sacrilicious]

US Executions Threaten Supply of Anaesthetic Used For Surgical Procedures

HIGHLY misleading headline. I read the headline and thought, "wow, so many executions are occurring in the US that there's not enough of this drug for non-execution purposes"... which is a much more straightforward interpretation than what the article eventually gets into, which is that the use of the drug in a single execution would make an EU regulation kick in.

BOOOOOOO, slashdot editor. Boooo.

firing squads have one blank.

[schneidafunk]

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

Re:firing squads have one blank.

[Applekid]

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

Strange how much effort we put into trying to relieve the guilt of those carrying out the murderous orders of the state.

Re:firing squads have one blank.

[thaylin]

Well most non-sociopaths dont want to kill people, therefore we either find sociopaths who have not illegally killed people to do it and hope it does not trigger it a murder binge or we get normal people to do it and try to minimize the trauma to them.

Re:firing squads have one blank.

[ultranova]

Well most non-sociopaths dont want to kill people, therefore we either find sociopaths who have not illegally killed people to do it and hope it does not trigger it a murder binge or we get normal people to do it and try to minimize the trauma to them.

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...

Re:Hint

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

The shooters aren't supposed to notice the recoil?

[Ellis D. Tripp]

presumably, the shooters have all fires rifles previously, and would surely notice the difference in recoil between a bullet and a blank round.

Interesting choice of pronoun.

[GPS Pilot]

that there is a 20% chance that she never shot the prisoner

Interesting choice of pronoun. I'd guess that throughout history, there's a 99.8% chance that a given firing squad member is not female.