Not always. Anyway, if the point is to induce death by separating the spinal cord we could do that much more reliably by incision. But we don’t, for anatomical reasons that I’m sure somebody will explain.
This is bizarre in the extreme. Inhalation of high concentrations of carbon dioxide is agonizingly painful. I once received a shipment from Omaha Steaks; it came in a styrofoam enclosure with a sizable chunk of dry ice. I took the dry ice and placed it in a ziploc bag, and when the bag had expanded nearly to the point of bursting, I opened part of the seal and inhaled the nearly-pure CO2 gas that came out. I’m not even sure I got it all the way to my lungs: my throat burned so intensely that I started coughing and hacking before I even had a chance to inhale very deeply. Take the “tingle” you get in your nose from a soda burp, multiply it by about a million, and spread it throughout your entire respiratory tract, and you start to get the idea.
It’s mind-boggling that this is a standard practice for “humanely” killing animals; it rips the “eu” out of euthanasia.
This link shows some details on Carbon Dioxide euthanasia. Specifically, how to accomplish it without causing pain prior to unconsciousness.
Could a doctor or nurse anesthetize a patient/convict prior to an execution if they were not administering a lethal doze without violating their ethical code? After the convict was properly anesthetized, the medical practitioner could leave, and the state could send someone else in to administer a lethal drug or bash the person’s head in with a hammer.
One of the cites I found when searching also mentioned using CO, but had a comment like “danger to operator”.
Using CO2 seems easy, since you just hook up a tank of CO2. I’d guess you can just use an exhaust fan to clear the air, without worrying too much about a little leakage into the room.
I didn’t see any cite mention N2. N2 is available in tanks as well, so you’d think that would be just as easy to use as CO2, and a little leakage wouldn’t be toxic like CO. I guess, though, there’d still be a danger that a leaking tank would displace Oxygen over time without anyone noticing. If CO2 started building up in a lab, I’d think someone would notice before dying.
It takes minimal skill to successfully anaesthetise a patient. The skill is in ensuring that they recover afterwards.
I would be so simple to kill someone with commonly available drugs. In mental health where someone is manic, large quantities of diazepam and droperidol IM result in almost immediate stupor. Followed by several common anaesthetics given IV to cause cardiac arrest or respiratory arrest.
It is a skill in titrating these drugs that allows survival in various operations.
In the many cases where the state has executed innocent people (it happens, you know, because no legal system is perfect), then yes, the word “victim” is entirely appropriate.
Whether the use of the word is proper for a truly guilty person who is executed is another matter and would be a digression from the OP, so I won’t get into that.
Nitpick: no US court has ever found that a person was wrongly executed. Of course, that’s in large part because there is almost zero political will for reopening the cases of people who have already been executed.
[church lady]Well, how conveeeeeenient![/cl]
I predict that there is a pretty nasty political and legal problem in the near future for these institutions. There is no possible way that this protocol would pass current research ethical standards. Maybe in the dim past when things were much more lax, but not any more. It sounds as if this one has simply slipped past without anyone noticing.
Most funding agencies are required to take a firm view on such matters now, and once these old protocols come to light, loss of funding is quite possible.
As a matter of obvious political management, anyone who is still using these protocols might be well advised to, right now, today, get it changed wherever they work. It is much much better to say to an investigating body “yes there was a problem but it is already fixed” than to find out from them first.
I wouldn’t think so.
My understanding is that doctors can only administer drugs, or authorise a nurse to do so, when it is for the health of the patient. If there is no medical reason to anesthetise a patient, then I would think it would be contrary to their code of ethics.
More directly, if the only reason for anaesthetising is to prepare the way for an execution, I wouldn’t think a code of ethics would allow that kind of distinction. The doctor is still doing it as a stage in the execution.
I’ll tell you why they don’t use this method or the hundreds of other drugs that would be quicker, easier, and completely painless (opiate overdose, etc).
They want execution to scare people and to give the “victims” (and/or their relatives, when applicable) some satisfaction of actually HURTING the criminal as opposed to putting him to permanent sleep as quickly and completely painlessly as possible.
If you ask the question right, death penalty supporters will come right out and admit this.
The suggestion of using an opiate overdose, which is not only quick and painless (euphoria, fall asleep, stop breathing, suffocate) usually gets such people to say that would be too enjoyable.
There are many barbiturates stronger than the thiopental sodium that they currently use for LE. Why not use pentobarital or secobarbital? And why not just use an injection of a strong, fast acting barbiturate to put someone to sleep, like they do with dogs? Why use pancuronium as well? Someone on death row sued a while back saying i won’t fight my lethal injection if you just use the barbiturate to put me to sleep and kill me. The state wouldn’t have any of that. Too painless, too humane. They want to use a moderately strong, middle of the road barbiturate to calm the inmate and then use another drug to cause a painful heart attack. No painkillers allowed. No guarantee of being fully asleep and unconscious. The family members watching for their pleasure “deserve” a show of agony, writhing pain, some sign the “scumbag” is suffering “just like he made so and so suffer.”
Also, due to doctrines of immunity, 11th amendment, mootness and standing, it’s pretty much impossible for any US court to decide whether someone was wrongfully executed.
But it’s pretty clear that Texas wrongfully executed Cameron Todd Willingham. Can’t sue the state over it. Can’t appeal anything. The only guy who would have standing to bring a lawsuit is now dead. Everyone involved from the prosecutor to the TDCJ have absolute immunity. So it’s fundamentally misleading to suggest no court has ever ruled there was a wrongful execution. I’m a lawyer and I can’t think of a way that a wrongful execution case could possibly be brought in any court in this country. No jurisdiction. No court would ever decide such a thing in conjunction with another case, either.
Although current nurses and doctors cannot remain in good standing with their registration bodies, it is not difficult to train other personnel from scratch or to retrain ex medics or nurses. It is not rocket science. All that is needed is manual dexterity, high school education and total lack of moral compass.
In the UK there is the realisation that people were hanged wrongly in the past- we have even apologised for shooting people with shell shock (PTSD) in the Great War.
There is also the problem of the release of many convicted murderers who were later shown to be innocent since abolition and who would undoubtedly been executed ( many Irish and English linked to Republican terrorism.
Luckily there is no possible way for judicial killing to be reintroduced in Europe; we grew up and became adult.
A few states tried pentobarbital, but its manufacturer was not happy and has put restrictions on its resale by distributors.
I don’t think it was actually used in an execution, they only discussed it as an alternative method (I could be wrong, I vaguely recall this though). But the bottom line is they’re the government, if they really wanted to get it, they could. It’s not rare or expensive.
And secobarbital is even stronger. Some manufacturers have restrictions on thiopental as well. I just read something recently about how one company wanted to move it’s factory to Italy, but the italians wouldn’t allow export of the drug if there is a chance it could be used for executions.
Opiates are the best way to go. Fentanyl derivates can be over 10,000 times stronger than morphine. How about carfentanil… a few micrograms would kill a normal person, and if that’s the intent there’s no reason to limit it to a few micrograms. Use a whole gram of it. It’s not like it’s made from platinum.
Or just plain old morphine. Keep pumping it IV until the person stops breathing. Best of all, if there’s a last-second reprieve from the governor after the execution has begun, an opiate overdose can instantly be reversed with naltrexone.
I guarantee you all these evil “victim’s rights” groups would go nuts and protest nonstop if convicted killers were being executed with a nice big pleasurable shot of dope. Most pro-death penalty Americans don’t even like lethal injection b/c it seems to painless. They’d rather bring back the electric chair, or some other cruel and unusual form of deathtorture. You know, for the children.
Pentobarbital has been used in Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, and Virginia. Florida currently uses a combination of Midazolam, vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride. I have no idea why.
Moderator Warning
kaltkalt, you should be aware by now that political jabs are not permitted in General Questions. This is an official warning. Do not do this again.
You’ve received previous notes and warnings for religious jabs. You would be well advised to refrain from extraneous commentary on such topics in this forum if you do not want your posting privileges to come under review.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I am quite interested in the warning given above. I have moderated my comments on this thread as I have been warned in the past about criticising death penalty advocates.
It does cross my mind that similar ‘political’ comments about the current Syrian government torture and killing of people, or Saudi beheadings and beatings, or previous prisoner treatment by Viet Cong of American military, or al Qaida flying planes into buildings would not be so apparently offensive. From my European point of view, all people who encourage the painful death of human beings are equally despicable. This includes death penalty advocates.
Why is it that especial protection is given to Americans proposing painful death, yet not so when nasty foreigners are involved?