I was sitting here, thinking about not much in particular, and this question popped into my head. ( Q the M, ya out there?).
I read somewhere, probably here, that a person’s heart rate spikes dramatically just before execution. Not exactly a surprise! Anyway, what would happen if the prisoner had a heart attack just before they pushed the button or whatever? Would the timing make a difference? I wonder if it was, say, five minutes before the event. Would they still legally have to provide medical care? After all, I suppose before they are actually in the process of the execution, there is still the possibility of reprieve.
Never heard of it happening, and IANAL, but I doubt they’d provide (expensive) medical care and let him live just to execute the bugger five minutes later. :dubious:
On the contrary, a prisoner, until the time of his execution arrives, has the same “rights” to medical care as any other prisoner - and the prison has the same obligation to care for him and provide for his health. Therefore, if a prisoner attempts suicide, they will try to save him only to execute him at a later date. One reason for this is because a reprieve could come even at the last minute.
As such, prison officials must provide medical care for all prisoners (even death-row inmates) until such time as the execution is actually being carried out.
There is always the possibility of a reprieve, a stay of execution, or the sentence being commuted to imprisonment even five minutes or five seconds before an execution.
In addition, in order for “justice” to be done, the state must actually perform the execution. If he should die of natural causes, commit suicide, or be murdered then he hasn’t been punished enough.
There is a precedent, Robert Breecheen attempted suicide shortly before his execution. Rather than just leave him to die, they revived him, then took him away and killed him. It would surely be the same in the event of a heart attack.
Which could lead to the interesting ethical problem of what the state would do if a condemned prisoner fell into an irreversible coma before his execution?
The same thing they would do if he didn’t fall into the coma. Provide for his health and well-being up to the time of his execution and then execute him.
Sure, but what they execute him while he was in a vegetative state? Would they still be required to put him in the chair/administer lethal injection if simply switching off his life support was going to kill him anyway?
And how much does he have to recover before they kill him? Say he has a cardiac arrest. Doctors shock him back to life, then determine that he needs a quintuple bypass if he’s going to live. Do they perform the bypass, wait for him to heal, put him through months of physical therapy, and then kill him? Or do they just shock him back to life and make sure his heart stays beating on its own long enough for them to rush him down to the lethal-injection chamber?
Actually, that’s an interesting question. It’s considered “cruel and unusual punishment” to execute someone unable to understand what’s happening to them. There have been cases where the condemned have been mentally ill, and incapable of understanding that they are going to die. They can’t be executed in that condition. So the state spends 100s of 1000s of dollars on the best psychiatric care to make them well. Once they are cured, they get executed. Probably the same would happen to the comatose.
IANAL, but I would think that the problem is not in executing someone who isn’t able to understand what’s happening to them, but in executing someone who (a) wasn’t capable of understanding that what they did was wrong at the time they committed the crime or (b) was incapable of defending themselves at trial. However, I would think that if the person was fully competent at the time s/he committed the crime and was fully competent during the trial, any imparements that they may suffer after the fact are really irrelevant. I don’t think it’s any more “cruel” to execute someone in a coma than it is to execute someone who’s fully aware (in fact, it is probably less cruel as the prisoner in a coma doesn’t have to deal with the anxiety of facing their mortality).
But that’s just my 1/50 of a buck. I’ll wait for a real lawyer to show up and provide a better answer.