Clayton Locketts made his death imminent.
And then Clayton Locketts made his death unpleasant.
No pro-DP person has suggested anything of the sort. It is entirely a function of the usual flurry of false dilemma arguments from the other side.
Which is very much part of the silliness - not giving him the steak he wanted is “lowering our standards” to the same as someone who raped and murdered a woman by burying her alive.
Do you see how ridiculous that sounds?
Regards,
Shodan
How?
- It’s Clayton Lockett
- He didn’t botch those insertions, he didn’t cause that massive heart attack, and he didn’t stop those in the room from attempting to revive him after they caused that massive heart attack.
So to be clear. It would have been more humane to stop the process, bring in medical professionals to save him from a heart attack, just to put him to death at a later date?
(Thanks for the name correction - can’t believe I did that.)
If anyone actually said that it would indeed sound ridiculous. How about you putting aside that “steak” chew toy you’re flailing around with and address the whole of the matter? What is your source of information concerning him having a heart attack while he was unconscious?
He was NOT unconscious during the process. Read the eye witness accounts. He awaoke. Midazolam has a half life of two hours and is removed on first pass through the liver. It allows effective sedation for a matter of minutes- one of its values in surgery is that the patient can be awakened quickly by stopping the infusion (I had this done only six weeks ago). In order to maintain hypnotic effect, Midazolam needs to be given continuously. HE WOKE UP!
You are just minimising the horror.
Of course it would have! Give the veins a little time to heal, get some proper testing done on those iffy chemicals to make sure they do what they are supposed to do and, while it wouldn’t be as humane as putting him in prison for life, it would be much more humane than what actually happened.
What level of torture do you consider it to be by locking someone in a bare, concrete-finished ‘closet’ for half a century? I would by far rather be executed than to be tortured like that.
ETA: By the way, how do we know he had a “massive heart attack”? In my opinion (which I admit is based on an incomplete knowledge of all the facts surrounding his death), a heart attack, i.e. myocardial infarction, is most unlikely given the circumstances. Much more plausible is that the potassium caused a fatal arrhythmia (and, for the purpose of media communication is being called a “heart attack”). Arrhythmias kill quickly.
Of all the long list of objections to the death penalty in general, and this execution in particular, that is the most trivial. There are many issues much more important than that one. You do yourself no favours by going on about it all the time.
You are in the minority.
I hear this from death penalty proponents all the time-those who are in no danger of having to choose between the two. What if we asked some prisoners to make the same choice?
See my Orwell quote earlier.
And, when some do, and desire to be executed, ‘death penalty opponents’ still rally to the cause and decry the practice.
I love this kind of thing. Anti-DP says something silly. Pro-DP points out that it is silly. Some other anti-DP repeats the silly. Pro-DP points out (again) that it is silly. Anti-DP - ‘why are you going on about this?’
Regards,
Shodan
Because not all anti-DPs think the same way? I could name one or two on this thread who are harming our cause more than helping it.
“Heart Attack” is frequenetly used colloquially and in the Media to mean any cardiac event causing a collapse from Myocardial Infarction, through Arrhythmias to Heart Failure. A recent soccer player was said to have had a Heart Attack, but it was Ventricular Tachycardia.
Whatever happened his heart stopped because of the stress placed on his body while he was awake. Potassium excess cause Venticular Tachcardia followed on by Ventricular Fibrillation if not counteracted.
As I had a near fatal Ventricular Tachycardia only six weeks ago, I can tell you that it is very unpleasant and lasted for at least 45 minutes during which I felt terrified, massively uncomfortable through lack of oxygen and extremely distressing.
A lot of attempted minimising going on here!
I am sorry that you had to experience that; seriously, it must have been a wretched experience.
That said, I did not want to get into it in my earlier post, but high potassium levels stop the heart dead in its tracks, with either ventricular fibrillation or asystole. Ventricular tachycardia, a rhythm which as you can attest may go on for some time, is NOT usually a result of high potassium. In other words, Lockett’s heart would have just stopped with no period before hand of palpitations, oxygen deprivation to the body, etc.
No human-derived system is ever 100% fool proof. And on any other subject, you’d take it as an article of faith that a government run program is going to be run poorly. What is it about killing people, in your opinion, that suddenly makes the government stop making mistakes altogether?
Actually it goes like this:
Anti-DP give a list of very sensible objections
Pro-DP picks the least important one and attacks it.
Anti-DP points out that he is being silly.
Pro-DP continues to ignore all points except the least important one
Anti-DP points out again that he i9s being silly.
Pro-DP imagines himself to have won.