Slashdot Mirror
Controversial Execution In Ohio Uses New Lethal Drug Combination
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "CNN reports that Ohio inmate Dennis McGuire appeared to gasp and convulse for roughly 10 minutes before he finally died during his execution by lethal injection using a new combination of drugs. The new drugs were used because European-based manufacturers banned U.S. prisons from using their drugs in executions — among them, Danish-based Lundbeck, which manufactures pentobarbital. The state used a combination of the drugs midazolam, a sedative, and the painkiller hydromorphone, the state corrections department told CNN. In an opinion piece written for CNN earlier this week, a law professor noted that McGuire's attorneys argued he would 'suffocate to death in agony and terror.' 'The state disagrees. But the truth is that no one knows exactly how McGuire will die, how long it will take or what he will experience in the process,' wrote Elisabeth A. Semel, clinic professor of law and director of the Death Penalty Clinic at U.C. Berkeley School of Law. According to a pool report from journalists who witnessed the execution, the whole process took more than 15 minutes, during which McGuire made 'several loud snorting or snoring sounds.' Allen Bohnert, a public defender who lead McGuire's appeal to stop his execution in federal court on the grounds that the drugs would cause undue agony and terror, called the execution process a 'failed experiment' and said his office will look into what happened. 'The people of the state of Ohio should be appalled by what took place here today in their name.'"
So ignoring for a minute all the ethical questions etc, just thinking about the process. I do not have medical training, but I have always wondered why they can't just use the drugs used for general anesthetic in general surgeries? Put someone under with those, then you can stop their heart painlessly when they're unconscious. Certainly there is a large supply of those drugs around.
Hasn't this been a solved problem for a hundred years or so?
Why not simply shoot them? I'm staunchly against the death penalty myself, but if you must do it then at least make it quick.
Of course, putting a bullet in someone's head might make the people invited to watch the event just a tad squeamish...
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Let's not pretend that this man didn't understand or even endorse the death penalty.
That is an interesting theory. Should the death penalty be reserved only for those who support it?
I would say that no, it should be abolished completely. While I support the concept, the risks of getting things wrong are not worth it IMO.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
Nit: "An eye for an eye" was directly repudiated by Jesus, who advocated extremes of forgiveness instead.
The superiority of restorative justice over retributive justice was a novel concept around year 30, and some Biblical authors were having trouble getting their heads around it, so you can see other quotations that seem to still have the Eye for an Eye flavor to them. But Jesus' refutation of that attitude, in Matthew, does not leave much room for interpretation. And, as if we needed clarity, his deeds (you know, like spending his last breath asking for forgiveness for all the people who had just nailed him to a cross and left him to die) back the attitude up very unambiguously.
It makes the whole doctrine of Hell seem like something of an anachronism, however. Or rather, hell as "eternal conscious torment," which not only has the retributive justice angle, but also qualifies as a punishment that is egregiously worse than the crime. Other interpretations, based on Jesus' use of the word "Gehenna" and its varied meanings at the time, attempt to re-interpret Hell as something more restorative in nature. But such ideas are not in the mainstream (and require a lot more education in Biblical history and Higher Criticism than most care to obtain).
So your only happy when you/your society is as bad as he was.
You cheapen all life.
This raises a point.
Is it vengeance or is that we simply want these people out of our lives permanently.
Some clearly want the convicted to get their comeuppance -- they want closure of a final variety, this convict will pay the ultimate price, at least in this mortal form, being ejected from the game.
Others see no chance of reforming the convict and do not relish them living a relatively easy life while everyone else has to work for their food and shelter. Prison life isn't really so horrible that some people are willing to return to it -- finding the outside world too much of a challenge or this is where their buddies from the street are and now they can go hang with them. Prison isn't so much a punishment as a way to segregate those convicted from society and visa-versa. Were you in a tiny town you and your neighbors may feel a need for accelerated and terminal judgement against villains, even of offences which seem of too little consequence to warrant a death sentence -- such it was in many sparsely populated communities at times in history.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar