I’ve noted before the idiocy of Sooners’ refusal (99%) to build basements under their homes in a state that is as tornado prone as it gets; now they can’t even manage to execute a prisoner properly? Whatever you think of capital punishment (and I am ever so slightly against it), that is pretty pathetic.
I have been present for the euthanasia of a good sized dog, and it was quite peaceful. Hard for me to imagine that they couldn’t do the same thing (with the dose matched to body weight) on a human being. But maybe someone who is a physician or other expert on human physiology will set me straight with an explanation of how we are so different from our fellow mammals.
And in any case, if it really is that difficult to do with drugs, then with all the engineering expertise our country possesses, I’m sure we can come up with a mechanical means of inducing death quickly and painlessly. Some sort of piston applied very quickly to a key part of the base of the brain where it meets the spine seems like one possible candidate.
Veterinarians will euthanize animals. Doctors won’t execute prisoners. So, you don’t have skilled people doing the latter.
But that wouldn’t look all sanitized and clean and clinical like we want our executions to look. If we wanted to kill people painlessly and reliably we’d just shoot them in the brainstem with a large caliber bullet; but that looks too much like killing someone.
Well, since you brought up ‘Sooners’, let’s ask the University of Alabama.
Also, there is quite the push state-wide in getting safe rooms and in-ground shelters
in place residentially, in schools, etc. Lots of the older homes here in Tulsa have
basements. Ours (circa 1923) does. It’s the relatively more recent homes built on
slabs that of course don’t.
Reminds me of that scene in Law-Abiding Citizen, where the murder victim’s father has one last bit of revenge and makes the murderer’s last few moments far more unpleasant by tinkering with the lethal injection.
I know that houses built in North Tulsa in the 50’s predominantly had underground cellars. When you start moving south, around the Bixby / Broken Arrow area, it seems to be less common. When I was growing up, we would use the closet under the stairs - located approximately in the center of the house. Only hassle was, that closet was traditionally used for storage, so there were many a Spring day spent frantically removing Christmas decorations, boxes of photo albums, etc.
That being said, I’m almost positive that a friend who recently built a house in Bixby had the blueprints include a cellar, but I don’t believe that house is in a neighborhood.
I wonder what happened between the 50s and the 80s to bring about that change. Some sort of zoning / building code restriction?
So you know for a fact that it was done improperly, and wasn’t some sort of fluke beyond the executioner’s control? I’d love to see the evidence for that.
Right, the issue isn’t that Oklahoma is stupid and messing things up. It’s that the rules for what they can or can’t use make things difficult, then the manufacturers restricting the drugs makes it more difficult.
I can’t remember where it was, but I read an article about the trouble with the drugs used for lethal injections. People against the death penalty put pressure on the drug manufacturers to not let their drugs be used for executions. So the manufacturers say that if their drugs are used in executions, they won’t allow them to be bought for other legitimate uses, and that scares the states off, so they start using other drugs. This article in Mother Joneshas some of the background, apparently it was sodium thiopental that had been used and is restricted now.
I agree that a large caliber bullet seems like it would be a good solution. It would be quick and painless, unlike many of these botched lethal injection methods end up being. But it does seem people prefer things to be sanitized. Also maybe it would be harder to find good trustworthy executioners to pull the trigger, I don’t know. I’m sure there would have been some people volunteering to execute the death row inmates with bullets, but that the Oklahoma law prevents that.
Oklahoma = not getting it right?
Florida = their East coast building habits + hurricanes?
California = houses on the mud slide ?? Earthquake fault lines?
All people is stupid. It is not their location. YMMV
Half a billion years ago, in the Cambrian era, what is now Oklahoma was the site of a triple junction rifting event. The aulacogen, the failed arm of the triple junction, underlies south central and southwest Oklahoma. Consequently there are some serious faults underneath much of central, southern and southwest Oklahoma.
Whether these faults are conclusively linked to wastewater injection wells is, I think, still up in the air. One commenter on your linked site says making this linkage is akin to stating that a black eye was caused by getting bit by a mosquito. Considering the enormous forces involved in deep underground rock layers sliding by, smashing into one another, I tend to think that even this comparison is not extreme enough.
I thought that the issue is that the inmate’s vein collapsed causing the delay in the administration of the drugs. Also, I’m pretty sure there was MD physician on hand for the execution, contrary to ignorance passed along upthread.
Oklahoma is a very nice state to travel in, nice to just wander around, with attractive landscapes. A well-kept secret. You don’t need to live there if you don’t want to, but take the time to see its backroads. .
The MD may be on hand, but are they allowed to participate in the execution beyond declaring the condemned, “dead?” I was under the impression that participating would be a violation of their oaths and could lead to the loss of their medical license.
A big difference between dogs and Death Row prisoners is that many prisoners have very poor circulatory health, due to poor overall health, obesity, or prior IV drug use. Accordingly, it can be difficult for the executioners to find a blood vessel for the IV line that can maintain integrity for however long it takes to inject all three drugs. Sounds like that’s what happened here. Hence the collapsed initial vein and the cut down to administer a central line or other IV.
I do not know if the original cocktail would have resulted in a quicker death through sub-cutaneous or partial IV administration, than the one that was used in this execution. My guess is no, but I really don’t know. I’m not sure why this would stop the execution of the second guy, as this execution doesn’t tell us much about how effective the new cocktail would be in a condemned prisoner with better veins.
I’m also not seeing how this would be considered cruel or unusual punishment. Inadvertent, infrequent mistakes in an execution don’t by themselves render the means of execution cruel or unusual. It is ironic that this procedure, which was chosen because of its ‘humane’ nature over that of other procedures (hanging, firing squad, etc…) will result in a much more prolonged, agonizing death than those other procedures. Anecdotally, from prisoners’ last words, either potassium chloride or pancuronium bromide (I forget which) burns a lot when administered. It’s just that the prisoner is already under the influence of the tranquilizer or paralytic when the potassium hits, so we don’t see any agony. Botch things, like what happened here, and the prisoner gets to experience what I imagine is quite a lot of pain, until his final myocardial infarction.
Still a whole lot better than the way his victims got to go out.
I am with this sentiment. If you can’t do the time (or sentence) don’t murder people.
This reminds me of one saddening account of the execution of one convicted murderer in the early 1980s. I was almost in tears reading about the condemned man’s last moments, and death, and thought that perhaps the death penalty may be too harsh, even for a murderer.
I then turned the page and read that he had raped and murdered a woman at the lake, in front of her kids, right before he drowned them.
I think that Oklahoma has demonstrated before that it is quite capable of executing a prisoner properly.I believe that the numbers indicate that the event that has you in a state (no pun intended) is an outlier. And, as a matter of fact, the event itself may have been a success. I know of the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc, but, let’s be real, we do have one stiff tonight that we didn’t have last night.
I vote that he was executed properly, just not pleasantly.
“You’re doin’ fine, Oklahoma!”
Is the real point of this thread the storm shelters?
For years – decades, really – as a child and then a young adult, I would travel the length of Oklahoma from West Texas to get to my grandmother’s house in Arkansas. Twice per trip, once each direction, occasionally doing it twice in a year. Doing it even before the interstates were completed as well as after. And I have to disagree with you about Oklahoma.