In case you missed it. 7-2 says lethal injection is ok. Along with most of you around here, I think execution by any means is an abhorrent embarrassment to this country.
Still, if we’re going to have lethal injection (and it looks like we will for the forseeable future) and if we want to see if it is a painful method of execution (or if we want to see how often it is botched) why not simply leave out the pancuronium bromide – the paralytic? After all, it seems to me the only reason it is administered is to eliminate any chance that observers will see the results of any pain the final drug may inflict.
I’m not a doctor (and, by the way, neither are the people who administer lethal injections), so I don’t know if there are any other reasons for the use of pancuronium bromide. But if lethal injection doesn’t cause pain, then there is no need for it, right?
Just a thought.
calipygian
The way things are going in the Middle East these days, we’re going to need those people we’re executing now to get blown up in those Iranian towns we havn’t turned into radioactive rubble.
4tehlulz
Needs more beheadings.
smiley
I’ve never understood the drug cocktail used in lethal injections. Why not just give lethal doses of morphine or phenobarbital? Is it not punishment enough for them to just go to sleep and die peacefully?
4tehlulz
>>Why not just give lethal doses of morphine or phenobarbital?
We lose the War on Drugs if we give them opiates or downers.
laneman
If you’re going to execute a person, the most humane way is a guillotine. Without any ceremony.
It’s just not pretty/clean. Which is why this country uses injection. Very ‘sterile’.
numbskull
Laneman, I don’t think beheading a conscious being is humane compared to other measures. We’re not even allowed to do that with research animals (C02 or anesthetic OD are the preferred methods).
Gus
Isn’t it true that the method they were talking about is considered too painful to use for euthanizing animals?
Fwiffo
I don’t know how long a human head can stay conscious after being lopped off, but for some animals it can be a long time. Rattlesnake heads have been observed to remain conscious and even give envenoming bites to their tormentors 30+ minutes after being chopped off.
Reverend Spooner
Yes, that’s correct.
What upsets me is that Stevens and Kennedy went along with this crap. Breyer doesn’t surprise me, he’s always been a wingnut when it comes to fucking over criminals and supposed criminals. But Kennedy is supposed to care about international law, and Stevens is the closest thing to a liberal on the court.
We’re going to lose at least 2 Justices in the next 4 years. If McCain gets in, expect 5 Scalitos to vote the straight wingnut ticket on every issue. Executions for all, abortions for none, privacy for no one outside of the Bush administration. It’s said that in democracy, people get exactly the kind of government they deserve; if America elects McCain, America will apparently deserve 25 years of the worst Supreme Court since Justice Taney.
Fred X. Quimby
Several years – look at Cheney.
Reverend Spooner
The French conducted experiments on this subject in 1905, with the guillotine and a convicted bandit named Longwy (sp). M. Longwy remained conscious for over 30 seconds after his decapitation. Experiments like this were instrumental in France abolishing the death penalty and the guillotine… in the 1970s.
sheila
I’m glad you brought up this topic on your blog. State sponsored killings, for whatever reasons, are wrong wrong wrong.
Tony Alva
Sorry to bust the party up, but I think the world is a better place without those who rape kids in it. I don’t want to pay for their incareration and I don’t want to have to worry about them being cut loose on account of over crowding etc…
In the immortal words of MC Search, “Give’em the gas face…”
Sasha
Basically, a information cascade that began with states adopting and never questioning the procedures first implemented by Oklahoma and Texas.
Pisco Sours
I’m an opponent of the death penalty, but if it’s going to be done, nitrogen asphyxiation seems to be the most humane way of doing so.
Cris
I continue to scratch my head in wonder that one of the voices of reason on the court was appointed by G.H.W. Bush.
calipygian
And it would be a lot easier to get rid of those motherfuckers if we just threw out the Constitution, too, especially those pesky guarantees of a speedy trial by jury and prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure and cruel and unusual punishment.
David Hunt
Although I am in general agreement with you regarding execution, I can think of a reason they could be giving the condemned that paralytic besides masking pain. I suspect that, regardless of whether the prisoner is conscious, that they might flail around some in a involuntary reaction as the poison kills them. It’s just a guess.
The explanation that I’ve heard regarding this is that it takes too long. The prisoner might survive for 30 minutes or even an hour after the injection. I believe that it is considered too much for the witnesses to wait while the prisoner dies or some such. Unfortunately, I can no longer remember the source I got this from, take that for what it’s worth.
PeterJ
Strap some C4 around the head of the person to be executed.
BTW, I think the death penalty should be abolished.
laneman
Having used CO2 to ‘euthanize’ animal and done inhalation toxicology studies on CO2 inhalation, I know that it is very agonizing.
CO, much less so. But, we stopped using cyanide gas (better than CO) for the reason that it was painful, and caused stress to the observers. Both of which cause much less agony than severe lung acidosis from CO2. Watch a rat spew foam as it’s lungs are acidified and tell me it it more humane than whacking it’s head off.
EL
I agree that it’s probably used to stop outward twitching, struggles, etc. disturbing to observers; but it would also stop breathing. However, the potassium chloride should do a thorough job of stopping the heart all by itself.
laneman
And, as an addendum, my comments has squat to do with pro-or-con death penalty.
It should be done with, it is barbaric, but that is not what I am speaking to.
Michael D.
Uhmmmm, it’s pretty well known that the legal costs associated with the death penalty are MUCH greater than the cost of incarceration.
Person of Choler
Why not use for executions the same mix of drugs (whatever the mix is) that the compassionate assisted-suicide folks in Holland and elsewhere employ?
The Other Steve
I understand that criminals don’t behave rationally.
But it seems to me if you were a putrid evil asshat and were to rape a child, and knew you were already going to face the death penalty. Why not kill the child too?
Get’s rid of evidence and a witness, makes it easier to get away.
A lot of these revenge law ideas sound great on paper, but have unintended consequences.
The Moar You Know
Tony Alva: No one gives a fuck what you think. Go back to your cave in Retardistan.
Reverend Spooner
Too grisly for the executioners. And that’s what “humane” execution is really about, anyway. It’s about letting the executioners sleep at night. It’s about society seeing people put peacefully to sleep, not having to feel that execution is what it is- a gory act of lynching, murder in the name of social order. The fact that the person may, in fact, suffer pain behind a paralyzed mask of serenity is fundamentally irrelevant; what’s important is that the illusion of the wholly theoretical concept of a “humane” execution is maintained, regardless of the substance thereof.
Me too.
Reverend Spooner
And I think the world’s a better place without litterbugs. Can we kill them, too? I think the world’s a better place without people who annoy me in it. Who gives a fuck?
If we start letting child rapists get executed, why not other rapists? Why not robbers? Why not pickpockets? Why not people who disturb the peace during political demonstrations? Where do we draw the line, wherever you, personally, feel like it?
Scrutinizer
Cool! Although I think we should bring back impalement, and do it publicly, so all these bloodthirsty vengeance hounds can get their rocks off on ridding the world of undesirables. If people are going to support the death penalty, they should be required to watch it.
What’s next? Debtors prisons, and cutting off various body parts for various crimes?
Reverend Spooner
Why not just do away with the death penalty, like they did in Holland?
The Other Steve
A new job for Dr. Kevorkian!
DBrown
I do not believe the Government should have the power to execute; however, if it does, why not use the same method as we use for pets – high altitude chamber (i.e. removes air) and the person drops off to sleep in a very happy state until their heart stops. No one can mess it up because that just means the person wakes up afterward. The system is simple, safe (no dangerous chemicals) and extremely human (no pain, just feel good.)
As an ex-air force, altitude chambers are fun – loosing brain function as oxygen levels fall is really a good time, getting high is not just a figure of speech! and yes, some people used them to commit painless suicide.
angie
Actually, most of us are Obama supporters. And our guy says that the death penalty does jack shit to deter crime and is morally wrong… unless the bastard has it coming.
The Other Steve
Draw and Quarter them!
Reverend Spooner
Kill their families while they watch, then execute them!
It’s the only way to deter litterbugs in our society.
Andrew
Maybe we could have them chased them off a cliff by topeless women on rollerskates?
Reverend Spooner
I don’t think we want to encourage criminality, here.
PeterJ
If you want a method that will kill instantly, then a bit of C4 is the way to go. Impalement isn’t. Neither is electrocution or lethal injection.
On the other hand it’s messy. And that’s a plus if you want the death penalty abolished.
PeterJ
Just a flesh wound.
PeterJ
Or perhaps by eating just a wafter-thin mint?
Excessive eating as a form of capital punishment…
Douche Baggins
That Wikipedia article on nitrogen asphyxiation was overkill. Who needs all that apparatus (respirator, valves, gas tanks, restraints, etc.) when a simple airlock will do? Start with room air, switch over to pure N2, wait 3 minutes until the subject keels over, flush with room air, remove body, rinse lather repeat.
Capital punishment is still abhorrent, of course, but if we’re going to be a state that kills, could we at least apply some space technology to the problem?
jenniebee
Yes, and do it quickly, too, because those laws are never misapplied.
Grumpy Code Monkey
While I do believe there are some crimes heinous enough to merit capital punishment, I no longer have any faith in the American criminal justice system to administer it fairly or even accurately. When you look at the number of convictions that have been overturned on new (or newly reviewed) evidence, odds are that at least one innocent person has been put to death. And that is fucking unacceptable for a supposedly enlightened society.
So, yeah, whether lethal injection is painful or not, or whether it’s more or less painful than electrocution or asphyxiation or beheading is the wrong argument to be having.
If you’re so goddamned worried about the gajillions of child rapists out there, then release all the minor drug offenders who are serving more time than rapists and murderers thanks to this goddamned idiotic War on Drugs and use the space to house sex offenders for life so you never, ever have to think about those people again.
datacine
A form of killing invented by Nazi Germany during WWII. I don’t remember them being particularly concious of humane killing techniques.
glocksman
Actually, Himmler had a great interest in more ‘humane’ techniques because of the effects mass shootings were having on the psychological health (apparently a lot of them committed suicide, became alcoholics, went insane, etc) Einsatzgruppen.
The RSHA gas vans and the later stationary gas chambers (first using CO and then cyanide gas) were attempts to ‘sanitize’ the killing as much as possible by making it much less bloody.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
It was first tested on two Jewish children by Adolf Hitler’s personal physician, Karl Brandt as part of the T-4 program. Modern lethal injections began with the systematic murder of 5,000 Jewish and German children with birth defects. Ultimately, the Nazis found gas chambers to be more “humane” than both lethal injections and the Einsatzgruppen method of shooting. They got the idea for gas chambers from California, which had been gassing inmates since the 1920s.
The Nazis learned from America, and America learned from the Nazis, too, for decades practicing lethal injection on children and the mentally retarded.
Dayv
If the death penalty is to remain legal, then executioners should be randomly selected from the populace in a manner similar to jury selection. They should be told nothing about the crimes of the condemned (they are not here to judge, that’s already been done), and there should be no opting out for silly things like religious beliefs.
If society can bear that, then I’ll let the issue go.
Tony Alva
If the DNA’s a match, the head must be detached…
Oh Yeah,
The More You Know: Fuck off into the air
Reverend Spooner
There is no more effective deterrent for spitting on public sidewalks…
fenris
From the article:
..What’s up with the “intent” and “deliberately” for measuring the limits with a law lately? There used to be something like “what a reasonable person could be assumed to accept”, typically dependent on known facts and so on – so the issue would be subject to change dependent on various factors – right?
But now it’s ok as long as you’re not intentionally out to do bad things? That used to be the /first/ line of defense, not the last. I mean, I’m not sure I see someone standing trial being instructed to say: “I plead guilty – but I didn’t mean to do anything wrong”. And the judge would say: “oh, I see, case dismissed”.
Same thing with Obama and the impeachment- clause/torture investigations, it seems. Unless the president goes out on the front lawn on the White House and takes a dump on the constitution – and then publically regrets it afterwards – noone can touch him.