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
Then put them to sleep and execute them with a bullet.
Clearly, we need to starve them to death. No suffering; just euphoria.
bring back the Chopping Block
Has any former death row inmate returned to complain? I don't think so!!!
There's always saline, curretage or starvation/dehydration. After all, if it's good enough for unborn babies and disabled people, it's good enough for death row inmates. /sarc
Quite frankly, if they did a crime where the criminal deserved death (murder, rape, child molestation, etc.), then they deserve the absolute maximum amount of suffering as they exit this world.
No sympathy. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Aw, gee, IF accurate, this is a real shame, isn't it?
Well, I was going to say we need to swithch to the painless, peaceful, euphoric, dehydration/starvation method of execution, but I see everybody beat me to it- LOL
Well said. Tell the big guy that a new Florida self-defense law would've allowed Terri Schiavo to defend herself with a gun under the new criteria of meeting "force with force".
Now that's good irony.
If they do; give 'em one the next one free.
Is that a "Tisk, tisk" I hear?
Moral Absolutes Ping.
I couldn't stand to read the whole article. This is a perfect example of false compassion, based on ignorance of real wisdom, real justice, and real compassion.
The real just and compassionate (for everyone) thing to do is as soon as the sentence is issued, take the criminal out to a field, tie him up, and either hang him (or her, as the case may be) or shoot him (or her etc). That's justice, and compassion.
To worry that the person who has caused terrible pain and harm and likely death to another person or persons may feel a teensy bit of pain during the execution of a death sentence is so egregiously stupid, asinine, wrongly directed compassion that I can hardly keep my dinner down.
It probably is just a ploy to eradicate any executions.
Let me know if you want on/off this pinglist.
Note: Plus, executions should be public so anyone who is thinking about committing similar crimes will have food for thought.
We should just bonk them on the head when they aren't looking and save the price of a bullet.
ANSWER: "Nope, that's how we usually kill 'em!"
Terri Shindler wasn't asleep when she was dehydrated to death. No mercy at all was shown to her.
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