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
I was compromising =)
"Study: Inmates suffer during lethal injections"
...to which the victims and their relatives say, "SO?"
OR put them to death the way they killed their victims?
Good. Suffer, you murdering b@$t@rds.
I still think were potentially wastin' good stuff though. If their healthy, we ought to drain their blood and cut 'em up for spare parts. Let 'em pay their debt to society with blood, kidneys, hearts, retinas, etc.
The smoke, the sizzle and the dimming of the lights throughout the prison.
(Sounds of crickets chirping)
Hey! Did you catch the game on TV last night?
Not only that, but they'll look more beautiful than ever. And peaceful.
Make thenm listen to tapes of Hillary speeches until the go into a coma.
What you said, lj.
Personally, I don't give a darn if the condemne feel pain during execution but I DO give a darn as to the amount of fear and pain they brought on their victims. As far as I'm concerned, lethal injection is too easy.......bring back the electric chair and by the way, the courts in Florida deemed it legal to starve and dehydrate Terri Shindler, so may we consider that as a new way of executing these convicted scum?
This must be the chicken or the egg question. How do people know right become decent and well intention in the forst place. Usually because we are taught by parents and pastors right from wrong. How would these people even know what decent and well intentioned was unless someone taught them.
Thanks for pinging me, LJ.
I just shook my head reading this. On occasion, I have felt that lethal injection was letting the criminal off too easy. Bring back Ol' Sparky, firing squad, hanging, or the ever popular Guillotine (made in France). Let's hear the crybabies squeal then.
Right on.
Execution should be done by a method that any of us could do, because the executioner is acting symbolically on behalf of all of us."]
Thank you for enlarging the area of understanding here, with such clarity and credence. Your analysis is so 'right'; I am wondering how this all escaped a more serious 'moral scrutiny' though I do recall debates initially. . .now it seems; they just make the choice or not. . .
Have always argued against this method of execution. . .feeling the 'dangerous oxymoronic'. . .the inverse happening. . .the 'kind and humane, personal', taking on an abhorrent and sinister quality, but did not know precisely 'why' it felt like a perversion of 'good'. . .save for the 'blurring of boundaries'; meat-cutter's do not perform operations. . .and Doctors do not work as 'meat-cutters' and a sensing a horror for us all, at the 'kind, up-close and personal, that is required for this 'humane' death task. . . and to the moral point. . .the premises here go far beyond the 'execution debate'.
The blurring of boundaries; removing them altogether, (while introducing the more subtle; more dangerous boundaries- ie political correctness. . .) is what Liberalism is all about.
This particular kindness; no doubt began, in the Liberal heart; where perhaps even their best intentions, cannot escape the 'perversion of ideas'' they are rooted in. There are other possibilities, of course. . .
. . . (*The 'Jewish Wisdom' offered by 'little Jerimiah' - post #28 offers a universal clarity as well: Ancient Jewish wisdom warns that if you apply compassion when you should be applying justice, one day you will apply justice when you should be applying compassion, which is one definition of tyranny.". . .)
"Why don't they just increase the dosage of anesthetic? They certainly can't be concerned about giving them a lethal dose."
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Think there is more to this issue than meets the eye and perhaps. . .the answer is contained above. . .
. . .the study warrants a moratorium on executions. . .
And why do they bother sterlizing the needle, heaven forbid the condemned person develops a nasty infection.
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