Posted on 04/26/2015 11:20:42 AM PDT by nickcarraway
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear a constitutional challenge to Oklahoma’s lethal-injection drug protocol, which last April left a man writhing in agony on the killing table for 43 minutes.
In the spectacularly botched execution, the condemned man, Clayton Lockett, first received an untested sedative, midazolam, but it failed to knock him out. As prison officials scrambled to pump the deadly drugs into his veins, he awoke, tried to sit up and said, “The drugs aren’t working,” before finally succumbing to a heart attack.
After that debacle, Gov. Mary Fallin of Oklahoma ordered an independent review of the state’s execution procedures, which ultimately blamed a misplaced intravenous line in Mr. Lockett’s groin. In December, a federal judge ruled that the state’s procedure was constitutional, clearing the way for the executions of four more men. Those inmates turned to the Supreme Court to stay their executions on the grounds that the drug is not an effective anesthetic and creates an intolerable risk of pain, but the court refused. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for the dissent, pointed out that the state expert who testified that midazolam works relied on the website drugs.com.
One week later, the justices voted to take up the case, Warner v. Gross, but they had to change its name because the original lead plaintiff, Charles Warner, had been executed in the meantime. It is now named after the man next in line to die, Richard Glossip. (The court put the remaining executions on hold pending the ultimate ruling.) The justices considered lethal injection once before, in 2008, when they upheld Kentucky’s protocol, which did not include midazolam. The question before them now is whether the use of midazolam violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Did I miss something, did the condemned survive the execution? Otherwise, it wasn’t botched.
Firing Squads would resolve that problem very easily.
It wasn’t botched. The perp died later, giving him enough time to meditate on his crime.
The perp shot a woman, and buried her while she was still alive.
It was perfectly executed.
A good amount of the companies that produce these drugs refuse to sell them to the DOJ and corrections,
Article:
“Shortage of execution drugs in U.S. becomes more acute
The scarcity of drugs for lethal injections has become a growing problem as more pharmacies are backing off from supplying the lethal chemicals.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/shortage-execution-drugs-acute-article-1.1619594
[[“The drugs aren’t working,” before finally succumbing to a heart attack.]]
Sounds like they worked to me
Just hang them, and unlike bullets, you can always reuse the rope, so it’s more economical.
Did they swab his arm with rubbing alcohol before they put the needle in? That would strike me as a cruel bit of pretense.
Enough of this needle BS. Just hang them or shoot them.
I’d probably choose getting shot over poisoned. Why is being poisoned more “humane”? Because the libs watching wouldn’t have to see any blood?
Why do they sterilize the needles? Afraid they’ll get infected?
I support the Constitution's Eighth Amendment as much as I do the First and Second.
They know how to put your dog down quickly and gently. This isn’t complicated.
Nitrogen delivery in bulk by truck within 24 hours, anywhere in the lower 48.
http://rt.com/usa/250957-nitrogen-gas-execution-oklahoma/
So, what you're saying is that hanging is more environmentally friendly. I think we can sell that. One recyclable rope rather than messy bullets or chemicals that might harm the planet.
And if it is done properly where the neck snaps, the perp does not suffer long.
We could even make the rope from Hemp, so that would please the 420 crowd.
I am passionately opposed to lethal injection for judicial execution.
I favor a return to hanging or beheading.
It should be simple sedation, then a plastic bag placed over their head. I think that I how Dr. Kevorkian did it.
Has the United States ever done beheading?
The problem is not the ban on cruel and unusual punishment, but the constant redefinition of "cruel and unusual" according to the whims of liberal opponents of the death penalty.
The original meaning presumably referred to drawing and quartering. (See "Braveheart" for the movie version or "The Lion and the Throne" by Catherine Drinker Bowen for the literary version.) Now it's taken to mean an execution by a drug not proven to be painless.
To say nothing of the redefinition in non-capital cases, for example that it's cruel and unusual punishment to deny a prisoner a sex change operation at the taxpayer's expense.
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