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Botched Executions Put Lethal Injections Under New Scrutiny
carmendrahl writes: "Lethal injections are typically regarded as far more humane methods for execution compared to predecessors such as hanging and firing squads. But the truth about the procedure's humane-ness is unclear. Major medical associations have declared involvement of their member physicians in executions to be unethical, so that means that relatively inexperienced people administer the injections. Mounting supply challenges for the lethal drug cocktails involved are forcing execution teams to change procedures on the fly. This and other problems have contributed to recent crises in Oklahoma and Missouri. As a new story and interactive graphic explains, states are turning to a number of compound cocktails to get around the supply problems."
I still don't understand why the lethal injection isn't just a bunch of heroin that's been confiscated in the latest raid. People OD on heroin without being horribly uncomfortable.
If people don't want to die a a horrid painful death they should choose their parents better - that way they'd be able to afford a better lawyer.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Guillotine, Hanging, Firing Squad and the Electric Chair.
You could also take standard drugs like Sodium Thiopental that are used in countries that allow euthanasia
Sodium thiopental is used intravenously for the purposes of euthanasia. In both Belgium and the Netherlands, where active euthanasia is allowed by law, the standard protocol recommends sodium thiopental as the ideal agent to induce coma, followed by pancuronium bromide.
Intravenous administration is the most reliable and rapid way to accomplish euthanasia. A coma is first induced by intravenous administration of 20 mg/kg thiopental sodium (Nesdonal) in a small volume (10 ml physiological saline). Then, a triple dose of a non-depolarizing skeletal muscle relaxant is given, such as 20 mg pancuronium bromide (Pavulon) or 20 mg vecuronium bromide (Norcuron). The muscle relaxant should be given intravenously to ensure optimal availability but pancuronium bromide may be administered intramuscular at an increased dosage level of 40 mg.
It's also cheap too.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Have gnu, will travel.
- It's completely painless and humane; one's physiology doesn't notice the lack of oxygen so the person just goes to sleep and then dies. People who were revived from asphyxia like this reported they had no idea until they woke up
- It's practically free of charge as nitrogen is 80% of our atmosphere; there will never be a shortage of it
- Because it's universally available and free worldwide it can't be banned or restricted
- It's much safer (ie nitrogen leaks are harmless assuming the area is ventilated.)
-- Insert witty one-liner here. --
Give them a small mouth/nose mask attached to a nitrogen supply. Quick, painless, and you don't have blood everywhere.
Export of Sodium Thiopental and similar drugs to countries that allow executions are banned throughout the EU. That's why the USA is now looking for shitty homegrown replacements.
I'm surprised the state of Oklahoma hasn't tried to make carrying out death sentences a profit center. There's no shortage of people in that state who wouldn't actually pay to be on a firing squad. And plenty of them would pay even more to get to do it up close and personal with a handgun.
They could even open it up to the residents of Texas and add in an out of state surcharge for the privilege.
In this case 'more humane' basically just means 'doesn't make the audience as squeamish'. As it turns out, this is a very poor indicator. Especially since the usual injection cocktail contains Pancuronium, or another curare-like muscle relaxant. Not an anaesthetic, or toxic in itself; but causes nice, peaceful-looking flaccid paralysis. Unless one of the other ingredients fully sedates you, or kills you, you just suffocate; but no unseemly twitching or spasms, no grimacing, gasping, any of that ugly stuff; because with the complete loss of muscle control, how could you?
The 'barbaric' methods, by contrast, don't look all nice and clean and medical; but they also don't involve deputy Cletus playing amateur phlebotomist with a dodgy, failure-prone, three-step injection process (compare to, say, how we put domestic animals to sleep, if you want to see somebody who knows their stuff handle a lethal injection...), they involve a lot of gore; potentially some peripheral nervous activity causing creepy corpse twitch; but they depend either on simple mechanical principles(as with the guillotine) or skills that prison staff likely have in more than adequate amounts (as with firing squads).
Personally, I'm not against the notion of capital punishment in principle; but the way we do it in the US is like a grimly parodic example of what not to do, and how not to do it. Despite the availability of trivially better procedures, we insist on using a variety of ass-backwards Mad-Libs protocols with a history of unreliability and no obvious merits. Our irrational, emotionally misguided, approach carries over to the selection of victims as well: (even aside from the documented cases where the whole trial was a frame-up, with gross prosecutorial, judicial, and sometimes even defense attorney, misconduct) we execute largely on the basis of emotional salience, rather than actual danger. Kill somebody, up close and personal, nice and gruesome? Potential death penalty in jurisdictions that conduct it. Kill a large number of people, by some polite, white-collar, epidemiological chicanery? Probably just a civil matter, you might even get to settle without admitting wrongdoing.
Nobody likes violent criminals, and they are notably unsympathetic characters; but (precisely for those reasons) their influence tends to be self-limiting. The really dangerous ones are smart enough to make it to a position of power and influence, where the rewards are better and the penalties oh so much smaller. If we were serious about rationally applying capital punishment, it'd be a lot easier to be taken out and shot for various flavors of fraud and corruption, rather than effectively impossible, as now.
Because if you use those drugs for executions, the (European) manufacturers of them then get prohibited from selling them to the USA and you no longer have them for medical uses.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
As someone who recently had to put my cat to sleep because of cancer, the vet told me they were using an overdose of barbiturates, not gas.
I felt my best bud of 12 years go limp in my hands within a second or two of the injection and he was gone a second or two later.
Maybe my vet was different, but I've known other vets who do the same.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
If we're going to do executions, then the whole "pain-free" premise should go right out the door. We're killing the criminal in retaliation for a crime. Why does it need to be so painless? I mean, don't torture the criminal by starvation or dehydration or anything like that. But hanging, guillotine, firing squad, etc. are all effective means. You could even give some local to ease the pain on some of these methods.
Otherwise, all you're really doing is admitting that execution isn't right, but trying to get away with it anyway.
If it is illegal to kill, it should be for the state as well. Anything else is hypocritical. Period. It is not about justice, nor does having capital punishment provide a deterrent that significantly affects violent crime rates.
I heard on the radio just this morning that due to the supply difficulties, Tennessee is passing/has passed a law to bring back the electric chair. Now that's humane!
Capital punishment is largely about one thing. One thing that politicians tend to do very well to keep their constituents in line. Fear-mongering. See.. I am tough on those rapin, theiving, murderin (insert carefully chosen group that panders to your audience here).
Silence is a state of mime.
Yes, but if you use those for executions, the European companies that make them won't be allowed to sell them to the USA, period, so you won't have them for surgeries either.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Phenobarbitol (barbiturate) is what they use to kill people. The only manufacturer is in Europe and refuses to sell it to the US to kill people. Hence, the secrecy, mad scramble and botched executions.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
despite all the jokes you've heard we're pretty damn resilient and it takes a surprising amount of effort to kill us. The trouble is once you start killing someone our bodies will rebel (trying to get us to get away from whatever it is that's killing us). That's pain in a nutshell.
There aren't a lot of ways to kill a man without significant pain. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or ignorant.
Now, a better question is why are we still killing people when at least 4% of ppl killed are verifiable innocent? I guess it's cheaper than dealing with the lawsuits for false imprisonment.
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This has become a problem because doctors are generally refusing to involve themselves in the process. From what I have heard from professionals, it can be difficult to properly insert a needle into a person. It becomes easier with practice, but the people administering this are only doing this a few times per year so there is little experience with the technique. Plus some drug companies are refusing to provide the tried and true cocktails, so states are having to find different drugs, again with little or no help from medical professionals.
What I don't get is this talk about a "more humane" way of killing people. Some might be more gruesome than others, but I find none of them to be 'humane' in the least, simply because I don't consider willfully killing someone to be 'humane'.
But that's just MHO.
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
Because you know, maybe one day the US might actually want to become a first-world-country...
I think the idea is that lethal injection is more humane for the witnesses, not the condemned. When lethal injection goes right, the person simply looks like they fall asleep. With gas, they choke for air. With electrocution, they jerk around (or take several tries, catch fire, etc). Firing squad comes with blood. Hanging, if done wrong, can decapitate a person or leave them wriggling around as they asphyxiate-there's also the violent nature of the drop and the body hanging there. As executions get easier for those watching them, it is easier to garner support for executions. I am pro death penalty, but I also feel that if the form of death was more graphic (and made it clear the person was dying and not just falling asleep) it would make people less willing to sentence someone to death and reserve it solely for the most severe of cases. I also think that the attorney that prosecutes an individual, the judge that sentences that individual, and the governor that denies clemency should all be present when the execution takes place. If you can order someone's death, you should have to courage to at least be there when they die.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
How about abolishing execution, period. If even one person is killed because of a wrongful conviction (which of course is realistically a very low number), then the state is no better than the murderers.
spoken as a true idiot. I have personally visited the camps in dachau. Get at me when you have seen more of the world than what you see behind your monitor
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
There were some 'experiments' back in the day with asking the condemned to blink certain codes after their head was removed. Results were inconclusive.
I still think that most executed prisoners have an easier death, pain wise, than normal people, who generally die of a painful heart attack, long cancer, illness, etc...
My vote's for nitrogen asphixiation.
1. No need for injections. Just give them some anti-anxiety medication to swallow.
2. No need for drugs obtained from secret sources in order to protect supply lines. Any welding supply store should do. Heck, they can purchase a machine to produce the necesssary nitrogen, or even carbon monoxide. I'd suggest a couple canisters just to 'keep it simple'.
3. Still doesn't mess up the body.
4. All evidence is that it's a fast, painless, and peaceful death.
I don't read AC A human right
Well, we're a Christian Nation, aren't we? Shouldn't we respect life, forgive and what not?"
Well, according to progressives, we're not...
You aren't, because there's no such thing. There's no mention of a concept of a Christian Nation in the Bible, the collective is a "church". The Old Testament has a nation (of a sort) which is Israel but they aren't bound by the political structure centering around the judges and later, kings, but around a common identity based on Abraham as the recipient of God's covenantal promises - promises which extended explicitly to Abraham's physical descendants, which is the common identity of Israel.
As for whether Christians ought to support the death penalty, the idea is absurd. For on thing, the vast majority of Christians understand that any punishment devised will ultimately apply to them, since on average the daily experience of Christians is one of persecution, loss and hazard because of their faith. To promote the death penalty, knowing that it is applied to Christians in other places and times merely on account of their faith, is repugnant to a thinking and faithful Christian.
For another, when Jesus speaks he doesn't speak in a code that allows Americans to continue doing or believing whatever they want. You've simply excused your inherited ethical code by eisegesis, instead of exegesis.