Posted on 07/04/2005 10:50:11 PM PDT by SmithL
NASHVILLE - Have condemned inmates who've died because of lethal injection done so peacefully or has a drug that paralyzes the muscle system masked horrific side effects?
States are grappling with that question in the latest wave of death row appeals.
The Tennessee Supreme Court heard arguments about the drug Pavulon, or pancuronium bromide, in a death row case last month, and is expected to rule by September. In Kentucky, a similar issue is expected to reach the state Supreme Court soon. In Missouri, an inmate got a last-minute stay in May so the U.S. Supreme Court could review his death penalty procedure case before denying his claim 5-4. He was put to death.
In the majority of U.S. lethal injections, an anesthetic puts the inmate to sleep. The second drug is Pavulon, or pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes the muscle system. The third drug, potassium chloride, stops the heart.
Corrections departments across the country say that lethal injection is a more humane way to kill inmates than the electric chair or gas chamber and therefore does not violate the Constitution's Eighth Amendment banning cruel or unusual punishment.
Death penalty opponents say lethal injection also can induce horrifying pain because Pavulon, which is banned by the American Veterinary Medical Association for animal euthanasia, will mask any signs that the anesthetic has failed to work. They have little to support those claims except a few anecdotes of inmates gasping and convulsing and an article in the British medical journal Lancet.
They also attack lethal injection by saying that the steps to complete it haven't been reviewed by medical professionals.
State correction departments who handle the death penalty process counter that doctors do not - indeed cannot - do such reviews because their professional code of conduct prohibits physicians from purposely killing someone.
"The department has had difficulty finding medical professionals to get involved," state attorney Joe Whalen told the Tennessee high court.
The American Medical Association's Code of Ethics doesn't allow physicians to participate in most aspects of an execution.
"A physician, as a member of a profession dedicated to preserving life when there is hope of doing so, should not be a participant in a legally authorized execution," according to the capital punishment section. It specifies that participation includes rendering technical advice regarding execution.
The Lancet study by University of Miami researchers involved 49 executions in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. In 21 of the deaths, the study concluded from autopsy toxicology report data that inmates were likely conscious when they received potassium chloride, which meant Pavulon masked the ability to determine if there was pain and suffering.
The nation's highest court has never found a specific form of execution to be unconstitutional, but 37 of 38 states that have the death penalty allow lethal injection, as does the federal government and military.
Deborah Denno, a Fordham law professor who testified in what is considered the first lethal injection challenge in Texas in 1997, said that her 2001 study found that every state that releases its protocol uses the three-drug mixture except North Carolina and New Jersey. Only New Jersey doesn't use Pavulon.
Death penalty opponents say the lethal injection protocol was established in Oklahoma two decades ago and readily adopted by successive states. Tennessee's protocol, for example, came primarily from Indiana with a review of the steps required by Texas, the first state to use lethal injection in 1982.
Denno said that argument shouldn't be used as the states' defense.
"I've argued that's why states don't change," Denno said. "It effects the implementation of the death penalty, but that's the worst excuse in my opinion."
Bradley MacLean, who represents a Tennessee death row inmate, says the lethal injection process might continue, but only with the perception that it is a flawed process.
"There's just the stigma attached with using a chemical that's strictly prohibited for potbellied pigs," MacLean said.
how about using an overdose of laughing gas?
The more important and relevant question is did the victims of the condemned die peacefully?
someone really needs to explain to me what exactly is so bad about a small-caliber bullet to the base of the skull.
good enough for pigs and cows, after all...
No need to rush to a decision. Take your time boys.
"how about using an overdose of laughing gas?"
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I still think retro-fitting an old gas chamber with some kind of nitrogen-purge system is the way to go. As the normal atmosphere (77% nitrogen) is replaced with pure nitrogen the condemned would simply lose consciousness and fade out without so much as a twitch or drool.
The very first space-shuttle fatality ocurred over a year before Columbia's first flight, when a technician climbed down into the crew compartment unaware that it was a pure nitrogen environment (fire prevention) and the hatch had not been tagged out appropriately. He never knew what hit him.
Is that online somewhere?
This is just an end around against the death penalty. The lethal injectors convinced people it was necessary to be humaaaane to these animals. Now they are playing the end game. Since there is no humaaaane way to kill these murderers we need to have life imprisonment, I mean they should be eligible for parole in seven years, I mean make them register to live in our neighborhoods, I mean let's rehabilitate them....(Sarcasm) All this crap was tried before. They eliminated the death penalty in the seventies and violent crime exploded to all time highs. Libs are people who adopt criminals as pets as long as they prey on other people.
Next thing you know we'll be right back to the 1970's with nobody safe in their own homes and a serial killer on every block.
'Serious side-effects?" Uh, like death? Life?
You didn't extend the Libs(socialists) line of thinking to what they consider a logical conclusion. If the people these animals killed weren't in the wrong place at the wrong time then none of these murders would have taken place. Consequently it's the condemned who are the victims.
"Is that online somewhere?"
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Nope, so far as I am aware it's my very own Dr. Guillotin-worthy inspiration. From my navy years I recollect that Halon fire-supression systems in engineering spaces work by simply displacing oxygen and that all personnel have to be evacuated beforehand. That and the incident I mentioned above led me to conclude that simply displacing the oxygen from the air in a gas chamber without having to introduce a poison gas would be the most painless way to go. And what better a gas than the major component of the air we breathe? (cheap, too).
Well, then, that's a deterrent now, isn't it? </onlyalittlesarcasm>
So the taxpayers have to fork out a couple of hundred grand
so Jimmy Lee Jenkins can go out like Edward G. Robinson in the movie Soylent Green?
suffocation is an unpleasant 2-4 minute business, from whatever cause.
".....drug that paralyzes the muscle system masked horrific side effects?"
I certainly hope so. The more suffering for those ***holes, the better
Sissy lawyers never give up. Bitch about hanging. Bitch about gas. Bitch about the chair. What's next after injection? Ziltch about the victim.
We are so PC, they us a use a 'sterile' needle -- resulting in more wasted taxpayer money.
How about simply starving them to death. It's peaceful and euphoric, so they say.
-PJ
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