Seems to me that potassium is all that is needed to cause death (via cardiac arrest). I doubt that there will be any shortages of that. In order to be a little more humane, can’t they just add any benzodiazapene or hypnotic to induce sedation? Essentially, I’m not certain that there needs to be just ***one ***protocol for chemical execution.
Note: I have no strong opinion regarding the death penalty.
…financial…
Okay. They’re a business. They get to make business decisions. But if knowing all we do about the utterly sleazy, uncaring ethics of the industry and most companies in it, do you *really *think they refuse to make these compounds on an ethical/moral basis? Or is it just that the impact on their stock valuation would hurt too much?
The answer to the subject question is “Because the only legal makers of those compounds have chosen to stop making them, despite making very close analogues (that are only technically uncertified for LI purposes), because of a potential big-finance backlash.” If you’re good with that “ethical” choice, I guess we’re done here.
The solution is to take the poor, poor pharm companies off the hook by certifying the full range of compounds suitable for LI use… but now we’re back to winning a public issue by putting a string across the road so tanks can’t pass.
Whatever. If you want to nationalize pharma companies to force them to produce compounds for executing people, be my guest. But the parallels to Nazi Germany is not a far reach.
Stranger
That’s precisely the problem: a *very *limited number of compounds are certified for the two or three stages of LI, by deliberate shaping of the laws. There are pharmacologically identical options for each of those compounds, but as they are not listed as formally approved execution drugs, they can’t be used. It’s all about the anti-DP movement, unable to reverse DP law itself, maneuvering pawns until the other pieces are boxed in. Yay for them.
Nor do I, except to believe that there are a very limited number of people whose absence would make the world a better place - the genuinely evil and broken, which does not include most murderers.
Excuse me? Where did I say or even imply either one, Dr. Godwin?
The problem is not pharma refusing to make this handful of compounds. The problem is the anti-DP movement maneuvering the US legal system into being blocked by issues somewhere below trivial and approaching irrelevant.
I’ve already recommended a method already that doesn’t require complex pharmaceutical compounds but is more humane than lethal injection too boot. “Insisting” or criticizing pharmaceutical companies for not wanting to accept the bad public relations for providing compounds which, frankly, are not humane or efficient is a non-sequitor.
Stranger
Well, that’s part of it. Why is the tactic legitimate if you approve of one, but not the other? If it is legitimate for anti-DP groups to do this, it must be equally legitimate for anti-abortion groups to do the same thing.
To the extent that they are doing the same thing, and I don’t know what instances Marley23 was talking about.
Regards,
Shodan
Wouldn’t CO be even more effective? My understanding is that anoxia is anoxia, whether it comes from blocking the air passage, drowning, or just removing O2 from the air. Isn’t there a final violent reaction in such cases?
Because it so closely mimics O2, CO does not provoke such a reaction - or so my somewhat fuzzy understanding has it. The subject just… fades out.
It doesn’t matter why they make the decision. They can do it for any reason they see fit, and public pressure (from shareholders or otherwise) is a perfectly legitimate reason for a business to change its practices.
Death penalty opponents do not write the laws by themselves. They can make objections and courts may find them to be legally valid. If there are “identical” drugs that do the same job and don’t violate the cruel and unusual punishment clause as it’s currently construed, death penalty supporters shouldn’t have a hard time making the relevant changes.
In the eyes of DP opponents, there are no such drugs that don’t violate the cruel and unusual punishment clause. Therefore death penalty supporters are going to have a very hard time indeed making changes that will satisfy them.
Regards,
Shodan
We’ll have to agree to disagree here. I do not believe in a blanket policy of business for business’s sake.
The number of things legal or illegal only by the most hair-splitting definition is almost beyond count. I’d wager that a vast number of such laws permit or obstruct something that would be otherwise by popular vote or even popular influence on the law were it not for carefully-maneuvered legal construction. It’s rarely a matter of one law; it’s often several laws delicately supporting each others’ tenuous position - which is *exactly *the state of things with LI drugs. If you’re arguing that the solution is one gentle tap on the beaker away, you’re denying virtually the entire battle over public law for the last century. Changing any one of the delicate laws limiting LI to this small spread of approved (and basically unavailable) substance would a a lengthy, titanic battle.
Which I suspect you know.
Why do you think that might be?
They don’t have to satisfy me. They have to satisfy the courts, which continue to believe it’s OK to execute people as long as they don’t suffer too much. If there are identical drugs, why is that a hardship?
Neither do I. I said businesses are allowed to make those kinds of decisions.
You were the one who said there are drugs that are essentially identical to the approved ones. If that’s the case, why can’t they be approved by legislatures and judges who are generally favorable to capital punishment?
Pffft, repurpose an old-style gas chamber with an evacuation pump. Condemned goes in, air is pumped out to roughly the same pressure as six-miles altitude, he drops off casually to sleep and suffocates.
Why do you have to make it so complicated?
You’re so cute when you make those disingenuous eyes. 
Because when you can’t influence courts, juries, experts or voters with a hard, cold decision on the actual topic, you play a “pawn game” with trivialities like certifications, training, notice delays and a hundred other points that grit up the machinery. Undo one, there’s fifty others still in the way while the supporting forces restore the first or find a variant someone will accept.
See above. It’s not a straight-out fight over capital punishment, abortion, gun control, endangered species protection, nuclear power and the like because direct confrontations cost too much and are too risky. (No one wants to risk a solid high-court ruling against their position.) Much easier, cheaper and safer to keep throwing bits of grit in the gears - whichever way you don’t want them to turn.
And the US legal system loves to play it that way.
In other words, you just object to limited government and separation of powers.
Maybe you should move to China. They have a very effecient death penalty legal system. 
Because the cumulative interpretation of “cruel and unusual” is that if it might briefly discomfort a sensitive toddler, it can’t be used.
I say whole hog or none. Ban capital punishment, or kill them exactly the way their victims died. Either we can live with that as a society, or we can’t, but it’s better either way than the endless minuet of bullshit.
Sure. I hate Mickey Mouse, too. :rolleyes:
This somehow turned into an interpretation that I’m all gung-ho for the death penalty. I’m not. My above post is as close to “pro” as my thoughts get and I’d be just as happy to see the US join the rest of the world and take capital punishment off the table.
But as long as it’s on the books, and convicts are sentenced under it, I object to the pissant methods used to battle it - same as with the shit anti-abortion states use to effectively circumvent the legality of the procedure. I really don’t lose much sleep either way about the DP… but gritware lawyering does get under my skin.
I’m being serious. You’d prefer a straight up-down vote, either complete commitment to capital punishment or complete withdrawal. No nasty compromises, no web of restraining laws, no anti-democratic compromises with minority views.