CRIME AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: A shortage of a drug used as part of the lethal-injection cocktail in many states is delaying executions and reigniting the debate over the science behind this form of capital punishment. Pictured is a gurney used to perform executions in Terre Haute, Ind., by lethal injection.
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A shortage of sodium thiopental, a fast-acting barbiturate and general anesthetic used in lethal injections of death-row convicts, has delayed several such executions throughout the U.S. and reignited a long-standing debate over the combination of chemicals used to carry out capital punishment. Most recently, Arizona inmate Jeffrey Landrigan was executed Tuesday night only after a delay caused by a legal battle over the source and quality of the sodium thiopental used as part of the lethal injection.
Lethal injection is used for capital punishment by the federal government and 36 States, at least 30 of which use the same combination of three drugs: sodium thiopental (a barbiturate to induce anesthesia), pancuronium bromide (a muscle relaxant that paralyzes all the muscles of the body) and potassium chloride (a salt that speeds the heart until it stops). This protocol was developed in 1977 for the state of Oklahoma by then–Chief Medical Examiner Jay Chapman, but it has never been codified or sanctioned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The only U.S. maker of sodium thiopental, Hospira, Inc., in Lake Forest, Ill., has reported a shortage of the raw materials needed to make the drug. When Arizona law enforcement last week declined to identify its source of the sodium thiopental intended for Landrigan, his lawyers seized on the opportunity. On October 21, they requested a stay of execution, contending that their client could suffocate painfully if the anesthetic comes from an unknown source and did not work properly before the pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride kicked in. U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver initially blocked the execution, but she was overruled Tuesday by the U.S. Supreme Court, which voted 5-4 that a condemned prisoner does not need to know the source of the drugs used in his execution.
The Superior Court of Maricopa County, Ariz., originally sentenced Landrigan to death in 1990 after convicting him of first-degree felony murder in the strangulation and stabbing death of Chester Dean Dyer of Phoenix. At the time of the murder Landrigan was an escapee from an Oklahoma prison, where he was serving time following a conviction in that state of assault and battery with a deadly weapon, second-degree murder, and possession of marijuana.
Regardless of whether Landrigan's legal team was simply using the drug shortage as stalling tactic, their legal maneuvering brings to the fore a contentious dispute over the science (or some would say lack thereof) behind lethal injection executions in the U.S. For more than two decades, it has been argued that the FDA should be required to certify the safety and effectiveness of drugs used to carry out executions (as it does for drugs used to euthanize animals). The FDA, wanting to stay out of the capital punishment debate, disagrees.
In 2008 the U.S. Supreme Court (pdf) upheld a lower court ruling that the state of Kentucky's three-drug method of lethal injection did not constitute "cruel and unusual punishment," as defined by the Eighth Amendment. Some scientists disagree. Scientific American spoke with University of Miami Miller School of Medicine molecular biologist Teresa Zimmers about this controversial topic.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
You and a group of colleagues in 2007 published a report in PLoS Medicine that examined public records of executions. What was the purpose, and what sort of reaction did you receive?
We were actually trying to look at whether there was any evidence that the three-drug protocol—sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride—acted in the way it was supposed to act. We analyzed the time to death or the time to different events, such as cardiac arrest, in order to understand what might be the mechanism of death. We found no evidence to support the use of this protocol, the dosage of the drugs or the order in which the drugs were administered in executions.
A lot of responses to the study were negative—people assumed that we had a specific political agenda. This began to change as people looked at our data more closely. We were invited to the March 2008 Fordham Urban Law Journal Symposium, "The Lethal Injection Debate: Law and Science," by Fordham University School of Law professor Deborah Denno to represent the medical and scientific aspects of it. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer also used our studies as part of his research for Baze v. Rees in 2008, which upheld an earlier ruling in Kentucky that the state's approach to administering lethal injections does not violate the "cruel and unusual punishments" ban promised in the Eighth Amendment. Breyer's research—our paper—did not uphold the constitutionality, but rather argued for the likelihood of unrecognized pain and suffering.
What concerned you and your colleagues about the way lethal injections are administered?
There's no record of a medical or scientific inquiry into whether this would be the best method. And there isn't any medical evidence to support this approach. Part of the paradox is that it looks like a medical procedure, but it hasn't been rigorously tested. There are no controlled trials, data collection, analysis or peer review of the processes to determine whether it works the way it's been said to work.
Why is sodium thiopental used as part of a lethal injection execution?
Sodium thiopental was chosen to render the person deeply unconscious and unable to feel the paralysis brought on by the pancuronium bromide, which causes the person to lose the ability to breathe. And the potassium chloride is extremely painful. Some people have said that three to five grams of sodium thiopental alone should be enough to induce death. [In December 2009 Ohio became the first state to use a single dose of sodium thiopental to execute death-row inmates.] We looked at whether inmates died reliably after the sodium thiopental, and it's not clear this is the case. We also determined that the doses of sodium thiopental used are not always as "massive" as claimed. It's not even clear how much a massive dose is in this context. We found that, at most, the highest doses were two times the lethal dose for animals, regardless of the inmate's weight.
It has been reported that in addition to a shortage of sodium thiopental, the doses that some states stockpile are set to expire before scheduled executions can be carried out. What sort of shelf life does sodium thiopental have?
Sodium thiopental has quite a long shelf life—up to 48 months in its unconstituted form. Once you add liquid, it's been reported to be stable for 24 hours or, if it's kept cold, it can last for seven days. They typically prepare it on the day of execution. Shelf life may be a problem because states perform executions infrequently and now don't have a supply of new doses.
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36 Comments
Add CommentLethal injection is not painless: Years ago, rather than have my old cat die in agony as did her 23 year old mother, we opted to have the vet do the task of life termination. Being caring, the vet agreed to come out to our car while I held our very good friend. Upon injecting the concoction my 'friend'; who I had no longer allowed my protection; took off to escape the violence that was chasing her insides around.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is a much better and absolutely painless method of dispatching living creatures. It is a natural compound that kills with only a small amount mixed in with one's breathing air: H2S, sour gas, Hydrogen Sulfide.
Being a pipefitter who has worked on many oil processing plants, this one time I chose to work for a non-union contractor. Their safety conditions placed my various partner, and my life in danger several times, but the worst situation was when the superintendant helped two of us to do a job that should be accomplished in but seconds, only the super did not complete his task so that Wes and I could lower the heavy piece to place. The super took-off and just then a puff of gas leaked out past the partially removed frying pan and gasket.
The result was Wes and I breathed in one breath of H2S. It does not hurt, it paralizes your diaphragm muscles, disallowing breathing. We both knew what that meant for us. While I steadied our load, Wes clambered around me and up the ladder to the surface. With him clear I ran after him, but he was passed out on the ground. The last thing I knew was bending down to get him clear of the deep hole.
One of Imperial Oil's Windfall Alberta operators had been watching from the the compressor building and came a running with a resuscitator. When I awoke I thought I was home in bed... but what was a big white pipe doing above my face, and how did I have a mouth and nose full of gravel? Neither Wes or I seemed to suffer any from the death incident, and we were dead. For weeks afterwards; on the bus ride to and from Whitecourt; my mind was filled with dark thoughts.
Even though Wes and I knew what we were in for, there was no panic, pain or even any numbness, merely some one had turned off the electricity to our brains, and so the brain cells stopped working; as did all of their controls to our muscles. We did not mess our selves.
The use of lethal injections should be replaced by gradual increases to the amount of H2S mixed in with one's breathing air. Done slowly, the chemical first deadens the sense of smell so one would not even be aware that the task was underway. Eddie R.
I think a hanging is painless enough! Certainly this is less painful.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLethal injection is and should be a controversial topic. There is simply no good reason not to expect some testing on whether this method actually does the deed in the manner claimed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHaving said that there is an even deeper issue and that is the existence of the death penalty itself. One doesn't have to have deep moral convictions about the wrongness of killing to see a few problems with it. A) the National Academy of sciences just examined so called Forensic science in the United states and with the exception of chemical analysis and DNA our system recieved D's and F's. This is the system we want to rest the power of putting people to death with? Add to this that current police interrogation methods have been shown quite conclusively to be flawed to the point of producing a rather large number of false confessions (a great many condemned persons are convicted primarily on the basis of a confession of guilt, particularly when the remaining evidence is circumstantial. This is why 125 death row convictions have been overturned in the last few years on the basis of DNA evidence. 125 innocent men who would have been killed...). At present detectives are allowed to lie, flagrantly, about evidence and witnesses with a suspect. Studies have shown that trained interrogators using tradition methods actually perform more poorly than amatuers (Amatuers do slightly better than chance, trained interrogators do slighly worse).
I won't even get into the flaws involved in trial by jury, except to say that if I were innocent and I had the choice of having a jury or not? I'd go with not. If I were guilty I'd definitely opt for a trial by jury though.
Our system is supposed to depend on reasonable doubt. It's so messed up right now that they simply cannot claim with any reasonable amount of accuracy that they won't execute innocent people. A fate even our founding father's anticipated and tried to mitigate against with current judicial procedures. Better that ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be imprisoned...
If we are truly worried about ethical use of the death penalty then we should worry about if we are capable of rendering that sort of judgement with a level of certainty that just isn't present at this time. In short debating the humane or inhumane nature of our method is putting the cart before the horse. There is very little controversy over the findings about the shortcomings of our present system. What controversy there is is about how to fix it. We have issues all right but they're bigger than this.
yeah, I was wondering why a "merciful death" was even a consideration for these vermin. That option was certainly not offered to many of their victims. and sorry, but jailhouse conversions do not count.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI suspect a lethal injection is way more comfortable than death by cancer, heart disease, stroke or any one of a hundred diseases that are going to claim virtually all of us.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEvery murderer who dies by lethal injection is getting a more comfortable death than any of us, unless a piano falls on our head while we're walking down the sidewalk. The crucial difference in being executed as compared to natural death is that you leave this plane of existence in a state of disgrace and contempt.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe death penalty should be abolished and the proper sentence for the worst of the worst should be "Experimentation for life". That way we could learn and the guilty could actually contribute to the betterment of society. Not likely, but still the most reasonable answer.
It has always struck me as odd that proponents of death penalty want to kill with the least damage possible. I wonder if it is a way to make it less horrifying to those who oppose it, so that they will not protest quite as strenuously.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven if you could get some idea of how much pain is involved from the other uses of anaesthetics, there will never be certainty.
One massive blow of some kind (bullet, knife, blunt object) to the head would surely be the most painless, but would leave a horrible corpse that would make the practice look bad. It could be that it is just the illusion, that since the damage is invisible it is less objectionable, that keeps capital punishment going.
“Reasonable doubt” is not the same as the “absence of doubt.” Sometimes justice will cost the blood of patriots, young men and women willing to give their lives for a cause. In this case, we are asking that the lives of those who are deemed guilty receive the judgment of the court for the cause of law and order and their lives are taken for this cause. In the absence of this justice our justice system is dysfunctional. We have come full circle to the barbaric absence of justice! It is a sad state of civilization. Our absence of justice becomes grounds for vigilante justice. Then we are all living in the gang life and the thugs are right; “There ain’t no justice.” I love our system of justice and embrace capital punishment for all capital crimes which include murder, death during the commission of a felony such as rape robbery and battery. I believe capital punishment is a deterrence to crime. Though that is debatable, it is a fact that an executed convict will no longer commit crimes. We need more of that justice in every city, state and country.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdhisrael,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI will not make any statement on the death penalty in general, but I have to say that your logic is extremely disturbing.
A wrongful execution "for the cause of law and order" is in no way, shape or form the same thing as an honorable death fighting for one's country. A wrongful execution "for the cause of law and order" is about as reasonable as a human sacrifice to improve crop yield.
Even a drafted soldier is still a soldier; he may not have chosen to go to war but he can die as a man. How would you feel about it if your son was wrongfully put to death, and half the nation was spitting on his grave for no reason other than his bad luck? How do you think he would feel as he died, knowing that his own people had turned on him through no fault of his own? I suspect that would be far more painful than the execution itself. The careless murder of one's own citizens is the hallmark of tyranny.
I comfort myself with the idea that most Americans (death penalty supporters or not) will think your pro-wrongful-execution stance is revolting.
There are two problems here
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFirstly the proscriptive regulations of the US law mean that certain drugs have to be used to kill the prisoner . The anaesthetic drugs specified are going out of fashion and there fore becoming in short supply. Second the amount of drug will vary greatly between individuals due to individual tolerance and say prior exposure to alcohol. It's is very simple to anaesthetise someone to first unconscious and then second to cardiovascular collapse, hook them up to a big bag of propofol and leave it flowing freely into a vein until breathing stops. By not prejudging the amount required and not using a paralysing agent you can effectively monitor what going on. This is the most humane way.
The far more important issue is the concept of the death penalty which I personally oppose because in the UK and Indeed in the US people have been locked up for horrific crimes for which many years later they have been exonerated. Wrongful imprisonment is reversible , execution is not.
Miscarriages of justice will continue to occur because we are all human. You may certainly want to lock up people for life for a horrific crime they are found guilty of committing , but isn't it a mark of a civilized society that if an error is made that at least some restoration can be made to the individual by restoration of liberty? Executing someone for a crime they did not commit is just as horrific as some of the awful acts of violence that unfortunately take place in our world.
Raj
See my other comment but I whole heartedly agree with E-boy
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRaj
Personally, my answer to the headline is "who cares". However, since some do apparently care, I propose a quick & painless method - nitrogen asphyxiation. Simply allow the condemned to breath only nitrogen and death will occur very quickly. I'm not sure why this has never been tried.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisForce (minimum violence when no other option is available) may only be used to defend the well being of yourself or others. Simple, logical and fairly easy to interpret and translate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe should inspire this through words and actions. If we allow the state to cold bloodily murder defenseless humans, it does not set a good example to impressionable children (of all ages.)
More to the technical points of this article, if you ask anesthesiologists (professionals and amateurs) how they would wish to be euthanized, most would go for a fast intravenous large heroin infusion. (Duh)
No..lethal injection is not without pain. I am not talking about the intended victim of capital punishment but of a society that does this sort of primitive rite of vengeance. Look around at the misery of violence that Americans bestow on one another and on the countries that it has attempted to control outside of its national borders. Capital punishment is just another of the litanies of a government sponsored death that sadly is the outcome of empire. I hoped for a change but, no, things are just as they are and have been for all of my life. I live elsewhere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA thorough study of methods of humanely killing animals has concluded that helium works very well and it's recyclable (cheap). The study demonstrated that when a pig was subjected to a helium rich atmosphere they quickly became unconscious and started to die, on removing the helium the pig recovered quickly and showed no ill effects or apparent discomfort - needless to say the effectiveness of the method was also later demonstrated. There is also the case of two teenagers who died from unwittingly exposing themselves to a helium rich atmosphere which they could have readily escaped.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen presented to a number of people in the USA, several of whom had expressed an interest in humane methods, as a means of humanly dispatching death row prisoners all demonstrated some disgust because there was no "punishment" aspect to it; as some comments here also suggest this demonstrated that for all the "humane" rhetoric in actuality the desire behind the death penalty is revenge rather than justice.
If someone harmed anyone close to me, and it wouldn't necessarily have to result in death, I would quite happily kill them with state sanction but I wouldn't kid myself I wanted to be humane nor would I kid myself that my motives were not driven by a desire for revenge rather than justice.
Then are you not a terrorizing murderer yourself? The reason it has to be painless is to make it ethical and humane.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHypocrisy in its best, as is expected from the US. On the one hand, it still adheres to the barbaric practice of capital punishment, using the reasoning "an eye for an eye", in exactly the same way as other totalitarian and/or primitive countries do. On the other, the execution must give the impression of cleanliness and painlessness, so that it masquerades from what it is, a state-sanctioned murder. As is the american way, appearance triumphs over essence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThree hundred years ago, courts of justice could be blinded by superstition. In those dark times, people in positions of power could snuff out the light from any candle of hope that the condemned still held for life. Innumerable falsely accused victims were burned at the stake, ignited by the flames of flourishing injustice, and fanned by the falsehoods spoke by their peers. Sadly, no joyous sunrise would come to end their tortured nights of captivity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut three hundred years later, courts remain hoodwinked by dishonesty. Three hundred years later, lives are still tossed to the proverbial pit of fire. Three hundred years later, people in positions of power demonstrate that they are impossibly all-knowing, all-seeing, and all-hearing by summarily judging the actions of others and then doling out executions with omnipotent strength. And so I share with you today a reiteration that acts can be neither omniscient nor omnipotent, that we all have faults, and by extension so do our governments and judicial conditions.
In a sense, capital punishment is like writing a cheque to purchase the life of a criminal. A payment, some argue, that is cheaper than supporting lifelong imprisonment. Yet the laws of Australia, Canada, the United States of America, and numerous others guarantee the "unalienable Rights" of Life and Liberty. Our past actions liberated slaves and all but abolished slavery. Our present actions show that we believe the authority to limit the life of a human being belongs to no one. But cold heartedly, these representative cheques continue to be cashed at Banks of Justice, even though Banks of Life and Liberty would return them marked "insufficient funds"!
We must refuse to endorse Banks of Justice that continue to honour such cheques. We refuse to believe that money can indemnify human lives, regardless of the crimes in question. These deplorable bank drafts must be nullified to redeem our courts of justice and our humanity.
Every moment that our voices remain silent widens the gap between being human and being humane. There is an urgency that cannot, must not, be ignored. Every hour of apathy lends credence to legalized vengeance. Now is the time to speak out for those lost voices smothered behind iron. Now is the time to turn our backs on barbaric States. Now is the time to tell the people in power that killing is wrong. Now is the time to teach compassion to all of our children.
Lives are lost forever by ignoring the fierce urgency of Now. The dark winter veil of cold-blooded murder will not be lifted until the springtime infusion of life is guaranteed throughout our societies. And those who believe that tomorrow will be just another day will have a rude awakening if the executions continue. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in the world until unconditional life is granted to all its citizens. The snowstorm of revolution will not end until the clear dawn of humble justice emerges.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd to the people united on the peaceful threshold of merciful justice: Do not embark in wrongful deeds. Life cannot be sanctioned by vengeful actions or riotous demonstrations. No, the Right to Life will not be chartered by outbursts of physical violence. Our actions must embody this monumental goal; we must segregate villainous force from moral force.
When light from our morality is used to judge the shadows cast by criminals, we must appraise ourselves and our laws by the same rays of ethics. To do otherwise places governments and judicial systems beyond the reach of mediated introspection, beyond the grasp of justice itself. By this beam of self-inspection, when a death sentence is dispatched we lift the offender to the moral equality of societal norms, and find ourselves standing deep inside the shadows of criminals.
We shall not walk in those shadows.
We will walk without the specter of hypocrisy to haunt our footfalls. And as we walk, our steps bring us closer to a golden era that waits ahead.
We cannot turn back.
There are those who oppose the progression toward leniency. They raise statistics like a stoic hammer, driving the belief that executing murderers will reduce homicides. However, this interpretation does not a nail in the coffin make. Numbers are tools to add weight to debates; debates that must be continually cross-examined for applicability and accountability. Yet statistics are also the claw to the hammer's head, pulling out deterrence arguments by suggesting that legitimizing murder through the death penalty actually raises the rate of homicides!
So we will not be satisfied by statistics. We can never be satisfied as long as the guiltless are slaughtered. We cannot be satisfied when fallible humans are the judge and the jury to deadly trials. We can never be satisfied while the Press pilots our opinions with sensationalized stigma. No, no, we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until tolerance towers like the tallest of trees and forgiveness flowers like an endless forest.
Even though we face the turmoil of retribution, we can see the tenets of redemption. Within these tenets, I, too, have a dream.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI dream of a day when no human will have the right to revoke the life from another.
I dream of a day when miscarriage of justice does not result in fresh flowers to a solitary grave, but in the freedom of an unjustly accused prisoner.
I dream of a day when even the ghosts of Salem Massachusetts, whose deaths were inconceivably shackled to "spectral evidence", and whose memories still mock modern justice, may finally find peace.
I dream of a people who understand that no heated crime warrants a cold resolution by death; that death is unjustly everlasting when pit against both fleeting and permanent transgressions; and that humane disciplines can meet the needs of society while being a fair reproach for felonies.
I have a dream today!
I dream of a world where we can judge our justice systems as though they were individuals: not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. Where at the highest courts of international law we find that justice is morally, ethically, and logically consistent across all countries.
I have a dream today!
I dream of a world in which Mercy opens the Door of Knowledge to reveal that the real truth in any situation can never be known entirely. A world in which we are keenly aware that the whirlwind of motives, emotions, psyche, and actions behind a trial cannot be judged and punished with absolute conviction. A world that has cast off the rattling chains of death to embrace the foundations of life.
I dream of a world without injustice buried within injustice. A world where the poverty line does not foreshadow a flat line. A world where the accused wealthy and the convicted poor face their fates with equal outcomes and equal opportunities. A world where the concept of just justice is not an ironic fairytale, but a practical reality.
This is our dream, a dream inspired by an extraordinary man.
In the spirit of Dr Martin Luther King Jr., a man who made an enormous march for liberty, these words strive to be an extension of his ideas, a continuation to his ideals. But this time the walk is for life. And along the road to the global abolishment of capital punishment sits a world that is one small step closer to unity. It is only through this journey will our collective conscience truly be free at last.
I'm not in favour of the death penalty.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever these types of arguments against the death penalty are silly. They make a mockery of justice in a democracy. The death penalty should be stopped through the ballot box.
I love that idea. Let them contribute to a cure for cancer or heart disease. Or even a cure for rabbies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy not just shoot them in the face? It's messy, but they won't know that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe tripartitite cocktail that is commonly used seems like a bureaucratic, overly complicated way of killing someone. An overdose of barbiturates, followed by an even larger dose of barbiturates, should do the trick, unless a form of vengeance is also intended. This appears to be the case, considering that persons with a very understandable desire, and I stress very understandable desire, for vengeance, are (I don't know how regularly) allowed to watch the procedure. There are quicker ways, and painful ways, to kill people. One way would be a very high dose of morphine, that would make the killer go very pleasantly to sleep, and die, and the fact that this method has not been chosen says a lot. After all morphine is extremely cheap, so the procedure would most likely cost a lot less. Personally I am against capital punishment, considering that some have (or may have) been sentenced and executed on bad evidence. Instead I would like to quote my old father, whose opinion was that crooks and bad people should be condemned to hard manual labour. And with hard he meant – really hard, no fun included. I think he was right. Murderers in particular should not sit in a cell for 20 years waiting for an execution that may or may not come, due to the unpredictability of the legal system. The type of work allocated to the prisoner should in turn be adjusted as to the severity of his crime. A really hard sentence of this type should, to be sure, also put demands on the evidence. There should be DNA, not just (often reliable) witness testimony. These are difficult questions, but a painful method of killing people is primitive, serves no purpose besides that of vengeance, and has very little effect in terms of prevention, since those who kill rarely make a rational calculation before they do it. On the other hand, I am not a meek liberal. Really bad people should be punished in relation to their crime. Much more to be said, of course. For example when and if a bad person should be regarded as having paid his due to society. I think we need more science here.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLethal Injection is death with a very cruel intent.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd because of the cruel intent of the methods it should be outlawed. It is a cruel punishment due to the cold calculation of thought that went into it.
First they paralyze the persons lungs so that they can not breath but they do not stop the heart (cruel intent). They use the persons own heart to assist in the kill(cruel intent). They want to deplete every last molecule of oxygen from the persons body. They want to starve the brain of oxygen and cause brain death as quickly as possible(cruel intent). While this forced suffocation(cruel intent) is going on. You and I would be in a panic. As a result of the suffocation the heart has to beat faster and faster. Maybe 3-4-500 times per minute to the painful point of heart attack(cruel intent). Also they use the persons heart to pump so much paralyzing drugs into the person even if they woke up they would still die(cruel intent). Finally just at the point of heart attack(cruel intent), they give the 3rd drug to stop the heart. I bet if an autopsy was done they would find a swollen heart so black and purple it is obviously "painful". Is it painful so to hide the pain from the spectators(cruel intent), they don't want the person flopping around(cruel intent) or trying to bash their own brains out on the walls(cruel intent) so they use they use thiopental to render the person unconscious(cruel intent). Without that the pain would be very evident. Kind of like a psychopath trying to hide(cruel intent). The person could not scream in pain because his lungs are already paralyzed and can not get any air into them(cruel intent). So there is a lot of cruel thought and cold calculation and intent that went into the process and they try to hide what is going on under the hood from the public by making the person unconsconscious first(cruel intent). Lethal Injection is the only form of execution where the person is firstly made to be unscious due to the pain involved.
I am under the impression that carbon monoxide poisoning can also lead to a painless death. I wonder if that is also a real option.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnly uncivilized nations execute people.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo greenisfraud,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe law in many countries used to work on your theory: make it as "cruel and unusual" as possible. Didn't work any better as a deterrent than modern "humane" executions or life imprisonment. The American Founders thought that kind of punishment debased society in general. You apparently don't agree.
It's simple. First - between 10% and 30% of executions are of people who didn't do it. Second - civilization is judged by how barbaric it is. Would you have us doing public executions by beheading like in Saudi Arabia?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe severity of the execution should reflect the severity of the crime! Why should we worry about the pain a murderer goes through when he or she didn't care for the victim. He'll be dead in a few minutes anyway. I also believe pnishment should be dealt out the day after the trial is over...... not put off for 10 - 15 years at public expense. A bullet to the temple the day after is the necessary solution to murder!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis discussion is repugnant.Capital punishment is 'cruel and unusual', most civilized nations have rejected this barbaric practice generations ago. The US homicide rate is far greater than other Western nations, so capital punishment seems ineffective as a law enforcement measure.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBy any means you kill the victim that one is cruel to him.No one want die you use any medium for killed he suffer same way. In middle age government guillotine for killing,than came hanging,lethal injection.In some part of world government throw to victim in front of tiger or elephant. Different government used different means to killed victim. In my opinion all cruel horrible,for victim.Only watcher thing this one is less cruel another one is good less suffering.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEither a bullet in the brain or the guillotine will do the job.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo time to feel pain , no time to suffer, fast and efficient.
While our species was culturally and socially developing, there was a natural mechanism to weed out those that were defective. They were shunned from the clan and were less likely to breed and survive. Primitive people needed to work together. In modern society all you need is a little money, whether it comes from work, the government or crime. Defective humans can live and breed. If capital punishment were solely used on the worst of the worst, the gene pool would benefit if given enough time. Anyone remember about how 18 years after Roe v. Wade crime rates and prison populations skyrocketed?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll kind of deaths are painful even the natural once which we all are going to face one day may turn out to be more painful. Even the people who live have to suffer pain. It is not the pain but death that one fears.Our main effort should be to reduce the crime in society so that their are less executions rather than working on painless death.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome say that life imprisonment is the "best punishment" for murderers. Not many seem to have noticed that Jeffrey Landrigan was given "life imprisonment" but escaped to kill again.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut it is not usual for "lifer" to escape and kill again one may argue. Well, how about those who maim and murder while in prison? That is not unusual! And how about those who somehow manage to get other to kill for them (drug "lords" etc.) while safely behind bars? Some also get others to bring weapons into the prison for them to use either against others or to attempt escape?
After giving the death penalty much thought over the years I still believe it should be given to every person whom the evidence, beyond reasonble doubt, demonstrates has taken life or lives "premeditatedly and maliciously".
Instead of worrying whether or not a murderer dies "without pain", I would support victim's compensation from the same government which is willing to spend millions of dollars rehabilitating and entertaining those who in most case have brutally and callously deprived persons of their loved ones and bread winners.