Posted on 05/02/2014 11:31:47 AM PDT by Kaslin
News reports this week were filled with lamentations from death penalty opponents about the messy and unnecessarily painful execution of Oklahoma's Clayton Lockett. As Andrew Cohen wrote in The Atlantic, Oklahoma corrections officials "were using an untested mix of lethal drugs, never previously used in that dosage combination, obtained through secret means, which precluded the possibility of oversight from attorneys or medical officials on the quality of the drugs. They were warned by medical experts, and asked by defense attorneys, to open up the process to review -- by the courts, by doctors, by some members of the public. Yet they refused."
Missing from that report -- and most others -- was the reason states are using new drug mixes obtained through unconventional means: Since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Kentucky's three-drug lethal injection protocol as constitutional in 2008, death penalty opponents have used every trick in the book to make the drugs disappear.
Of course, before the big bench's 7-2 ruling, lawyers for death row inmates had argued that the three-drug protocol violated convicts' constitutional protection against "cruel and unusual punishment." The remote possibility -- a 0.001 percent chance -- that an inmate might suffer unduly prompted federal Judge Jeremy Fogel to halt California's three-drug executions in 2006; despite the Supreme Court ruling, there hasn't been one since.
After the big bench affirmed the three-drug protocol, activists went after suppliers. The European Union threatened to ban the export of sodium thiopental to the United States. European producers stopped making it. U.S. manufacturer Hospira also stopped making the drug.
That's when states started experimenting and scrounging for "untested" drugs.
When an investigation of Lockett's gruesome end is complete, it may find that the drug cocktail had little to do with Lockett's unintended pain. The problem could have been intravenous needles that were damaged or poorly inserted.
Kent Scheidegger of the pro-death-penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation blogged Wednesday that because lethal injection requires the involvement of medical professionals, it "was a mistake from the beginning. We should have kept the gas chamber and merely used a different gas. Carbon monoxide, for example, is painless." He's right.
I should note that Lockett had it easier than Stephanie Neiman, the innocent 19-year-old victim whom he and his friends beat and bound with duct tape in 1999. Lockett shot her twice before he ordered an accomplice to bury her alive in a shallow grave.
White House spokesman Jay Carney called the Oklahoma execution inhuman. He did not mention the Obama administration's role in pressuring states to surrender drugs found to be constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2011, the Obama Department of Justice actually seized Georgia's supply of sodium thiopental because the drug, among other problems, did not have FDA approval. Really.
"If the White House is upset," Scheidegger wondered, "why don't they do something about the supply problem? Everyone knows that pentobarbital, the single-drug method, works just fine." Maybe President Obama should sign an executive order.
Who killed Davey Moore, why and what's the reason for?
Hang 'em high.
No torture in lethal injection.
But, a good many liberals responsible for the torture of aborted babies.
The murder must take initial responsibility as he is the one that brought on the situation. The Judge and courts are next as they are the ones that hear the evidence and determine guilt. The execution system is last in responsibility. There are many Muslims that would love to execute an American. All they need is a large sharp knife.
lockett returned to the truck because the gun had jammed. He later said he could hear Neiman pleading, “Oh God, please, please” as he fixed the shotgun.
The men could be heard “laughing about how tough Stephanie was” before Lockett shot Neiman a second time.
“He ordered Mathis to bury her, despite the fact that Mathis informed him Stephanie was still alive.”
Having been put under for different medical tests and procedures over the years, one recently, I find it hard to believe there isn’t a way to just knock someone out and then stop their heart.
When I’ve been out, I’ve known absolutely nothing. Wasn’t even aware that I was out. One minute I wasn’t, and then I was.
They should have taken him up to the roof of the prison, and thrown him off.
“If Lethal Injection Is Torture, Who’s Responsible?”
The person who put themselves in the position to be executed by lethal injection is responsible.
(Personally, I think the offal should have been beaten, shot, raped and buried alive, but that’s just me.)
I don’t care either way whether some bloodthirsty murderer suffers. If the death is painful, so long as that pain is not intentional and administered for the purpose of causing pain, I’m okay with that. If the death is quick and painless, I’m also okay with that. I just want these predators completely removed from the universe, so they can never be released, escape, or otherwise gain access to another innocent victim.
There is some interesting data out there indicating that lethal injection actually has a higher rate of “botched” executions than all the other methods.
Except perhaps hanging. In the Old West an inexperienced hangman could result in a slow, gruesome, painful death.
They can put a dog to sleep in seconds, why not get a vet to do the lethal injections, or at least use the drugs the vet uses?
And being painfully dehydrated over a span of weeks, such as what happened to Terri Schaivo is nooooo problem to the people complaining about this “inhumane” execution.
Lockett himself is responsible for any “torture” that occured during his “botched” execution.
The morning of his execution, he opened a vein and had to be tazed and brought on all sorts of problems.
Got a better idea. Smother them with pure nitrogen. They’ll never en know they’re dying.
Works for animals at slaughterhouses.
Its not the pharmacology, its the legalistics.
Didn’t the libs give us the solution in the Terri Schiavo incident? Starving is humane and even euphoric. Beats injections- eliminates all pain.
There was a woman who recovered from a Schaivo-like state and survived an attempt to starve her to death. She’s now a public speaker - I wish I could remember her name....she said it was excruciating.
WHY have we made EVERYTHING so darn COMPLICATED?
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