Botched executions happen fairly frequently, there was recently a Supreme Court case upholding the Constitutionality of pain not being part of ‘cruel and unusual’ so now I wonder why it’s difficult.
Anesthesiologists go to school for years to NOT kill the people they make unconscious. Couldn’t Joe Schmoe just administer the same gas/drugs and crank it to 11?
It isn’t. The simple problem is that the state institutions that are still killing people
a. Don’t want to change, despite evidence that suggests that executions aren’t a deterrent
b. Don’t want to give the inmates a painless way out - it has to be at least somewhat painful and horrific
They could obviously let the inmates OD on heroin or oxycontin. Or, for a method that is apparently the best known at the present time, they could use nitrogen or some other inert gas (everything *but *CO2, oxygen, or a gas you can smell, basically) and apparently totally painlessly and near instantly kill people. People have been exposed to rooms full of nitrogen, etc by accident and later revived - they don’t remember anything unpleasant. This is because the body uses a sensitive C02 sensor instead of detecting oxygen levels for detecting suffocation. (it does have an oxygen sensor but it is not the primary drive)
The problem with using anesthesiologist methods is that the drugs that are needed for this will not be sold by drug companies to states planning to use them to commit murder. Anesthesiologists won’t participate in their administration, either. So they can’t get the fentanyl and other effective drugs and are forced to dig into drugs used by vets.
While I don’t support the death penalty, I’ve often wondered about this as well. This past April we had to put down our 14 year old dog. She was given a sedative and about five minutes she was given some drug intravenously. She died quite calmly in no apparent pain at all. Can’t this method work on humans?
They seem to be much more concerned with appearance than anything. They could kill people instantly with high explosives or a high-powered rifle shot to the head.
A botched execution is a bad appearance, given that it’s difficult to keep people alive under extreme sedatives it’s strange executing people with same appears difficult.
And I do not buy that this ineptitude is a conspiracy to make inmates suffer.
My thoughts too. In fact you just beat me to it!
So why can’t an anesthetic be used to put these people to sleep first?
I too have wondered this.
I put some time in at a humane society for animals when I was a kid, and I held many a dog and cat while the vet administered the magic shot.
No way those animals suffered anything nearly as traumatic as what I’ve read happens when a human execution goes bad.
Habeeb’s second point seems a bit odd in this day and age… “They don’t want to give inmates a painless way out.” Really? Can this be really one of the reasons? Our insatiable need for vengeance? People want to see the bastard twitch?
I can’t remember what the vet gave the animals. It was a shot of (memory here, and I am not looking it up) Phenobarbital? Does that sound right? Actually it doesn’t sound right to me, but whatever it was, it did the trick, and did it fast.
Ok, if someone tells me that is the generic name for sudafed, I’ll look it up. But dogs literally “went to sleep”, never to wake up. It is truly a peaceful way to go, and as the person holding the dog, I never felt any turmoil going on inside of the animal, indicating some internal organ Armageddon was going on under the skin.
It truly is putting the animal to sleep. I support the death penalty and even I wonder why we care more about inflicting less pain to our animals than other humans. Actually I think I know the answer.
The short answer is no. Administering gas-only anesthetics is difficult. There are stages to the body reaching that peaceful looking anesthetic plane, and one of them is the “excitement stage.” That’s the one where the patient starts leaping around and gasping. It’s why it’s been deemed, at the very least, unusual. I use this method occasionally with cats when they’re feral or otherwise untouchable and giving them an IM shot of another anesthetic isn’t possible for some reason. It’s not a fun procedure, and no amount of tying the patient down suppresses the alarming state.
Pentobarbital.
The manufacturer of pentobarbital will expressly NOT sell it to anyone for the purposes of executions. So it cannot be gotten for executions unless by illegal means. Since the paper trail for the purchase of execution drugs has to be pristine, pentobarbital cannot be on the list of what can be used.
There’s an easily followed paper trail on controlled drugs, from manufacture, to distributor, to doctor. So anyone trying to fudge it along the way will be caught. Pentobarbital is sold for veterinary use only, so for a regular MD to get hold of it would raise eyebrows immediately and would swiftly lose their license.
When euthanizing people’s pets, we use propofol as a preliminary anesthetic. This is the same drug used for people and pets for surgery, to get them sedated enough to intubate before starting gas anesthesia. It’s not a controlled substance, and can be had by all medical doctors, but I don’t know about the manufacturer’s stance on using it for executions. It’s also extremely short acting, so it’s likely not appropriate for use if the second fatal drug isn’t fast acting enough. Though, many may remember it’s the drug that killed Michael Jackson - administering too much too fast can cause respiratory paralysis. Probably arguably not a good way to go and is probably considered cruel and unusual.
This. The End.
I’ve often wondered why not just bleed 'em out? No specialized drugs or equipment or medical personnel needed.
Thank you for the information, SeaDragonTattoo. I have wondered why my vet first administers one drug, then another that does the job. The vet is reluctant to share, but now I know–ignorance fought, and thanks again.
I have had to have the vet put a few of my animal friends to sleep. It is never a pleasant experience, but the vet does his or her best with the preliminary anaesthetic, and then uses the second drug. And my friend just basically drifts off, painlessly. The vet tells me every time that the animal may twitch, but that’s just the body shutting down; that the animal has, at that point, passed, and is not feeling any discomfort; and I should not be worried.
Apparently, in the latest ISIS murder video, they tried this. Explosive cord around the neck of the murder victims. Supposedly, they died instantly - the shock wave from the explosion probably causes enough trauma to the brain to cause instant unconsciousness, and the explosive cord cuts the arteries in the neck supplying blood so they won’t wake up. Messy, but it is as close to instant and foolproof as anything.
With regards to lethal injection, I think that setting up an IV line and administering drugs (any type of drug, for that matter) isn’t as trivial as one might think. Anaesthesiologists as well as the medical personnel working under their supervision do this dozens of times every day in their professional life. They are very experienced, they know what they are doing and they are able to identify, troubleshoot and deal with any problem/irregularity that might come up.
OTOH, the people who are charged with performing an execution by lethal injection only do this rather infrequently, even in busy death penalty states like Texas, and they are not nearly as proficient and thoroughly trained. It isn’t really their job, after all.
Even if 24 executions go through without any problem, when execution #25 is botched, this will be heavily publicized and criticized, so there is a lot of pressure.
We are way too concerned with being civilized, forgetting the laws of the bush are never far away.
China and Saudi are not concerned with such niceties. Smart of them.
Isn’t that the reason to be concerned?
Don’t you want to be civilized?
Still not seeing a real reason among these responses, honestly.
An anaethesiologist isn’t required for an injection, only a nurse is, for one. Drugs are available on the street that could be used without concern about the manufacturer’s consent. There are combinations of drugs as well, (not street drugs) which could be easily used.
Why not go the whole way and stage public executions. Maybe draw lots for who gets in the firing squad. Put the whole thing on TV with a popular presenter. I bet the ads would cover all the costs.
From what I remember reading about botched lethal injections, these occurred when (a) the setting up of IV lines presented unusual problems (and the drug(s), as a result of this, were not administered properly) and/or (b) the reaction to the drugs was unusual. 95 % of the times executions go smoothly, but when they don’t go smooth, the correction officers are often overwhelmed by the problems and things get ugly.
If the corrections department were allowed to hire out for one hour the night shift crew of a busy surgical unit for an execution, there would be much less problems.
Nurses will not participate in executions, nor will any other health care professionals. It is against their code of ethics.
That is the real reason for botched executions. Untrained prison employees are trying to perform procedures that turn out to be harder than they think.