No, nothing barbaric about this (death penalty rant)

[Bricker]

From CNN:

Oklahoma corrections officials looked for answers Tuesday following the death of inmate Clayton Lockett, who convulsed and writhed on the gurney after drugs to carry out his death sentence were administered.

“His body started to twitch, he mumbled something I couldn’t understand,” said Dean Sanderford, his attorney. “The convulsing got worse, it looked like his whole upper body was trying to lift off the gurney. For a minute, there was chaos.”

He said guards ordered him out of the witness area, and he was never told what had happened to his client.

The execution was halted, but the result was still death.

Lockett died 43 minutes after the first injection was administered, according to reporter Courtney Francisco of CNN affiliate KFOR, who witnessed the ordeal.

Later, Oklahoma Department of Corrections Director Robert Patton said Lockett died of an apparent heart attack.

The execution was the first time Oklahoma had used midazolam as the first element in its three-drug cocktail to end a life.

Midazolam is supposed to render a person unconscious. Seven minutes later, Lockett was still conscious. About 16 minutes in, after his mouth and then his head moved, he seemingly tried to get up and tried to talk, saying “man” aloud, according to the KFOR account.

Other reporters – including Cary Aspinwall of the Tulsa World newspaper – similarly claimed that Lockett was “still alive,” having lifted his head while prison officials lowered the blinds at that time so that onlookers couldn’t see what was going on.
Yet the office of Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin issued a statement indicating “execution officials said Lockett remained unconscious after the lethal injection drugs were administered.”

I admit it’s legal, and I admit it’s constitutional, to get those out of the way.

But the government of a state of the United States strapped a man down and ended his life in a way that is at least supposed to be humane and peaceful: that’s the selling point of lethal injection as opposed to the electric chair or the firing squad. Instead, the guy has some kind of a horrible reaction, spasms around, and dies of a heart attack.

And the governor’s office knows they need to lie about what happened, because to tell the truth might risk a loss of public support for the death penalty.

I’ve observed in debates here that while it’s not a certainty, it’s good evidence that when your opponents lie about the facts supporting their case, it’s because they know they have a shitty case.

The death penalty is a barbaric exercise of state power. And the ugliness of what happened here showcases the barbarity.

[Budget_Player_Cadet]

I personally don’t get this. At all. Not one bit. The death penalty doesn’t save the state any money and life in prison serves the same goal of preventing them from continuing their crimes, so obviously the sole purpose it could serve is deterrent - telling people “If you do this, this will happen to you”. And once we’re all on that page, why the hell would you make it civil or humane? Dunk them into a vat of acid slowly, feet-first. Break their arms and legs, force-feed them milk and honey until they’re fit to bursting, and string them up in a boat in a swamp until nature takes its savage, disturbing course. Bring back the iron maiden; challenge being that those who survive it the first time get to live. Get Jigsaw up in this, and put it all on national television. Assuming that we want the death penalty as it is right now, and given that as it currently stands, the only thing it is good for is a social deterrent (and it’s pretty shitty at that as well), let’s make people really not want to get that verdict. Fuck humanity, fuck civility, fuck peace. Fuck the inmates in the ass with a razorwire condom and leave them to bleed out, become infected, and die horribly. We already left those things behind when we decided that it’s a good idea to execute people to begin with.

(There. That’s a death penalty rant. Bricker, your civility is wonderful in GD and the like, but come on, this is the pit. Put some oomph into it!)

[MrDibble]

@Bricker

I admit it’s constitutional

Is it? Doesn’t it violate the “cruel” in “cruel and unusual” if there is excessive, prolonged pain?

[jimbuff314]

Yeah, I have to admit I knew a thread was coming from someone about this (I live in
Tulsa). Can we at least acknowledge that this guy raped and murdered someone?

That said, clearly we are kidding ourselves to assert that there is any humane, relatively painless way to execute someone. So the question remains - are some
crimes so horrific as to warrant the death penalty? Before this, I would have been
inclined to say yes. Now, now not nearly so much.

The next guy scheduled for execution, Charles Warner, raped and murdered his girlfriend’s 11-month-old daughter. Apparently he has never shown remorse for this.
What in the world can we do with people like this? It turns my stomach to refer to
him as ‘people’. Clearly world opinion is moving away from the death penalty. Are we
to feed, house and provide for ones such as these until they die of old age?

[bobot]

Bricker, I never thought I’d say this, but I agree with you. So there.

[jimbuff314]

BPC - I think there was probably enough ranting going on in the OP’s reporting the circumstances of Lockett’s death. Anything added to that would only have detracted
from the awfulness of what happened.

[Emiliana]

@jimbuff314

Are we
to feed, house and provide for ones such as these until they die of old age?

Yep, we do. Not so much for them but for us.

[Smapti]

@jimbuff314

Are we
to feed, house and provide for ones such as these until they die of old age?

No. They don’t deserve it and we have no obligation to them.

[Frank]

@jimbuff314

Can we at least acknowledge that this guy raped and murdered someone?

Yes, of course. To the best of my knowledge, no one is suggesting that he be freed from prison.

Are we to feed, house and provide for ones such as these until they die of old age?

Yes.

[BobLibDem]

@bobot

Bricker, I never thought I’d say this, but I agree with you. So there.

Me too. Time to buy a lottery ticket.

At the very least, I expect governors to obey orders from their own supreme court. When this is not the case, anarchy rules. Oklahoma is an outlaw state and Mary Fallin is the don.

[Acsenray]

@BobLibDem

Me too. Time to buy a lottery ticket.

At the very least, I expect governors to obey orders from their own supreme court. When this is not the case, anarchy rules. Oklahoma is an outlaw state and Mary Fallin is the don.

Yes, this is extremely troubling as well.

[jimbuff314]

@Frank

Yes, of course. To the best of my knowledge, no one is suggesting that he be freed from prison.
[…]

The guy I was referring to was Lockett - now dead of a heart attack.

[Boyo_Jim]

@BobLibDem

Me too. Time to buy a lottery ticket.

At the very least, I expect governors to obey orders from their own supreme court. When this is not the case, anarchy rules. Oklahoma is an outlaw state and Mary Fallin is the don.

I don’t understand this comment. What did the court order, that the state disobeyed?

[BobLibDem]

@Boyo_Jim

I don’t understand this comment. What did the court order, that the state disobeyed?

I must stand corrected. constitutional crisis averted.

On April 21, the Supreme Court said that to avoid a miscarriage of justice, it would delay the executions until it had time to resolve the secrecy matter.
The next day, Ms. Fallin, a Republican, said the Supreme Court had overstepped its powers, and she directed officials to carry out both executions on April 29. An outraged legislator, Representative Mike Christian, said he would seek to impeach the justices, who were already under fire from conservative legislators for striking down laws the court deemed unconstitutional.
A constitutional crisis appeared to be brewing. But last Wednesday, the Supreme Court announced a decision on the secrecy issue — overturning the lower court and declaring that the executions could proceed.

[Fiendish_Astronaut]

Capital punishment is what you get in the most backwards countries of Africa, the middle east and Asia. But experimenting with your death row inmates is too backwards even for a lot of those. The US is a strange country - it’s like a third world nation but with lots of money and a fantastic cultural and technological core.

[jimbuff314]

Just feel I need to add (since I did not see it reported in the CNN story) that the local
news here reported that Lockett’s “vein exploded”.
Don’t quite know what that means, but it sure sounds horrible.

[Smapti]

@Fiendish_Astronaut

Capital punishment is what you get in the most backwards countries of Africa, the middle east and Asia. But experimenting with your death row inmates is too backwards even for a lot of those. The US is a strange country - it’s like a third world nation but with lots of money and a fantastic cultural and technological core.

If not for death penalty opponents pressuring pharmacies into not making the established and humane lethal injection chemicals available, the states wouldn’t have to “experiment”.

Anti-death-penalty advocates are directly responsible for this and I hope they’re happy that they made a human being suffer needlessly in order to fulfill their ideological crusade.

[Acsenray]

Parody?

[BobLibDem]

@Smapti

If not for death penalty opponents pressuring pharmacies into not making the established and humane lethal injection chemicals available, the states wouldn’t have to “experiment”.

Anti-death-penalty advocates are directly responsible for this and I hope they’re happy that they made a human being suffer needlessly in order to fulfill their ideological crusade.

I suppose people who ran the Underground Railroad were responsible for the beatings suffered by captured runaway slaves.

[Clothahump]

I have yet to understand why there is such a fooraw over lethal injection. Why don’t we simply fire a single round into the base of the skull, right where the spine comes in? It would be totally painless; it would turn them off like a light switch. And I do believe that a .38 cartridge is a LOT cheaper than a batch of drugs.