Posted on 07/07/2009 6:36:36 AM PDT by MyTwoCopperCoins
NEW DELHI (AP) — India's top court has refused to replace hanging with lethal injection as the country's sole method of execution, saying there is no evidence it is less painful than other ways.
Monday's ruling rejected a petition by rights activist Ashok Kumar Walia, who said hanging was a "cruel and painful" method of execution and should be replaced by lethal injection, which is used in more than 30 U.S. states as a primary method of execution.
"How do you know that hanging causes pain? And how do you know that injecting the condemned prisoner with a lethal drug would not cause pain?" Supreme Court Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan said.
Balakrishnan and Justice P. Sathasivam said experts believe that hanging — meant to dislocate the neck and sever the spinal cord — causes instant death.
India last carried out the death sentence in 2004, when a man was hanged for raping and murdering a 14-year-old school girl in 1990.
The government says 28 convicts are in line to be hanged for various offenses, including an Islamic militant convicted of taking part in an attack on India's Parliament in 2001.
Their mercy petitions against their execution are still under government review.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesofindia.indiatimes.com ...
7 July, 2009
AP
NEW DELHI (AP) — India's top court has refused to replace hanging with lethal injection as the country's sole method of execution, saying there is no evidence it is less painful than other ways.
Monday's ruling rejected a petition by rights activist Ashok Kumar Walia, who said hanging was a "cruel and painful" method of execution and should be replaced by lethal injection, which is used in more than 30 U.S. states as a primary method of execution.
"How do you know that hanging causes pain? And how do you know that injecting the condemned prisoner with a lethal drug would not cause pain?" Supreme Court Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan said.
Balakrishnan and Justice P. Sathasivam said experts believe that hanging — meant to dislocate the neck and sever the spinal cord — causes instant death.
India last carried out the death sentence in 2004, when a man was hanged for raping and murdering a 14-year-old school girl in 1990. The government says 28 convicts are in line to be hanged for various offenses, including an Islamic militant convicted of taking part in an attack on India's Parliament in 2001.
EXCERPT. Read more at: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jzvjxmS2DS1XkjXO92o2m6fmuAUwD999EO5O0
It seems to me that the Chinese are the only practical ones when it comes to this subject. They fire a bullet from a pistol at close range to the back of the brain. Then they bill the family for the cost of the bullet. Pretty quick and inexpensive.
Could be. I believe there are some groups campaigning for the abolishment of capital punishment by lethal injection, the US, because of evidence of it not being a painless method:
Execution by Lethal Injection Is Not Humane or Painless
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/22945.php
Article Date: 17 Apr 2005 - 0:00 PDT
Prisoners executed by lethal injection in the US may have experienced awareness and unnecessary suffering because they were not properly sedated, concluded a research letter in last week’s issue of The Lancet. The authors believe the use of lethal injection should cease in order to prevent unnecessary cruelty and a public review into anaesthesia procedures during executions is necessary.
Lethal injection is the most common way people are legally put to death in the USA. It has eclipsed all other methods of execution because of public perception that the process is relatively humane and does not violate the US Constitution’s Eight Amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment. Anaesthesia during lethal injection is essential to minimise suffering and preserve public opinion that lethal injection is a near-painless death. Lethal injection generally consists of the sequential administration of sodium thiopental for anaesthesia, pancuronium bromide to induce paralysis, and finally potassium chloride to stop the heart and cause death. Without anaesthesia the person would experience suffocation and excruciating pain without being able to move.
Leonidas Koniaris (University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, USA) and colleagues analysed protocol information from the states of Texas and Virginia, where around 45% of executions are done. They found that executioners-typically one to three emergency medical technicians or medical corpsmen*-had no training in anaesthesia, drugs were administered remotely with no monitoring of anaesthesia and there were no data collection, documentation of anaesthesia, or post-procedure peer review. They also noted that neither state had a record of the creation of its protocol. The investigators also analysed data from autopsy toxicology reports from 49 executions in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. They found that concentrations of thiopental in the blood were lower than that required for surgery in 43 of the 49 executions; 21 inmates had concentrations consistent with awareness. The study suggests that the current practice of lethal injection for execution fails to even meet veterinary standards for putting down animals.
Dr Koniaris states: “Our data suggest that anaesthesia methods in lethal injection in the US are flawed. Failures in protocol design, implementation, monitoring and review might have led to unnecessary suffering of at least some of those executed. Because participation of doctors in protocol design or execution is ethically prohibited, adequate anaesthesia cannot be certain. Therefore to prevent unnecessary cruelty and suffering, cessation and public review of lethal injection is warranted.”
In an accompanying Editorial The Lancet comments: “Whether you receive the death penalty depends not on what you have done, but where you committed your crime, what colour your skin is, and how much money you have. The use of the death penalty not only varies from state to state (12 US states have no death penalty) but from jurisdiction to jurisdiction within a state. Repeated studies have shown a pattern of racial discrimination in the administration of the death penalty.
“Capital punishment is not only an atrocity, but also a stain on the record of the world’s most powerful democracy. Doctors should not be in the job of killing. Those who do participate in this barbaric act are shameful examples of how a profession has allowed its values to be corrupted by state violence.”
Lancet
42 Bedford Square
London WC1B 3SL
United Kingdom
Phone 44 207-424-4910
Fax 44 171 637 3265
http://www.thelancet.com
Look if you wanted a fool proof, painless and cost efficient method that is painless just pack a half ton of TNT under the guys butt and lite the fuse. Painless since the shock wave travels faster than the nerve impulse. Fool proof since there is no way the dude survives. Clean up could be a problem, but just do it out in the desert. Cost effective because TNT is cheap and you sell it on pay per view to cover the costs.
LOL, that’s nice!
Interesting point regarding the blast wave traveling faster than the pain messages.
Cleanup won’t be a problem. Just keep a flock of vultures.
What strikes me here is how rare executions are in India. The USA, with less than a third of India’s population, beats India’s figure by more than an order of magnitude.
Actually if clean up is a problem, just put a few drums of Napalm above the condemned. Serves a duel purpose of tamping the blast and incinerating the grizzly bits. Since it is above the condemned it doesn’t ignite until after he is dead so not complaints about the victim being burned alive.
Workers who've accidently succombed to nitrogen asphyxiation had no clue that they were suffocating until they woke up in the hospital. Turning a wrench, bang, hospital bed.
An execution with a cremation thrown in for free. Now who can argue against that?
Same with helium and other inert gases. These gases by-pass the mechanism by which the brain senses suffocation.
Yep, and with nitrogen it’s not poisonous and can simply be released into the air since it’s a biggest component of the air we normally breath. No muss, no fuss.
I got a better one...death by 90 story drop...no pain at all....
Darn. I wish our courts had this much sense.
Plus a free adrenalin rush, and weightlessness, before going off in a splat.
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