Posted on 04/14/2005 12:58:28 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
As many as four of every 10 prisoners put to death in the United States might receive inadequate anesthesia, causing them to remain conscious and experience blistering pain during a lethal injection.
Researchers in Florida and Virginia drew this conclusion after reviewing levels of anesthetic in the blood of 49 inmates after they were executed.
"I approached this as a physician," said the study's lead author, Dr. Leonidas Koniaris, chairman of surgical oncology at the University of Miami. "We were asking: Is there a possibility of awareness during an execution? Is there a large degree of pain and suffering associated with it? And I think the answer we found is yes."
Of the inmates studied in a report published by the British journal The Lancet, 43 percent had concentrations of anesthetic in their blood — as measured by medical examiners during autopsies — that would indicate consciousness rather than sedation during an execution.
Koniaris, who says he does not oppose the death penalty, thinks the study warrants a moratorium on executions until a publicly appointed panel can review whether some inmates remain conscious during lethal injection.
"If that's the case, as a society we need to step back and ask whether we want to torture these people or not," he said.
Death penalty supporters dismissed the suggestion of a moratorium.
"Lethal injection represents the most humane possible means of punishing a brutal, heinous murderer," said Andy Kahan, Mayor Bill White's advocate for crime victims "Whether or not it is painful, one thing is for sure, it is certainly less painful than the excruciating and horrific death that the victim suffered at the hand of the defendant."
And Mike Viesca, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said his medical staff has assured him the combination of drugs used in a lethal injection renders a person incapable of feeling pain.
The anesthetic, sodium thiopental, is the first of three drugs given in the execution protocol used by Texas and most other death penalty states. The amount typically administered through an IV, 2 to 3 grams, is far more than the amount used to sedate surgical patients and, doctors say, should prove fatal by itself.
Yet, some death penalty critics say poorly trained executioners — most have no formal anesthesia training — could miss a vein or otherwise err in administering a dose. The anesthetic also could wear off during a prolonged execution, which typically last at least 8 minutes.
If the anesthetic somehow fails and an inmate regains consciousness, the second step of a lethal injection, administration of a muscle relaxant, paralyzes the muscles and lungs. The third drug given is potassium chloride, a toxic agent that stops the heart.
The implications of an ineffective anesthetic are, in the words of a Lancet editorial accompanying the article, troubling: "It would be a cruel way to die: awake, paralyzed, unable to move, to breathe, while potassium burned through your veins."
Argument for a stay The potential inhumanity of lethal injection is sometimes raised by lawyers trying to win a last-minute reprieve for their death-row clients.
In December 2003, Texas killer Kevin Lee Zimmerman had his execution stayed after his lawyers argued that the lethal-injection procedure masked severe pain and thus constituted cruel and unusual punishment.
The U.S. Supreme Court soon lifted its stay, and Zimmerman was executed six weeks later. Still, death penalty lawyers say courts may reconsider the issue if more evidence, such as that in the new study, is presented to suggest that executions are extremely painful.
The study reviews the blood records of inmates from Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Texas, the national leader in executions, refused to provide data for the study.
A critical question, the study authors admit, is whether measurements of the levels of sodium thiopental in the blood minutes or hours after death correlate with levels in the blood at the time of execution. However, they note that sodium thiopental levels remain stable in stored human blood.
A local anesthesiologist, Dr. Lydia Conlay, said the extrapolation of postmortem sodium thiopental levels in the blood to those at the time of execution is by no means a proven method.
"It's an interesting and thought-provoking study," said Conlay who chairs the department of anesthesiology at Baylor College of Medicine. "I just don't think we can draw any conclusions from it, one way or the other. I just can't be sure what the numbers mean."
Some opponents of the death penalty say the public accepts lethal injection as a painless medical procedure because, with the IVs, it appears to be one.
"The bottom line is that the there's a real problem with the perception of how lethal injection goes down in the public, and what we believe really goes on," said Gary Clements, deputy director of the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana, a group that represents death row inmates.
Lack of data and records The study's authors said this question of whether an inmate can feel pain ultimately can't be answered because of the unwillingness of states to maintain or share their execution data and records.
In addition to asserting that the TDCJ had no autopsy or toxicology reports for inmates executed by lethal injection, Texas officials told the researchers it did not even have records of how it created the protocol it uses for injections.
Another of the study's authors, University of Miami anesthesiologist Dr. David Lubarsky, said the research team would have greatly preferred to use blood data from inmates at the time of executions. But the data doesn't exist, or it wasn't provided, Lubarsky said.
"What we do have is data to suggest the process might be critically flawed," Lubarsky said. "It's now up to the corrections systems to show that, at the time of death, inmates are asleep. We should accept no less when we're killing people."
eric.berger@chron.com
So, the only data they had upon which to base their findings was old blood, taken at some unknown point after death.
I performed my own study, and the results are shocking. 43 percent of scientists lack sufficient education to perform their jobs.
OK, I think we can safely say the world has gone mad. The point at which this has happened may have been some time in the past - I think it would be hard to pin down exactly when the world lost its collective senses. But there's no denying that it's now happened. I'm sure this point has already been made but did we study the concentration of anesthetic in the blood stream of babies during partial birth abortion? Where they adeqately anesthetized while their brains were sucked out, hmmm?
Have thought as well, that maybe Justice is served by the same. . .have already found myself thinking just how 'Just' it might be, for that pervert in Florida, who kept. . .then buried the child- most likely - still alive, (her name escapes me), to suffer the same. . .
Leni
The number of actual innocents who are judged guilty is infinitesimal. If we can't trust that generally speaking, those found guilty of horrendous crimes are actually guilty, then all bets are off.
The last time I read about death sentences being commuted due to supposed possibility of innocence, it was really just picayne ACLU type procedural details.
IF they're actually guilty, kill'em quick.
And actually the guillotine was invented by a Monsieur Guillotine, in order to create an execution method that was swift and painless. More humane.
I also like this phrase: "I think the answer we found is yes." Actually, the conclusion is maybe.
Beats Henry the Eighth's method. Broadswords and battle axes. Wives can be so inconvenient.
Reply to a post you made about being guilty. I remember a quote, I think from my grandmother, that it is better to let ten guilty men go, than hang an innocent man. I've seen news accounts of men, mostly black, who were in prison for years for crimes they didn't commit. I say sue until they can't sit down!
That case was the first to come to mind for me...that slimebag deserves nothing less.
EXCELLENT point!!
Interesting bit of history for Owensboro. . .
I'd like to see more information about the exonerations - were they all exonerated because they were innocent and pure as the driven snow, or were they exonerated because some of the evidence used to convict them was later judged to be inadmissable, which is often the case with overturned convictions?
Are you against all death penalties? Come clean, now.
The problem with letting the guilty go free is they kill more innocent people. So that is also condemning the innocent.
The justice system is seriously flawed, no doubt about it. The ACLU has done great harm in disallowing what kind of evidence can be used, making so many kinds of searches illegal, and so on.
Justice should be swift, none of this 20 years of appeals. This is a little OT, but all prisons should be self-supporting. The inmates should grow and produce everything they eat, wear, and sleep on.
LOL bump
One clean head shotwould solve that problem right away.
*snicker*
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