Regarding Cecil’s column on problems with lethal injection.
Another problem is the history of many of the criminals. Many have been heavy drug users. Very often their veins are messed up and finding a good one is hard. Even searching legs, etc. sometimes fails to find an undamaged one. They can also sometimes have a high tolerance to drugs so the pentobarbital doesn’t work well.
Pets usually don’t have such prior issues.
Not all pet euthanasia goes well. When we took my ex girlfriend’s cat to be put to sleep, the vet couldn’t find a vein in the cat’s leg. The cat was screaming in pain and stress as the vet kept poking it with a needle and my girlfriend was in hysterics at what was happening to her beloved pet. I ended up stopping the procedure and telling the vet that no way in hell was she continuing with that procedure. They ended up putting the cat under with an anesthesia mask, and then administering the fatal drug.
If there is going to be capital punishment in the U.S. - and it appears that there are still some states where there will be, into the foreseeable future - I don’t know why prisons don’t just use carbon monoxide. Hitch a car engine up to the gas chamber.
Wasn’t some agency looking at Nitrogen? Supposed to suffocate you, but doesn’t have the painful effects CO2 does.
Do you mean CO? You could kill somebody with CO2 but I don’t think anyone has ever used it as a standard execution method.
No, Nitrogen. Carbon Dioxide will kill you, but it’s supposed to be a painful way to go. Nitrogen will kill you the same way, but you just go to sleep.
I know you said nitrogen, but you also mentioned CO2, so I assumed you were referring to CO2 being used as a means of execution, which to my knowledge hasn’t been done on a regular basis. CO on the other hand has been used for execution. Hence my confusion.
Ah. Other than Dr. Kevorkian using it, I hadn’t heard of a state agency using CO. Who did so?
One thing that baffles me - I hear that pharmaceutical companies won’t provide anesthesia for use as the actual killing agent itself for legal/ethical reasons, yet the condemned* is indeed injected with a barbiturate to put him to sleep and **then ***the lethal drug is administered. So why not just double down on the barbiturate and overdose him dead that way?
Ohio did that for a while, but the manufacturer shut down the supply of the barbiturate that was chosen.
Pumping drugs into someone until they die is not really an exact science, and the point of lethal injection is that it’s quick and quiet. If it’s going to take an hour and the person is going to be awake and screaming the whole time, you might as well just shoot them, but that would be icky.
How much heroin has been seized off the streets. Or fentanyl?
I stand corrected - based on the first paragraph ofGas Chamber I guess CO2 has been used, although I haven’t found where. However, as mentioned in that article, the Nazis used CO (as well as cyanide), and it looks like the Soviets did too.
Wikipedia’s article on the gas chamber has a link to http://newsok.com/oklahoma-gov.-mary-fallin-signs-bill-allowing-nitrogen-asphyxiation-as-alternative-execution-method/article/5411181
Hanging, used correctly with the long drop adjusted for weight, has always been an efficient and speedy method. The British executioner Pierrepoint would enter the condemned man’s cell with his assistant, tie his hands, put the hood on, swiftly walk him to the room with the gallows just a few feet away, slip the noose on and hang him, all in a matter of seconds. He would be dead in an instant. I’ve never understood why the actual execution process in the US is so drawn out. It needs to be done quickly for everyone’s sake and hanging is one of the best ways to achieve this, and there will never be a shortage of ropes.
Because knowing you will be hanged vs. knowing you will be “put to sleep” is a kind of psychological torture that at some point someone decided violated the “cruel” part of “cruel and unusual.”
Washington State will still hang you if you choose it, though. A guy named Westley Allan Dodd was hanged there in 1993. IIRC, it’s only one of two state-administered hangings since the lifting of the moratorium in 1977. Dodd chose hanging because he hanged his victims. There’s an interview with him that was recorded shortly before his death. Scary guy.
Exactly. This whole squeamishness about taking someone’s life in a ‘gentle’ way is for us, not for the prisoner. If we’re going to execute someone, we should do it like the heathen Chinese: A bullet in the back of the neck. Yes, it’s barbarous but that’s kind of the point. (Can you tell I’m not a fan of the death penalty?)
If you’re going to be executing people - something that puts the United States in very dubious company worldwide, I have to add - surely it can’t be that hard. If the three-drug cocktail isn’t viable any longer, why not go for the standard inhaled anesthetic used in operations? In hospitals you have an anesthetist monitoring things precisely so you don’t accidentally over-anesthetize the patient and kill them. Normally a bad outcome, but here? Problem solved! And if a triple hit of anesthetic doesn’t do the trick, hell, at that point you can kill the guy with an injection of Drano if you want and he still won’t feel anything.
I’m suspicious of obvious solutions, so I assume there’s a really good reason this wouldn’t work … what is it?
For one thing, some people react badly to certain anesthesias. As in, start having a heart attack or some such before the stuff fully kicks in. Giving a person a heart attack when they are still conscious is nasty.
And, you don’t know if the victim is in this group or not until you try it.
In a OR setting with real medical personnel, when it happens there are sometimes things you can do to help the person: reduce suffering, counter the anesthesia, maintain heart rhythm, etc. Death rows are basically the opposite of that.
And that’s just one (rare) possibility. Some people retain awareness under anesthesia. It would be possible for someone to realize that they can’t breath anymore and feel suffocated. All while being unable to signal that this is happening.
While such reactions are rare, the pre-existing conditions that increase the chances of bad reactions are naturally the kind of conditions you’d expect to be far more common in prison populations. (Drug-alcohol abuse, etc.)