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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.'"
I don't know what is then.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
And her opinion on the 8th amendment matters why exactly? (yes, yes, I know that invoking the victim, and her precious fetus too, I see, is fashionable; but it's kind of a lousy substitute for thinking).
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?
There's a reason that independent third parties adjudicate trials and not friends and family of the victim and accused.
I guess I should be appalled, but.. the dude slaughtered a pregnant girl; I don't care how he died exactly at all. In fact, I'm going to consider this a successful QA test and move on.
I thought testing drugs on humans -- without their informed consent and successful prior testing -- was banned long ago.
It doesn't matter that the person is a prisoner; in fact the standards are higher for them, because they are much less able to refuse consent. It also doesn't matter that they will die soon; terminally ill patients also must give informed consent.
What kind of sick society experiments on helpless prisoners?
But more unpleasant than I'd expect a civilized society to behave. There's a reason people have generally looked up to the US. This sort of thing is not exactly America's proudest achievement, and history will not look kindly upon the quantity and manner of execution.
Since innocent people end up on death-row and are frequently exonnerated by DNA or new evidence, then how can it be logical to maintain a death penalty? If you're going to say "well, maybe .1% of the time an innocent person is put to death but it's for the greater good", then how about you line up to be the next .1%?
Screw morphine. I've wondered why we don't just use nitrogen to suffocate them. There is no suffocation reflex, because the body's suffocation reflex is based on overabundance of CO2, not underabundance of O2. It's completely painless - they pass out within a minute and never wake up. In the oil and shipping industries we have "Nitrogen: The Silent Killer" posters plastered everywhere in enclosed at-risk spaces. I never understood why we deal with expensive drug cocktails when we have tanks of simple N2 ready to be used.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
You are not allowed to kill, but it okay for us to kill you.
I won't get into the fiscal debate as to whether it is cheaper to lock away someone for life or to execute with multiple appeals and proceedings. It shouldn't matter. If it is wrong to take a life, then it is wrong to take it in any circumstance. End of story. Then when you factor in the fact that we are constantly finding innocent people convicted (if not for death penalty offenses). Often due to poor representation, over zealous prosecutors, or shoddy politically or financially motivated police and forensic work, it would seem to me that the ethical cost of killing one innocent person would outweigh all of it. Even if our judicial system was perfect, humans make errors.
However, as with so much else in our society, our desire for vicarious retribution, our poor ability to truly judge relative risk, and the fear peddled by those in power to keep you caged keep winning.
Silence is a state of mime.
Oh yes, it's much better to put the vicious murderer in prison for 60 years or so, at $75,000+ a year.
Considering the whole appeals process ends up costing more than life in prison, yes, that would be better.
Exactly this. I'm only a second year med student and even I could tell you that trying to kill someone with the mixture of drugs in the summary would be a really ugly process. I'm pretty sure we can't use propofol for the same reason we can't use the pentobarbital mentioned in the summary, but honestly a regular dose of propofol to knock someone unconscious plus a pneumatic piston like we use to humanely kill food animals would be the obvious option. Sure it makes a bigger mess, but it's WAY more humane for the person being executed, the one who were trying to protect from unnecessary cruelty and suffering. Propofol plus guillotine works well too. As it turns out medical science knows a lot more about reliably making people unconscious with drugs than about reliably killing them with drugs. Given that, if the killing is to happen, it should be done with something we know works reliably and quickly.
...Like another wrong!
Go for it, America, show us how it's done. You lead the world.
Stick Men
My principle reason for wanting a painless and relatively low stress execution method is that we have an imperfect justice system. Which means we periodically commit murder in the name of executing criminals. Other than some sense of vindication we as a society gain very little from a condemned persons suffering. So in the event of an innocent person being put to death I would at the least hope that there last few minutes of life are not spent in agonizing pain.
So far as deterance goes I don't think that it really works very well because that only works when people make logical decisions about what they are doing. When murder is involved there is rarely much sound reasoning happening. Additionally I think it makes more sense for such a criminal to meet a quiet ignominous end.
I, for one, do not believe the state has a right to take any life, regardless. Besides, if our society wasn't hell-bent on spending billions of dollars to incarcerate non-violent offenders, there would be plenty of cash in the coffers to put every sociopath away for several lifetimes, with money left over.
That's really all I have to say about this.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Ignoring the fact that the appeals process for the death penalty costs far more than lifetime imprisonment, your figures are wildly inaccurate. The U.S. average cost per prisoner, per year, is in the $20-30K range, not even close to $75K.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
You're not far off the mark. For short OR procedures, fentanyl is preferred because the onset is faster and the duration is shorter, but hydromorphone can be used. Midazolam is used in conjunction for it's sedative and amnetic properties. This is also still a common combination when patients are mechanically vented. Patients lose complete orientation to what's happening to them before they lose consciousness. The observers' perception that he "suffered" is very unlikely to be the case.
It ain't just about the victim's family, asshole - it's so that he can never do the same crime again, and we don't have to bear the cost of his remaining days.
Bullshit. LWOP is cheaper than capital punishment. Fact.
It's got nothing to do with public safety and fuck all to with economics. It's about retribution, satisfying the bloodlust of an angry mob. Capital punishment is lynch-mob justice. It's expensive, ineffective, and barbaric. Period.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
And you're an animal for saying so, and should also die.
See how easy that is?
I'm all for putting violent animals out of our misery...
An unfortunate reality. In terms Slashdot understands, it's why you don't let your PC technicians take home bad hardware -- suddenly you'd have a lot more "bad" hardware cropping up.
If we can me completely certain that there never will be an error in a capitol crime sentencing, I would advocate immediately dropping the killer in a wood chipper head first. However, being as there is always going to be some error in the legal system the question we should be asking is, "How many innocent people are we willing to murder in the name of revenge/justice?"
Because, until you get to that 100%, and never make an error, that is what you are doing. You are murdering people because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, are the wrong skin color, or cannot afford a good lawyer. At least if you screw up a life in prison sentence, you can let the person out in a decade or two when the truth comes to light.
There is a great bullshit test I came up with to give to someone who advocates capitol punishment. Ask them if our court system is 100% perfect in convicting the guilty. Then ask them if that means that means that we are murdering at least a few of the wrong people with capitol punishment. Then ask them if they would still feel that capitol punishment was fair and just if they were one of those people that was selected to die. Then ask them if they still support capitol punishment. If they say still yes, they are lying.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Here in Denmark, Lundbeck has been under fire for their drug being used to kill people. They've tried to defend themselves in various ways, e.g. by casting it as misuse as their drug. But in the end in Denmark the American executions are viewed upon in the same light as the stories you hear of amputations and stoning people to death in the middle east. So the reaction has been as if a company sold convenient stones to be used for said stonings.
It is sad to see that the outcome is more suffering.
we are all humans and we know what justice is. If a person did something horrible, then yes it's justice to do it back to them.
So how does your definition of justice differ from your definition of revenge?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Funny, Jesus didn't kill any sinners. He would have opposed the death penalty. Or he does, depending on your belief.
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Would someone still steal a car or shoplift if they knew they'd be executed if caught? Probably not as often...
They tried this approach in UK back in the day, with sentences of hanging handed out routinely to pickpockets (often underage) provided that the amount stolen was more than a certain rather small sum. It didn't really help deter crime. On the other hand, it does mean that someone stealing a car would be likely to murder any witnesses, since it's death for him either way if he gets caught, and so anything reducing the chance of getting caught is fair game at this point.
It's worth remembering that despite all the moral panics, we do actually live in a time where crime rates - especially violent crime rates - are at their historic lows in the Western civilization. That despite the fact that a good part of it has completely abolished death penalty, and some countries having even abolished life sentence.
I don't think Europeans would care much about American-made weapons. If you stop and consider for a moment that the US service rifle and light machine gun are both manufactured by a Belgian company, the military standard-issue sidearm is Italian, the most popular police/LEO handgun is Austrian, and the most popular SMG is German...